Part 3/6 Atlantic Crossing West – East and Hump Day RONDÉE ATLANTIQUE

Our Atlantic crossing West-East on Aaron’s daily English expressions and Hump Day Grapefruit😋

Written: Sailing the Atlantic🌍36° 043N 041° 58‘W📅Tu 12.05.26🕗16:15 / 17:15 (21:15)*🌬SE4 🌤sunny
🌡️20°C🌊2m 10sec bumping⛵main + small jib, close reach🧭070°, 5,8 kn, dolphins around

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Plastic out of the Atlantic

12 Luckily on We 6th of May a constant wind comes back. We reach our calculated ETMAL of 100 nm and 1.000 nm in total. Our weather strategist’s instructions are inconsistent. In the night: Go N! In the morning: Can and should head NE! In the afternoon: Run E! To escape the light wind coming from W. In the morning we see a huge perhaps 1 m diameter big white kind of buoy. Fishing so much plastic out of the ocean ~ ugh ~ Hendrik is the „Catcher of the day“.

Ugh!

Hump Day Grapefruit😋

13 Th 7th of May 16:00 pm we have 1.157,7 nm to go and done. We celebrate our hump day – not of the week, but the halfway point of this crossing – with the last grapefruit and Mushroom Risotto – from at home self collected and dried mushrooms – I love risotto – yummy – this time not with fish but a fresh cabbage salad. There seems to be really almost no sea life here. But we are visited once in a while from white birds with black accents and long thin arrow-like tale – a variety of Tern.

Hump day

ETMAL 125 nm in the right direction

14 Nothing really happens on Fr 8th of May!? But the distance of 125 nautical miles we run in 24 hours. It’s our best – let’s call it– ETMAL on this crossing. Although ETMAL means the distance you make from noon to noon. I count from midnight to midnight. It’s the easiest for me, because the boatspeed App counts like that. And so I can just copy the numbers from the App. And what really takes the cake: Our weather strategist Alex says, the wind system seems to stay unusually stable, so we could reach the Azores within 11 days. Fingers crossed.

That takes the cake.

Amazing night shifts💫

15 After 28⁰C in the Caribean – with 5⁰C cooler now Sa 9th of May, it is no longer the barefoot route. When the sun is gone, and the wind is blowing, it is the „socks suck route“;-) I think about also to wear scarf and cap in the night shifts. Anyway it is amazing to see the glimmer of luminescent plankton in the sea, when they are activated by the moved water from the boat. Looking up: All the stars in a cloudless sky. And there! A long long shooting star above the deep yellow half moon.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

A cookie a day...

Hopefully half an apple a day keeps also the doctor away. Because we have to ration our provisions. So as a sundowner there is only one cookie for each of us. A cookie a day keeps bad mood away!? Perhaps I should bake a cake!? Only we have also to take care on our energy management. Baking in the gas oven is quite inefficient and means a lot of gas consumption, which we like to minimize. The energy efficient alternative is our baking machine. But the electrical solar energy is needed to preboil the water for cooking diner and for baking bread. We needed some sunny days for a cake. Additionally there is just a little hiking on board;-D up and down the companionway, that would burn the calories energy… Half an apple should be enough.;-D

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Always safe travels, pleasant winds, and friendly seas wishes

Silvi with Hendrik
sailing …by the winD

⛵️live slow – die old⚓️

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