Day 11 Watermakers and a new quiz

Day 11 dawned with the same light winds that continue to taunt us. The motorers ahead have now got good winds. We’ve just got to stick it out and hope our fortune changes sometime.

Parasailor in action

We got our downwind spinnaker up – to be specific our parasailor. For those who have not seen one, a quick google search will get you some pictures. It has a distinctive wing slot in the middle of it. It’s doing a very nice job at the moment.

The Adina crew spent most of the day catching up on sleep as we sailed with sunny blue skies and 10 knots of breeze.

Given it was “Scrub the crew day episode III” we thought we’d continue our education on sailing an ocean by talking about water. Adina has two water tanks – one with 450 litres and one with 150 litres. We also have an ocean crossers’ most treasured item – a water maker. This takes in sea water and de-salinates it by pumping it at high pressure through a membrane. We get 30 litres per hour of delicious, slightly sweet water. We keep our 150 litre tank always topped up as our emergency tank. Our main usage is drinking, cooking and washing. Most boat toilets use sea water for flushing but this does leave a bit of a sulfuric pong smell. Adina uses fresh water so they smell good but it does use up valuable water. Now you know!

On the fun side we started to play with the Go Pro camera – this is a video camera that has a wide angle lenses. It was going all over the place – we hoisted it up the mast and even put it on a boat hook and dipped it in the water. Our next cunning plan is to put it underwater when we next see dolphins!

Overnight we had very light winds of 5 to 8 knots – we decided to keep the parasailor up which paid dividends as with our normal white sails we would have been dead in the water. Dawn and we’ve got 11-13 knots are moving faster.

So quiz time ladies and gentleman. The person who has a much loved Mallard duck called Harold is Neil. To be clear, it belongs to his lovely wife Hallie. Hallie is based in the US at the moment before heading out to meet us. She is officially ‘Adina US Ground Support’ and has been ordering us spare parts as we lose items – new winch handles, a new drive belt etc. etc.

A new quiz! Memorable sayings on the trip – first up, who said “It’s a bit chilly tonight, I think I’ll put a t-shirt on”?

Please send wind.