I’m sitting at the cockpit table with my laptop and watch the sun rise in our wake. I just got woken up by Gui to do my morning watch. We try to move our watches around so everybody gets the good and bad parts. It works like this: The kids go to bed at around 21pm after which soon Wolfgang and Gui both search for their bunks. At one in the morning Wolfgang does his shift and Gui is on the watch from four to about half eight. After which its again my turn. It’s really nice to have three people doing the watches – we get around twice as much sleep as usual. Heh. Sometime during last night all our outside navigational companions quit their job. Electronic compass, log and chart plotter are without power. Later on I’ll search for the reason but right now that’s not important. We use the magnetic compass beside the steering wheel and we also can see course, speed, distance, etc. on the GPS at the chart table. The sea was a little choppy during parts of the last day. The cooking was (as usual) an acrobatic masterpiece. Right now the wind has settled a little and we’re gliding along with 4-5kn in a somewhat smooth sea. Got lots of flying fish again last night. The whole deck is covered with skin parts and smeels really ugly. Another task for today: wash the deck ! – The smell of flying fish is a desaster ! Oh – speaking of: The night before a flying fish actually landed in the cockpit and made a lot of noise before hiding itself behind the spare diesel jerrycan. I got it in time and threw it overboard. I’m doing a lot of reading during my nightshifts and finished ‘Tamata and the Alliance’ by Bernard Moitessier. And AMAZING book covering the whole life of Bernard – a really great read. I also finished ‘Blueship’ by H. Sprungala and R. Radtke which is quite different from other sailing books. These two guys are out to search for fun and sail around the world (and Cape Horn) with a nice 15m Catamaran. One line really stuck in my mind: ‘The atlantic crossing was the most boring part of our whole trip.’ Hehehee. Well we’ll see how our own crossing develops. But so far we didn’t touch the sails or the steering. – In nearly three days !!
Wind: ENE 3, sea 3 with swell from NE. Course 280 degrees, speed: 5.2 knots. Miles to Barbados: 1676 Position at 08:16UTC: 15 40.1N and 030 44.5W