Atlantic Crossing - Day 3 - on board pasta maker: Check

After a full day of sailing with 6-7 Beaufort, after sunset, the wind drops to 1 Beaufort, in the course of about half an hour. The wind and I play a little game, where I start the engine, the wind picks up, motor is stated, and so on. The wind finally settled at around 10 knots, and we move with a slow 4.5 knots. Not for long though. The wind picks up, and we are racing along with 6-7 knots.

As the night goes on, the speed of the boat slowly drops, until 1.5 knots in the morning. At this point, we decide to wash the deck. As we are walking around the boat, we spot some dolphins. We decide to start the engine, so see if they would follow us, and indeed they did. Charles shot some hopefully good footage with the Go-Pro his mum gave him. It looks like there are 3-4 small dolphins, most likely the striped ones. After the dolphins have gone away, we continued the deck clean. We also mop the floors on the inside. This is the usual procedure after an episode of African rain. Finally, I use the period of calm to replace the water maker filter. While most of the filter is a dirty grey, the inside is still white, so we catch the filter change just in time.

The waves are around 2.5 meters high, but very long, so we have quite a smooth ride. We are now over 100 Nautical Miles offshore, and we still see the occasional bird.

The shipping traffic, which was very busy at Gibraltar, and the shipping channel in the straight, slowly diminishes on our way South-West. We only had to hail two large ships that where on our course. Since we passed Casablanca, we haven't seen any more ships. Just the AIS display let us know that there are ships in the general area. We hear some chatter on channel 16, but we are now too far out to receive any weather updates from the shore stations. The radar reflector lights still come on, so we know that we are still being pinged by ships. However, since we left Gibraltar, the duration of the LED flashes is getting less and less. Once in the open ocean, we can set the alarm, so we will be warned if there appears a ship in radar range.

Elizabeth is using the period of calm, to get a French Lesson from Charles. Thereafter, Charles and I make a Caneloni, everything from scratch. We have a pasta maker on board, and we are not afraid to use it. Elizabeth and Charles give in to the after dinner dip, while I keep watch. The engine goes off, while the sail comes back up. The waves slowly subside, so we have a smooth ride at about 5 knots. Time for me to take a nap! The day ends with 123 Nautical miles completed.

These dolphins are around 150 NM offshore!