12-Dec-2008 Noon Position

Atlantic Crossing Day #5
23'22.8N/21'48.8W
North Atlantic Ocean

• 116 nm last 24 hours
  
• 457 nm from Grand Canary
  
• 2235 nm to Barbados
  
• Winds NE 15-25 knots
  
• Seas NE 6-8 feet
  

The winds are honking! We have had another 24-hour run straight downwind to the SW and are still rolling all over the place. Still running with a double reefed main with a preventer out to starboard, and a hanky size part of the jib poled out to port. We are now confidant that we are in the NE trade winds and will spend one more 24-hour run to ensure that we are well within the trade wind belt before we swing west.

The problem with the broken generator has not been a problem as of yet. Between the wind generator and solar panels, Sandpiper has been getting plenty of nature's juice. We have been turning off the refrigeration at night and not using the laptop for charting, which have made a big difference in our power consumption.

We are back to using our Palm Navman for our electronic charting. We have not used it since crossing the South Pacific because it did not have the charts we needed. But now that we are getting back to this side of the world, we are back in business.

Normally we leave the laptop powered on for our electronic C-Map world charting program. But leaving this on uses a bit of power. The Navman is just a Palm Pilot with a GPS antenna attached that uses Maptech Charts. I like this setup because on long passages it mounts in the cockpit and shows our position along our track line along with course and speed. And it hardly uses any power at all.

No traffic last 24-hours.

More in 24,
Tom and Amy