Page 30 - SOA 108

Atlantic Crossing

the bilge. Was this a leak in the brine discharge circuit? No, nothing to
record on this side. With Gilbert, we had not noticed that Christine had
just pumped towards the black water tank (this is the procedure on the
boat since the direct exit refuses to work) The leak was coming from the
inlet on the tank. We sealed, rinsed the bilge, and ventilated to remove
the bad smell. Finally we could start the watermaker and fill our small
dedicated tank. On the morning of the 28th, the wind speed was not
above 6 knots, we hoisted the Parasail again for the day, but dropped it
down and goosewinged for the night. In the meantime 4 boats had left
again the Canary Islands, and 4 other planned now to stop in Cape Verde
to settle crew or technical issues.

On Friday the 29th, we put the Parasail
back on, and this time kept it in place
until December 1st. The number of boats
calling at Cape Verde had increased to 7.
During the night, we were now accompa-
nied by the light of the moon for more
than 4 hours every night. For the night
watch person, this support was welcome
and an invitation to dreaming. The ro-
tating shifts on a 2-hour basis chosen at the start ultimately suited us
very well: over the 12 hours of the night, each of us was making two shift
and could sleep twice up to 3.5 hours.

On the 30th, we restarted the watermaker to recharge our small 20-litre
fresh water tank. In 4 hours, the tank was full. The weather was nice, we
took our first showers (with a bucket of sea water) in the cockpit, and
rinsed with fresh water using a garden sprayer, plus for Christine a bottle
of fresh water for her shampoo. We were not seeing any more boats on
the water, except a few freighters and a luxury cruise yacht, the Lady L.
The whole fleet of the ARC was now ahead of us, except Milena Bonatti
which had not yet left Las Palmas, and another which stopped South of
Gran Canaria for repair. One of the three little ones also stopped and de-
cided to give up. Here we were the second smallest boat, with 8 cm more
than Little Island and its honeymoon crew, but 2 metric tons more!

Page 30