0700/22nd

Position 1706 02555 Trip 2478 = 135/24 – noiceAlexism for quite a lot of things which taste good or are going especially well.

We have just passed the Banco Do Noroeste at the NE point of the Cape Verdes. Short lumpy sea and Berri has been a bit lively all night – jerky corkscrewing bouncy motion and very difficult to do anything or even brace. Drinking a cuppa takes some skill. Still dark this far west but lighter sky in the east. Saturn has risen. Orion now to the west.

I'm running the watermaker without the engine for the first time since Lisbon. The Airbreeze at full whizz in the 14 kts or so apparent that we now have carries about half the load. The watermaker needs 6 amps for the hour it takes to squeeze the 4.5 litres we use so we're only down 3 amp hours and no diesel. Whack fol the diddle-o. It means that the whizzer is putting out about 5 amps – 2 for the boats gizmology and 3 for the squeezer. And it keeps the voltage at 12.9 – fantastico!

Carol – lots of Orionid meteors – mostly little ones, appearing to fall directly into the NE horizon, some white, some yellowish. Pete saw another big one – these follow a different line and may not be related. Intermittent cloud so we probably missed a few.

Have to stop this every 12 minutes or so to check the watermnaker bottle – we never squeeze directly into the water tank because if the membrane were to kark, we'd have salty water in the tank – no fantastico – so we have two reserve plastic bottles with 6 litres between them and a further 9 empty tonic bottles that we fill and keep as the ready-use supply. This way, we keep the tank full of Lisbon water and use only squeezed ocean. If we use any from the tank (and no reason to do so unless the squeezer fails) then we can first taste the squeezed bottles and if ok, pour them into the tank. By doing it this way, we also know how much water we have to survive on it both squeezers – or the electrics – fail and we can ration accordingly. We do have a handle that can be fitted to either squeezer if the electrics go so we can still make water manually.

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