SAILING AROUND THE WORLD WITH SPIRIT OF ARGO

Trans-Atlantic Day 2

At nine am this morning we were at W 20’21.43′ N 26’16.47′.

It was a rather ‘uneventful’ day really.
The winds shifted from NE to East.  That was not the best for a twin sail arrangement.
Twin sails prefer to sail down wind or on the quarter (that is the wind coming over one stern corner).
We did not have a ‘custom’ set of twin sails made.  We just used our new Jenny (fore sail) and our old 30 year old Jenny (that one of the humans restitched when it blew apart a few years back).  The old Jenny is larger then the new one so we stuck it on the port (left) side thinking we would get predominantly NE winds. Well we would have if we were leaving from the Cape Verde Islands instead of the Canary Islands.

Well we are in Easterly winds instead.  We are heading West, but will probably enter an area of little wind ahead, if we stay on this track.  We really need to move further south to pick up the stronger and more consistent trade winds and current.  Besides we want to end up in Martinique not Florida.

So early this morning the human’s were on a mission to try and switch the sails around.  They furled the two sails up and proceeded to  switch the boom and the spinnaker pole, and all the associated lines acting as forward and stern preventers, to opposite sides of the boat.  All in the end to figure out they could not switch the sails around with out dropping them and raising them on opposite sides of the front foil.  Opps!  So they had to move everything back again and let out both sails on one side.  Some thing they should have done, with no effort, in the first place.  Human’s!  You just can’t teach old human’s new tricks.

The winds have died down a bit and so have the waves.
We are still rolling around a bit, but we all can get about better.  This is quite important for me, as it is my responsibility to get the humans out on deck cleaning the place.  It also means they can have a bath and get the fishing lines out.  Maybe catch me some dinner.

We are heading SW now and have 2365 nm to go before my first sight of land!