500 Miles from home!

The doldrums did finally catch up with us with a couple of windless days. One night it became so bad I finally dropped all sails, lashed up the boom and went to sleep letting Mhadei drift around. The next morning turned out to be as windless so had a refreshing swim in the sea, the first time in this trip, and started sailing again once a little wind picked up by noon. Been getting light North westerly winds since then making slow but some progress.

The cooking problem has been sorted out to some extent by using warm water from the water heater which heats up water to about 60 C using the engine coolant. So idling the engine, instead of the generator, to charge the batteries and also for getting warm water once in a few days. A bit of food rationing is being resorted to as the supply of ready to eat food, which I usually used to keep for bad weather days, is limited and with the unreliable winds, predicting an ETA even 500 Nm away is a bit tricky. The ready to eat food is well supplemented by knickknacks like Cereal & chocolate bars, Billtong, crackers, canned fruit etc so really no cause to worry.  In any case the heat really kills ones appetite and what you really need is plenty of fluids which are available in plenty. The progress in the next few days should give a better idea, at least about the likely day if not the time of crossing the finish line!