A Day when time seemed to stand still
Part 2
Cleaning/Washing/Hygiene, Water
We have 2 tanks with 1,610 litres of water, which we have to be mindful of. Man can live for some time without food but not without water. We need water for cooking, drinking, teas/coffee, washing up, showering, cleaning the boat and washing clothes (yes we do this and by hand). The toilets only use sea water. On my last Atlantic crossing we had to manage this by only having one shower every 4 days and it was a quick shower. Luckily Stormbird has a water maker – our own desalination unit. This makes up to 255 lts an hour. When we start a trip we check this is working first and if we are happy it is working , then within reason we do not have to worry too much as long as it keeps working. If not we may have to then manage our water usage. We do take quite a lot of bottled water as well just in case. We are therefore lucky and can shower every day and ensure we keep the boat clean. In order to run the water maker we have to run the generator which in turn uses diesel – more about that later. Checking our water and diesel is part of the daily checks.
Power
I have mentioned our freezer and fridges which are on all the time and we need to create our own power for what we need. Whilst we have a number of batteries, they last only so long before they need to be charged. When sailing we have our VHF radios on, our chart plotters (water sat navs), instruments telling us about the wind, its strength and direction, our position, GPS etc. When we use our taps, showers, lights, computers for weather information and communications etc- they all use power. At night we have to display navigation lights and we use an autopilot a lot which effectively steers the boat for us to a given course or so many degrees off the wind. Power is therefore very important otherwise it would be very difficult to operate.
We obtain our power from 3 sources, solar, generator or engine. We have 4 solar panels which gives us some power but nowhere near enough so we generally use the generator for a few hours each day to top up our batteries. This takes less diesel than the engine which if there is wind we do not use. The generator uses 1-2 lts an hour of diesel and the engine 7-8 depending on revs. When either the engine or generator is on it is also making hot water although I could put the water heater on independently but that uses quite a bit of power.
We carry 1610 lts of diesel and 100 lts in jerry cans. We therefore need to manage its usage and it is part of the daily checks. Our range on full tanks would be about 900 nmiles. As our journey is 2800 nmiles then you can see why we preserve our diesel just in case we need it for emergencies.
Rubbish
After shopping we minimise what we bring on board in terms of packaging. We dispose of any raw food waste and obviously collate all rubbish and put in black bags in the anchor locker. We have a can crusher (2 bits of wood) and crush cans to reduce space. We try to limit our rubbish as we have to store it until we arrive.
Today
There was another lovely sunrise and it was a lovely warm morning. The wind was light and in fact was like that all day. It was one of those days where time stood still and it was as if it did not matter. We had checked the weather again and we were in for light winds all day. Looking ahead we had a choice of going south of the Cape Verde Islands and then straight across, however there may be 4 metre swells or going even further south and then round in a curve which would avoid this. We could see a large front coming over the Atlantic and a big wind hole appearing south of the canaries from where we had come and there was a risk that wind hole was coming south to meet us. We therefore decided not to motor but to enjoy the day and preserve our diesel which may be required later.
We sailed along about 5-6 kts all day with a relatively smooth sea. There was still a 2.5-3m swell but the waves were about 8-10 seconds apart so you hardly noticed it. We all relaxed, and eat, slept, chatted and read books. Mark did an inventory of food. We found that most of our lemons were off, our carrots had mostly gone or gone off. We did our usual checks etc and ran the boat as usual. However we just enjoyed the day and felt privileged to be here in this vast ocean and it was as if we had it to ourselves. Time seemed to just pass gently as Stormbird sailed us toward our destination. We had another lovely typical sunset - hence the picture.
Peter cooked a delicious vegetable soup for supper. We tend to have a theme at suppers and decided tonight should be joke night. You can imagine with 6 blokes on board what a collective mix of jokes and laughs we had. In the night we will pass a 1,000 nm so far. Thank you for a great day and love to all those at home.