Light winds

The wind has been steadily dropping through the day. We're still making steady progress at 4-5 knots, but compared to the wind we've had over the last week, it feels like we're becalmed. Fortunately the seas have moderated as well, so the wind doesn't get knocked out of the sails too often, but even so from time to time the rig slams in a nerve edging way in the swell. It's satisfying to be sailing under full sails again, I think it's the first time we've run all day without reefing since we were becalmed off the Cape Verde Islands.

We saw our second ship in 24hours today. It's a major event after a week of unbroken sea on the horizon. We were a little worried as the sea-me which detects ships radar wasn't picking anything up, so we called the boat up with, "BIG SHIP, BIG SHIP this is the sailing vessel Kika, Kika OVER". Amazingly he responded. We asked how we showed up on his radar and he told us to "standby while I switch it on"! Slightly worrying. He'd come from Trinidad and was bound for Poland. We must be getting close to the Caribbean then.

We put the clock back another hour, so we're now on UTC-3. The radio nets stay at the same time UTC, so start earlier for us. It takes a few days to get used to the new relative time for everything and we need to loose another hour to be insync with Caribbean time.

With the calmer conditions we thought that we'd have more luck fishing, but the line was out at first light and brought back in at dusk, without a single bite.

I've taken the floor up again to continue my creak eradication programme. I've tackled most of the creaks which sound like a canon ball splitting timbers, but with the decreased noise level a new set of creaks have been revealed. I guess in the heat/humidity panels have expanded causing the creaking.

Position at 15.30 UTC: 14deg 47'N, 55deg 23'W
Daily distance run: 145nm; cumulative distance: 2637:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 319nm
Conditions: NE 10-15 knots, moderate sea, 1012 millibars