The problem of the day was the missing wind and the fact that there is no fuel station in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The fuel consumption was nagging on my nerves. On one side there was the need to get out of the calm ASAP, and on the other side there was the consumption of fuel. Brutally constant, although on very slow speed, the fuel indicator move towards 1/2. We watched the wind meter and it did not go up to constant 5 kn. The very nasty thing it did, was showing sometimes even 6+ kn. But, whenever we thought that God of the Winds finally had mercy with us, the wind went back below 4 kn.

We prepared the gennaker well in advance to set it was fast as possible once the wind is enough.

At the end we forgot all pre-conditions and pulled it up. We made 2 kn with the gennaker. Engine stopped thus fuel consumption stopped. My nerves felt better.

Slowly the average wind speed increased an we made good miles over ground.

But what to do with during the night???

As the moon is a bit above half the night could be pretty well illuminated, I thought about using the gennaker during the night. I kept this idea circling in my mind. Can we risk to have the gennaker flying during a bright night???

Then A released me from the pressure by asking about using the gennaker beyond sunset. I felt relieved and we discussed it. Result: we will do it. Limitation triggering “all on deck” was set to 12 kn winds for about 2 min or a squall which might hit MaRe. Everyone has a position, thus task defined.

We checked the 1800 weather forecast, which confirmed that our plan and preparations were matching the possible winds during the night.

In the meantime G cooked again an excellent meal: dolphinfish in lemon-capers sauce with pasta penne. We finished almost our meal, when a dark cloud was close to MaRe at about 45 deg on starboard. Everyone went on the assigned position and in 2 min the gennaker was down. While the gennaker was secured in the port side bow net, the genoa was set already.

With a bit less speed we continued our sail into the night with only the genoa for safety reasons.

At the end, all was good! Let’s hope it stays like this in untill the morning light!