L'Eau Commotion Westabout

5:30pm Tuesday 28th November 2017 ( UTC-2 )
A feature of today's sailing was the heavy pall of dust which kept the sun a dirty silver colour for most of the day. The Easternmost Island of the group, Boa Vista, was not visible through the murk until 15 miles off while later in the day Ihla de Santiago was spotted 50 miles off. You could even see the layer of dust settling leaving the quite high peaks in clear air. The fluctuating Trades were swinging more to the East so the pole was taken down and the jib set to Starboard on a broad reach and pretty well on course for my next aiming point, St Peter and Saint Paul Rocks, or as the Portuguese would have it Penedas de Sao Pedro e São Paulo, distant 940 miles, bearing 205T, or say Sou'Sou'West. The temptation is to head there in a straight line but the more cautious approach might be to head a little more to the West to dodge the dreaded doldrums. Even if this is overdone most likely the South East Trades blowing past the Amazon and into the Caribbean should pull us back towards Recife without having to sail hard on the wind. Just easing off ten degrees gives another knot in boat speed. One of the unfortunate consequences of the combination of light following winds and a weak sun is that there is no spare power to run the fridge so the quite large Dolphin fish caught yesterday only made two large meals and then had to be recycled. It is getting noticeably warmer and even though there is good flow through ventilation the cabin temperature as I write is 27C. All in all a pleasant day to be out on the water.