Now, being in day 7 of our transatlantic sail and in day 3 in the trade wind, a relaxed routine had spread on board. More reading, more sitting and watching and writing. Watching can easily become a kind of meditation. G said yesterday that there are millions and millions of waves but there are not two waves which are the same.

No sail change since yesterday also were are curious if the round-sail performs as sold at TWS of 20+ kn. Everyone says, we should test it, but nobody makes a decisive move. Relaxed life on board.

We moved the flow generator into off-position losing about 4 – 6 A constant charging current but gained about half a knot on speed.

As we have AWS (apparent wind speed) of about 16 -20 kn on, the wind generator becomes much more effective and the indicator shows 4 – 6 A. This appears as reasonable because the batteries are not empty thus the charging currents gets reduced by its controller. With solar and wind we have a total net charging current of 2 – 7 A. That looks like a good preparation for the night.

Talking about speed, we have winds of 5 – 6 Bft (Beaufort; if I recall it right, there is a good article in Wikipedia), in knots the range is 18 – 30 (TWS). With only the genoa, we are running the full range of 7 kn; sometimes a high 6 and sometimes a low 8.

MaRe takes the waves good. Very seldom a higher waves rolls to MaRe from a more northern direction, which makes MaRe swing around a bit on the “down hill slope” of the wave. In an extremely rare case the genoa flaps a bit and only 1 – 2 times the sail collapsed and was leaning against the inner stay and the mast for a few seconds.

The autopilot in wind vane mode keeps MaRe very good in the set wind angle.

G again tries his luck with the catch-of-the-day? As we are sailing pretty fast, we might only catch tuna or a wahoo. To increase the chance, G trolls the bait more than 100 m behind. Two crew members are prepared to immediately reef the genoa to reduce MaRe’s speed to get the catch in.

Until the fish decides to take the G’s lure, G cuts already zucchinis, pumpkins, onions… Will he create a vegetarian meal without the catch-of-the-day?