Day 7 – 0800 UTC location: 21°12.30’N by 027°38.40’W and 808 nm from Las Palmas. Yesterday’s average speed was 5.8 knots.

Conditions:
By morning, the wind had calmed down to 6 10 knots apparent on the starboard beam. The seas followed suit, with swells at 4 feet and wind waves at 1 – 2 feet. Overall it was a pleasant ride, though we did get the occasional bigger wave. The seas continued to calm all day. Farther out there is more fetch, so it takes that much longer for the seas to respond to the dying wind. By evening, the wind was down to only 3 9 knots apparent from the aft, and the seas were much smaller overall. Even the occasional bigger waves seemed to have less force. However, since the wind had changed direction, the waves also became a bit confused in the evening. Though light seas, they were not as comfortable as you would expect them to be. The day was sunny overall with scattered clouds, and it was actually warm enough to sit outside! At night, the moon was half full with few clouds, and visibility was good. Not that there is anything at all to see out here.

News:
We don’t have any butter sitting out, but the chocolate has gone soft and mushy, so maybe it is time to turn west? Oh wait, we’re already going west. Unlike the sailors, we picked something closer to a rhumb line than a sharp right angle to avoid the wind.

Reduced RPM to 1500 from 1550 to reduce burn and ensure a 20% fuel reserve. Needless to say, days without much news drag by slowly.

Day 8 – 0800 UTC location: 20°43.00’N by 030°05.00’W and 949 nm from Las Palmas. Yesterday’s average speed was 5.9 knots. Our efficiency is now about 2.9 nm/gal.

Conditions:
The seas continued to calm down by morning and it was a nice ride, with wind only at 5 8 knots apparent from starboard aft and swells at only 2 4 feet. It was sunny with scattered clouds. By late afternoon, it had completely clouded over and the seas had picked up noticeably, despite the fact that the wind had gotten even lighter, down to only 1 4 knots apparent. It was still by no means a bad ride, but we already miss the calmer seas from this morning. The wind waves are only 6 inches, but swells are big. Sailboats must be hating life right now with no wind. The forecast says ugly weather is coming, and we are guessing the increase in swells must be indicative of the approaching rougher conditions.

News:
We crossed the 1/3 mark in the wee hours of the morning. A good milestone, indeed. We hit the 1,000 mile mark at almost exactly 1600. We couldn’t hear the other boats on the radio net very well this morning. The SSB radio wave we use to keep in touch sometimes do not propagate very far. The bad smell seems to be gone. Maybe the bilge cleaner did the trick, but since the smell seems to be related to rocking, it is just as possible the calmer seas made the smell go away.

Early this morning, we noticed the engine temperature gauge was doing an occasional spike and that the other gauges in the pilot house panel (oil pressure and voltage) were occasionally stuttering to be slightly off from their normal numbers. We went down and checked the physical measurements of temp and voltage (using hand held temp gauge and digital volt meter), and everything is normal on engine. We have seen behavior like this before due to some loose connections. The on engine connections appear to ok, so it could be something at the panel itself. We will watch it and continue to take regular measurements. We suspect either some water got in during the Stromboli flood and caused corrosion in there, or maybe someone bumped it when they were in the engine room and knocked it loose. Eric decided since it was not a complete failure, he’d better leave it for the time being and fix it when we get to port. But, later in the day he decided it wouldn’t hurt to give the connectors a good shove to make sure they were really in place. It magically fixed the problem. Indeed, it was just a loose connection.

The next issue is the port stabilizer is making an intermittent noise, almost like a vibration in the hydraulic pump. The system is otherwise working normally. Right now it is more annoying than anything else, since the actuator is located literally next to the mid stateroom berth, which makes it hard to sleep. Oddly enough the noise is normally there, but in the bigger seas it is a consistent “white” noise. In the calm seas, the sound becomes intermittent, and thus more noticeable. Eric got tired of the noise and turned the stabilizer off for a few hours. It was still making a noise, but not nearly as bad. Of course, as soon as he turned it back on, the noise went back to being irritating.

In a complete change of topics”¦ We have forgotten to mention the birds. There are quite a few small little birds flying around. Every time we see one, we are absolutely amazed. We are 375 miles from the nearest land (one of the Cape Verde Islands), and 800 miles from the African coast. It seems like such a long ways for these little birds to fly.

Something we have noticed over the course of our sea travels is that the rockier it is, the more we sleep. We think this is probably two fold, one because it is miserable and the fastest way to pass time is to sleep. Two, because the rockier it is, the poorer the quality of sleep. You wake up at the especially rough waves and unconsciously are aware of the motion, so you don’t sleep as well.

And onto a couple blog questions:

Q: did you install an entertainment system in the master bedroom?
A: Yes, we have an actual home theater. Eric designed and installed it himself and he is very proud of it. We have a projector mounted to the shelf above the bed and a pull down 50 inch wide screen mounted to the ceiling against the wall with the bathroom door. Since the bathroom door slides, the screen case does not interfere with our ability to open and close the door. We also have dual zone surround sound, so we can listen to music upstairs and a movie downstairs simultaneously. The viewing angle, size, distance and sound are fantastic and we love it. Worth noting is that the projector puts out a lot of heat, making it uncomfortably warm in the stateroom on a hot day. On the flip side, on a cold night it is great to snuggle in bed with a movie and let the projector warm the room.

Q: Who was your salesperson at Nordhavn?
A: Jeff Merrill, who is phenomenally good. We highly recommend him.