Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

Madeira Cape Verde Leg

Day 5

Thursday, July 11

Noon Position: 21 20.0N 20 48.5W

Course/Speed: SW 7

Wind: NE 20

Sail: Both headsails poled out full, wing and wing

Noon Miles: 159

Total Miles: 730

Harmon thinks that I futz with Monte’s strings too much, always in search of the perfect heading and never satisfied for long. So, he was shocked to learn this morning that once deployed, I touched not a hair on the windvane all last afternoon and all night as we tobogganed the growing sea.

Not even today did I tinker—much—with our course.

Only this afternoon has the wind come more into the north than we’d prefer, driving us off our rhumb line to Mindelo, and so now I am pulling this and releasing that, trying to wring from wing-on-wing a course better suited by a different set of sail. No one is quite happy.

Slowly we are rounding W Africa, and last night, we were not alone. In an area between us and the coast we spied on the AIS as many as 40 ships passing N and S. Only one ship came close enough to bring us both on deck. From distance, it looked head on, but only its port running light ever showed and it eventually passed a mile to port. Still, so much commercial tonnage here makes us wonder how much was initially bound for the Red Sea.

Another oddity. A couple nights ago we passed a ship adrift, Copper Spirit, a tanker, empty and floating so high as to seem out of the water. It took hours to approach and pass, and in that time the ship moved south at about one knot. It’s position was some two hundred miles off the coast and four hundred north of Cape Verde. On its AIS page at the line “Destination:” read “WAITING FOR ORDERS.”

One storm petrel. Spotted dolphins. A postage stamp sized flying fish lifted to heaven by mighty Mo.