16’53.6S 004’15.5W course 309′ speed 5,1kn
As the weather report predicted, the past 24 hours the wind has been very light and so we have been making our way under engine. Our surrounding is heating up and with the engine on, so is part of the ship. The current water temperature is 25,2 degrees. And although we are sort of lucky with complete cloud cover during the day, the air temp is now up to 25 degrees as well. If we would have had a clear sky, I think we would have been extremely warm!

And to keep life interesting and fun, we decided that we needed another swim stop! Not just to swim, but also to clean some pesky barnacles off the hull! See if we could get the speed up! We spend an hour and 15 minutes in the water with old dishwash brushes and some scrapers or spatulas to get some of the growth off. And low and behold, as we started the engine up again, we were doing 5,4! 0,3kn faster then we had been doing just before.. Since then the wind has picked up from the East North East and we have set the forestaysail, for a little bit we were doing 5,6, but the wind has disappeared again and now the sail is hanging down like dirty laundry… we had better take it away again before it slows us down.

As it was Sunday, we also turned off the engine for our Sunday evening beer. We had a half hour of no noise, just some music and laughter of the crew. And as we were having dinner out side on deck, the sun went down with a spectacular sunset, the best we have had so far! The picture off the day had been chosen all ready, Max won with a picture of a crew hard at work. But tomorrow I am sure the picture off the day will be one of this amazing sunset!
Saint Helena is just 110 miles away, under engine we hope to be there within 20 hours. Everybody is getting excited for the stop. Hoping for some hikes, a drink on shore, buying two new mugs, as Joels and mine have both broken down.. and meeting the local community! It is such a special and spectacular place!
Other then that, we are still working our way through our bananas, Alice is making a cheese cake with them, the flue is now completely gone, the vans in our cabins are back on for fresh air and the general feeling is that you can never have too many swim stops.
All is well on board, jet