Sahara dust, glowing dolphins, boat paperwork

We are on our third day of passage between Tenerife in the Canaries and Cape Verde with three days to go.  We have all settled in to the rhythm of passage, with rotating night watches.  It sure is a lot easier with 4 people on board.  At night we get 3 hours on, 9 ours off.  The weather is pretty constant 12 to 22 knot winds from North Africa.  We started the passage fairly close hauled, but the wind has been backing and now we are swinging between beam reaching and broad reaching.  Yesterday the winds were just right to get the lightweight code D sail out (a french designation), and we made some pretty good time – up to 8 knots in 15 knots of breeze.  We don’t fly that sail at night as it is a bit tricky to handle by yourself, and if a gust comes along things can get kind of exciting very quickly.  We had enough excitement in the Mediterranean.  Which reminds me, have I mentioned how much we appreciate the nice calm Atlantic ocean.  We have had another sailboat keeping pace with us a few miles off, but they are not answering the radio.  Last night I think we pulled ahead of them and they are  now well behind us.  Its funny how whenever there are two sailboats it turns into a race.

With the coast of Africa 150 miles east of us, there is a fine red dust getting on the boat from the Sahara.  It is settling on some flat surfaces, and on some of the smaller lines.  It would be nice to get a quick squall to rinse everything off!  But the prediction is just for steady winds so we will have to live with the dust for a while.

Just before we left Tenerife we got the final bit of paperwork finished off, and we now have the full Canadian registration!  Finally!  That only took six months to do (I will have to do a blog post on that entire process).  So yesterday Maggie and I scraped off “Waya Waye” and put up “Adiona” and our port of registry as “Prince Albert”.  We get to choose any of the official ports in Canada as our Port of Registry, so we picked Prince Albert as it is the only “Port” in Saskatchewan.  I guess I now have to print out the registration so we have a paper copy on board.

Last night we sailed through a big patch of bioluminescent plankton again, and saw a couple more dolphins leaving trails in it.  Not nearly as dramatic as when we were coming in to Gibraltar, but still pretty frickin cool.  We turned out all the lights and saw our twin glowing trails behind us.  It was also a pretty cool view through the escape hatches to the streaks of green light under the boat.  It was like sailing through a fire with wind blowing sparks along the ground.  And for the entertainment value, I flushed the toilet in the dark until glowing sparkles swirled around in the bowl.

As for the never ending task of boat maintenance, we burned up yet another water impellor in the generator.  My last spare is now used up on it.  But I have high hopes that this one will last longer, as Dave advised me to use actual grease on it, like he does on his own boats.  Since it was part of the water system, I was always hesitant to put grease inside the pipes, and always used the little tube of lubricant that comes with the impellors – but it is pretty useless I think.  I am sure that it comes off really quick.  So I guess we will see.  Hopefully I can find another spare when we get to Cape Verde.

It does feel pretty cool to be actually doing this.  Here we are, sailing south off the coast of Africa in our own sailboat, getting ready to turn right and head across the Atlantic.  It has been a long time coming.