Day 14 – Today will be the end of 2 weeks at sail - June 19
I am not putting in anything about today yet as still early in the AM. Have been working on getting this posted – sorry it has been a few days since you have heard. Just want everyone to know we are doing fine – just our email system isn't working and we have been needing to try another system which is taking some time to do.
Day 12 & Day 13 - Sunny, Blue Skies & A Wild Ride
First, our apologies for not getting this posted yesterday, but…
Day 12 – Sunny & Blue Skies - June 17
We had a great night sail last night with winds between 12-16 knots doing a broad reach with an average hull speed of 6 – we are making progress! We woke up this AM to clear blue skies and the winds are still with us. We are moving continually east with alittle north direction ever closer to the Azores. I downloaded my weather file this AM, talked to the other boats on the SSB and then got a message on our SSB that we needed to read an email from him on a storm update. We went back to the computer to get the email and nothing! Not sure what happened but we now know that we have lost everything on that machine so working on rebuilding it from our backups which will take some time as we need to also try to get the software working for the email package to work with the SSB. Luckily we were able to contact the weather router and found out that the message he sent about the storm was "no big deal" as it wasn't going to affect us. Just got our hearts racing some without being able to touch base with him , but sounds like things are fine in our area. Now we are wanting to make sure that our backup system will work to get the blog entries up to stay in touch as we don't want anyone to worry if they don't hear from us.
The sailing was so good yesterday that our total for the day was 145 miles which is outstanding. One reason for this was that we found out that we had a 1+ knot current with us helping us out. Our current position as of 12 noon on June 17th is 33.00N, 50.10W. Will keep these short as will be sending these via satellite phone for now until (hopefully) we get the other system functioning again.
To all those father's out there - Happy Father's Day!
Day 18 – Bob Up the Mast, Computer Work and Calm Seas
Yesterday late afternoon when Bob was checking things over on Tsamaya he noticed that the radar dome bracket on the mast seemed to be moving when it shouldn't be. As a result he had to go up the mast today (yes, that is right and even with the sail up) to secure it to the mast to prevent any future damage. First thing this AM the waves calmed down from yesterday so it was a good time to go up the mast. He was successful in securing it and found out that one of the 4 brackets broke which is causing one of the other rivets to loosen from the mast. He has it secured now and it is on the list of things to be repaired when we get to land again. We had heard that a crossing is hard on a boat –we are understanding how much so now. The next project of the day was working on the computer again. Bob had gotten some of it functional last night but then was stopped by the fact that when we went to put the software on the computer it stated he couldn't install it as it was already installed on a machine. Luckily the sat phone came in handy as he made the call and was successful again. We are back in business except for the email package. We have the software on a disc but it doesn't seem to load so we may just have to continue to use the sat phone instead. It is alittle more cumbersome and more expensive but we are glad that we have the backup in place.
One of the software that had to be reinstalled was our AIS (this is the system that transmits our location and details on our heading, speed etc to other boats in the area as well as we get the same information on their boat). We were transmitting fine last night, we just couldn't see their information last night, but Bob got it functional just as surprise, surprise a Dole container ship just happened to be coming by a 1 ½ miles from us. We gave them a call and confirmed that they could see our information which was a confirmation that it was working. Another success.
Today our winds have cut down to 6-8 knots and then for a while down to 2-3 so the engine went back on. It is now 4PM on Monday and the wind is filling in some up to 8-10 therefore we could slow the engine down some to still keep the same speed forward. We understand that we may have very light winds for a couple of days but hopefully will get into some wind in the future. It was actually quite nice today to have a quiet day as we were even able to put the table up in the cockpit to have lunch for a change. Only new wildlife we have seen was one lone Portuguese man of war (jellyfish) float by yesterday afternoon. The last 2 nights we have seen much more of the bioluminescene in the waves as we pass which are great to watch.
Hopefully this will get posted today as tried yesterday without any luck. If have problems again with posting this be sure to check us on shiptrak as I have been calling in our position to them so you can at least see our forward movements.
Our total for the day yesterday was 139 miles and our current position as of 4PM EST on 6/18 is 34.05N, 47.51W. The plan now is to move directly east for a while.
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