Rancho Rapido of the Seas

I always thought a 12 ton steel vessel would be awfully slow. But our Rancho Relaxo for sure isn’t. Last day’s daily log was 145nm which gives an average of more than six knots. Of course the wind and waves increased during last night but it was still nice sailing with jib and reefed genoa. During the night we passed two big oil tankers and believe it or not the first one actually altered it’s course by 25 degrees to get out of our way ! Very nice. Especially when you’re out alone during the night and both sails are fixed with a boom – that really limits our maneuvrability. At 1100 UTC we once more received a DSC alert from Gran Canaria Radio. Those (excuse me) stupid bastards send a security alert (!) for every weather broadcast !! This means that you’ll receive about 12 DSC alerts a day which cause the radio to go into panic mode and start beeping really loud. The reason why many sailors in the Canaries turn off their VHF. That’s a perfect example for an security improvement that fired backwards. Anyway. We recieved that alert – but hey ! We’re 370nm off G.C. ! That means we’ve once again limitless VHF reception. I tried to reach the SY Kira (roughly 40nm behind) via VHF but they didn’t answer. Maybe the DSC alert caused them to turn off their radio ? ;-)

370 miles off Gran Canaria also means that we’ll have ‘Bergfest’ (half way there) in about five hours. Yay ! Now I’m gonna change the bait – maybe today we’ll finally catch a fish ?