It was a day later than our plan due to torrential rain and Zarpe frustrations on Monday, but Tuesday morning we hauled anchor and were on our way...finally! The wind started out from the south-west, so we motorsailed south-southeast for most of the day. I say most of the day because everytime it started to clear, the wind would switch to the southeast and we would tack over and sail southwest. Then we would reach the next rainy cloud and the wind would either die or switch to the southwest again. Over the afternoon and night we stopped and restarted the engine some 4 -5 times and tacked back and forth almost as much, but we made pretty decentt distance and kept our fuel consumption down to about 25 gallons over 24 hours.
We had a minor work-party yesterday when we realized our big radar was not working properly. Luckily Bill had the name of a tech at Furuno who was very helpful in troubleshooting and we discovered that the unit needed to be re-tunned. We have had to re-tuen twice now, which is very odd and not explainable by Furuno yet, but at least we know what to do now.
We are now in clear skys and 15kts of breeze from the southeast, reaching off towards the west-southwest, with the plan to dogleg left as the wind shifts furher east as we head south. It is a bit lumpy out here with rather confused seas, but hopefully that will ease with the wind as we get further from the ITCZ. Mom made papaya chutney this morning so the boat smells great and we are now making 9.5 to 10 knots speed which will help put some miles between us and the more variable weather to our North.
All is well. Only 1764 miles to go!
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