Day 5 

Big swells!

5-6 meter swells for the majority of the day! We have made good speed though and made decent progress which makes up for the slow speed yesterday. The rope holding the daggerboard snapped today ... not ideal but not exactly a show stopper.

I was in the Aft cabin this afternoon with the door slightly a jar when a big wave broke over the stern and washed over the cabin and ran in from the top of the hatch. Imagine being in bed, with all of your possessions on that bed, then someone tipping a bucket of water on you ... yeah, not fun! 

Today’s been cloudy all day with small intervals of sun. We’ve struggled to get much charge into the solar panels and they’re rather low now. On a routine of no cabin lights, charging of electronics etc. We filtered the minimum amount of water needed today to also save battery.

Myself and Neal were on the 6pm-8pm shift when we kept getting blown off course. We couldn’t stay on our bearing and the auto tiller couldn’t hold us. After being continually blown off course Ralph made the call to deploy the Para anchor and wait again until the morning before trying again.

The night was cramped, myself and Ralph spent the night in the Aft cabin along with a lot of kit and equipment which was uncomfortable and no one got much sleep.

~ Duncan @rowingroy