Not much to report, just another fine day of tropical tradewind sailing, blue sky, blue seas and white square sails. The settled weather has been much the same for days now: glorious sunshine in the morning, a little too warm after lunch followed by light rain showers and then a fine afternoon, slightly cooler. Our various projects are continuing well with a new group of daymen sailmakers, carpenters and riggers broken off from the watches today, and an excellent chocolate cake to celebrate Aidan’s birthday.
SHIP’S WORK: Work continues on wooden project boat KARL mast and planking, scrape and sand thwarts in MONOMOY, spot paint buff on galley-house strongbacks, spot prime focslehead railing, sand helm grates, main yard footrope maintenance continues, sailmaking: roping on t’gallant studdingsail and gaff topsail, roping on t’gallant staysail, cut tabling off KARL sails. Celestial navigation classes today introduced sun lines, looking at local hour angle and assumed position. Ditty bag workshop on making the large manila grommet for the top of the bag: stitching it on is called roping, and is the same technique as roping the edge of a sail for strength.
FROM: Mindelo, Sāo Vicente, Cape Verde
TOWARDS: The West Indies
TIME ZONE: ZD+3
NOON POSITION: 16°36.6’N /046°04.3’W
DAYS RUN: 132nm
PASSAGE LOG: 1,316nm
DISTANCE REMAINING: 863.2nm
COURSE AND SPEED: West by half North (CMGT 271°T)
WIND: Force 5, East
WEATHER: 5/8 cloud cover (cumulus), air temp 80F (26.5°C), barometer
reading 1021 millibars, visibility good
SWELL HEIGHT & DIRECTION: approx 3-5 feet, East by North
SAILS SET: Al square sails to the royals, except the mainsail; fore topmast staysail. Braced square and running downwind in the tropical trade-winds as our barque was built to do.