On route to Mindelo, Cape Verde

Valent has made good progress along the route to Cape Verde. We passed the half way mark last night (Tue night) while charging along at an average speed of 9kts. Valent touched 15kts at one point and the wind regularly reached 30kts (Force 7). We breathed a sigh of relief as daylight returned and we could see the waves before they grabbed us and chucked us on our way. The biggest swell was around 6M. The hydrovane has needed a bit of assistance steering the boat in the conditions. We have now adjusted our sail plan to enable us to sail deeper (more downwind) to save us having to do a long gybe later.

Before departing Las Palmas we spent a hectic few days getting the final preparation done. Suzy and Alex took charge of going to the supermarket while we busied ourselves on board with final preparations and crew briefings. It was a relief to finally set sail and get the chance to relax at sea. We came up with ingenious storage solution for lots of items, the bananas found a lovely home on the comms pole.

Talking of comms, one of the last decisions we made was to install Starlink. Starlink is the new satellite communications system from Elon Musk. It has proved to revolutionary. I am posting this blog from the middle of the ocean with download speeds better than at home for just £2/GB. The above photo shows the iteration of yacht communications systems. The ‘ladder’ up the backstay is the SSB aerial. Back in the 1970/1980s this was the only long range method of communicating at sea. The system could do email via a modem (remember those) and provided radio communication out to around 16,000 miles. Our SSB still works and we use it each day to communicate with the rest of the fleet who are spread out over around 100nm. The Thales dish is the Certus 700 satellite comms from iridium and was state of the art in 2020. However, it is expensive to run and only gives download speeds of upto 700kB/s. The rectangular dish is the Starlink, and we are regularly getting 22Mb/s, over 3000% faster (and at fraction (0.015%) of the cost of Iridium). Also on the pole is a Navtex dish, (1990 technology), Iridium Yellow Brick Tracker (2020) and an active radar reflector (Echomax) (2020). There is also a spare VHF aerial which we currently use for the AIS which enables us to be seen by other vessels and tracked by Marine Traffic.

Time is spent managing the boat and the mind. We are running 2 man watches at night and single watches during the daytime. Watches are 3 hours on, 3 off. This system allows us to rotate the pairs for the night watches so that you don’t get bored with the same person. It also allow each watchkeeper to have 1 day off in 4. A popular activity for Neil and Mike is crosswords. Lucy is enjoying herself and has found new ways to enjoy being rocked by the boat.

All being well we will arrive in Mindelo before Saturday, though we may well be arriving in the dark. Tonight we are going to have a Chicken casserole. Previous meals have been Beef Stir Fry, Chorizo&Pasta Salad and Bolognese. Meals are determined by the sea state, and at present we can only manage meals that can be served in bowls and do not require a knife!