Delivery day 7

S 25°06.503’ W 008°03.225’

Rob has thrown himself wholeheartedly at the task of fixing the spinnaker pole, come part time bowsprit. He spent his day hard at work cutting, shaping and working on the aluminium. Long hours he spent wishing for a little on-board workshop, instead of the seemingly stone-age hand saws, drills and files. All this work is not wasted though, as we have plenty of time, and the pole is coming along nicely.

A lot of the day was spent experimenting with sails, and once again, the gennaker was the main object of experimentation. The wind did pick up to 8 knots, and we had the sail flying very nicely, after careful trimming and good helming.

In fact, the orange gennaker closely matched the gorgeous sunset. Our crew sat and absorbed the brilliant orange and yellow sky scattered with puffy clouds, ablaze with pink.

While watching the sunset, we spotted a ship on the horizon. It was actually quite surprizing though, when a short while later, we were contacted by that ship via VHF radio. They asked us where we were headed and if we had enough provisions on board- and we learned that the ship was an iron ore vessel headed to Brazil. I guess this just goes to show you really can make friends anywhere.

The night was beautifully crisp and clear, but more wonderful than that; WE HAD WIND!

It seems we are out of the high pressure now, and while we are still not breaking speed records, we’re going at a good pace.