Day 11 – 0800 UTC location: 19°42.90’N by 037°04.20’W and 1348 nm from Las Palmas. Yesterday’s average speed was 5.4 knots. The paravanes do slow us down.

Conditions:
The wind was much more consistent today. It ranged from 10 20 knots, usually staying around 15ish. It came from the starboard aft the whole day. The swells are about 6 8 feet, the waves 2 3 feet, and sadly, they are still confused. We are hoping that now that the wind is steady, the seas will follow suit soon. It was bright and sunny today. The moon was almost full and it was absolutely vibrant whenever it peeked out from behind the clouds. We have forgotten to mention how amazingly vibrant the stars are out here, thanks to no light pollution at all to dim them. Venus looks like the headlight of an oncoming motorcycle.

News:
We crossed the half way mark at about 1230. We celebrated with Tunnock’s Tea Cakes. While halfway in terms of miles, we fear it may not be halfway in terms of days thanks to slow speeds the last few days. Today speeds have been better so far, and hopefully will last. We debated putting the paravanes back up to increase speed, but we have all agreed we prefer comfort over speed. We checked fuel burn again, and it is right at 1.93 gal per hour at 1500 rpm. That puts us around 2.7 nm/gal, which is quite good. Here we are celebrating the big half way moment:

Day 12 – 0800 UTC location: 19°22.00’N by 039°28.00’W and 1485 nm from Las Palmas. Yesterday’s average speed was 5.7 knots.

Conditions:
Yesterday, the swells had already started a gradual buildup, and the pattern continued through the night. By morning the swells were 5 8 feet at rapid intervals, and coming from two directions, east and northeast. The wind waves were 2 3 feet, also rapid, and quite sharp. The gradual buildup continued all day, and by evening, we were definitely in the official “uncomfortable” category. Thanks to the dual stabilization, we are only rolling 5 to 10 degrees in either direction most of the time. The constant motion is maddening. We occasional get a bigger 15 or 20 degree roll. The dual stabilization is helping make it more tolerable. We are sure that if we weren’t consistently running both, the rolls would be more like 10 30 degrees each way, like it was in the South Pacific. The wind has continued to be consistent at about 15 knots apparent from the starboard aft all day. It was sunny today and tonight the visibility is good. Moonlight is a great thing.

News:
It was especially hot today, especially downstairs, so we broke down and turned on the air conditioner in the early afternoon. We are so sad to report that the downstairs blower fan is not working. The compressor turned on, but the fan didn’t blow. That means no air conditioning down stairs. Sigh. It is too hard to fix at sea, so we just have to live without it. Fortunately, it works upstairs, so at least we get some reprieve from the heat. The cooler air has made it easier for us to cope with the rough seas.

Eric hasn’t been feeling very good since last night. His body doesn’t much care for the constant motion. The anti-siphon valves are making some noise more than ever. Cleaning the valves just made the squeak worse. Colin is looking through various manuals trying to figure out how to stop the noise. The frozen food is down to slim pickings, so we broke into the not-frozen dinners we mentioned buying in Mallorca. They are not bad.

And on to a couple blog questions:

Q: Was the fuel price in Malta in Euro or US dollars? To get the fuel duty free, did you have to just leave Malta or did you have to leave the EU? Why did you buy fuel in Malta instead of Tunisia?
A: The price we quoted in that blog post was in Euro. We forgot to convert it to US dollars, as we normally do. To get duty free fuel, we had to leave Malta within 24 hours and go to a non-EU country. Of course, EU citizens can’t get the duty free price. The duty free fuel in Malta was approximately the same price as fuel in Tunisia. Malta has a better reputation for clean fuel than Tunisia, and clean fuel is of major importance to us.

Q: Isn’t there an implicit warranty when you pay for a mooring that it won’t drag?
A: Eric thinks the opposite may be true. Eric thinks the mooring company might demand that we pay to have their mooring put back in place.

Q: You make the whole boating thing seem so smooth. What is your secret?
A: There are three secrets. One is detailed and meticulous planning. We do a lot of research on where we are going on everything from typical sea conditions to sightseeing activities. We plot careful routes and make specific plans about where we will go and what we will do. We know what the hazards are and the likelihood of running into them, and have contingency plans in place for such events. The second is that we are respectful of the fact that we are guests in others people’s countries. We try to go with the flow, be laid back and nice, which saves us a lot of grief and hassles. Third, we try to keep things in perspective. It is easy to become obsessed over upsetting things that are truly minor. We make ourselves mentally gloss over the minor bad things and only become highly focused on things major enough to deserve that much attention.