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Atlantic Crossing

goosewinged the sails, which improved our speed by 1. ½ knots, and we
sailed almost downwind. Our windvane was helming beautifully, much
better than we would have done by hand!
This night, we were surrounded by fluorescent arrows: it was dolphins,
playing around the hull. We could hear their breath. On the 26th, the wind
dropped below 8 knots, we were dragging at 2 knots! We ended up
hoisting the Parasail at 4 p.m., but preferred to lower it for the night. We
received a first ARC’s flotilla news. The boat Milena Bonati had not yet left
Las Palmas, the crew being sick. 4 others had turned back to the Canaries
to repair various damages.
On November 27, the wind remained light. We
only did 240 miles in three days. Our VMG, was
even more depressing because going down to the
south, we were in fact “turning” around the point
of arrival instead of progressing towards it.

To keep the day busy, Christine began, with Gil-
bert's support, to manufacture textile shackles.
One has first to manage the carrick knot and the
bosco’s whistle knot.
The moon was now starting to appear in the sky. It
was only dimly lighting us, but would now accompany us to the end.
This first week, from November 24 to 30, we had been trying to go South-
Southwest to a point roughly in the North of Cape Verde Islands. But the
winds were weak, and our progress was slow. The weather files however
did not encourage us to change our option and go West, because a wind-
less area would block the way in a few days and we would then face head-
winds if we were not able to cross this area quickly enough. Going further
East was also not an option, we were already close enough to the Moroc-
can coast, and the wind was not very strong either, despite a low locally
accelerating the winds, … and eventually we were not really willing to
check if there was pirates there.

As we wanted to switch on the watermaker, we discovered a water leak in

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