There is always a bit of relief when daybreak comes. It has not been a bad night, but everything is very moist and it is slightly on the chilly side. With day light also the luxury of seeing better! Hans got me up at 6am for my watch. It was starting to get light, by 6.30am the sun was rising and the wind had dropped a bit. I rolled out some more genoa to keep up our speed.

I am still feeling tired after my two three hours off watches. It will be nice to catch up with some sleep during the day. The sun is out in force and heat things up! Gradually the wind and swell have been easing as the day has progressed. Slowly we get accustomed to life at sea and feel more at home. I started the generator this morning. To my surprise, it was only generating some 30-35 Amps at 24V compared to it usual 90-100 Amps. It then suddenly died after some 45 minutes. We will need to run the main engine to generate electricity now. Not at all as efficient and on top of that, it has a dodgy alternator belt set up on port side.

The big decision is when to tack North. We want to clear the North Western corner of Spain. We don’t want to be drawn in too far into the Bay of Biscay which has lighter winds, but there is also lighter winds closer to the Azores high (the prevailing high pressure system) to our West. It is currently situated North of the Azores and a ridge of high pressure extends to Brittany. We will have to go through this. It is likely to generate light winds from all over the place.

Hans and I investigated the generator in the afternoon. The heal had reduced a bit which made it easier. Starting it was not straight forward. We changed the throttle screw that mechanically driver the throttle and is turned by a small motor controlled by the VCS (voltage control system). It is strange because the generator can generate high voltage to boil a kettle and so on and its output is around 225V, but still the battery charger is charging the batteries at a much too low voltage and hence not generating that many Amps.

We tacked to starboard at 16.55 local time. In n hindsight, which is always easy, I thought that we had left it too late. Hans is not so sure that it would have been better tacking earlier as the winds closer to the Spanish coast were both against us and lighter. We could hold an attractive course on the other tack and made immediately straight progress against the destination; Brest.

position:42 16.8'N:11 28.5'W