Position: N 34° 55' W 057° 50' UTC 1200

Nautical miles left: 1421

As I've told you before our two plotters are broken and therefore we have borrowed a handheld GPS from Alan on Starfire, Emelie's boyfriend. In addition to that one we have a spare battery driven GPS in the grabbag. Yesterday the charger for Alan's GPS broke and now we are left with only one working GPS, and since it runs on batteries and consumes them in no time we can not have it on all the time. To steer we have to look at the compass. The problem with that is how small the numbers are, I have good eyesight and didn't think about that when I bought it, but Catrine and Emelie on the other hand find it difficult to see where they are going. Most of the time they get it right, though. Yesterday I badly regretted not trying harder to find a third handheld GPS when the plotters broke, but we did look for one on Virgin Gorda and Gran Turk. What happens if our last GPS breaks down? We really hope that it does not. We keep it inside and turn it on every third hour to write down the position. If worst comes to worst we have a back up plan. We would have to trust Starfire, right now about 20 nm behind us, to find us with the help of our last known position and then guide us to the Azores or lend us another spare GPS.

One could think that would be enough bad luck for one day. But, I was getting ready for my new night watch when Catrine told us to get out in the cockpit. DuoGen's wind propeller was spinning franticly, the part that connects the propeller to the generator rod was broken again, making it possible for the propeller to spin with out resistance. It has happened before on Cuba, then a very nice man in the marina fixed it temporarily for us. We have been in contact with the manufacturer and they have sent a new part to the Azores free of charge. Nowadays they make it out of aluminium which is stronger that ours in plastic. Not having the wind generator spinning means a lot less power. The engine os our only other charger and we don't have that much diesel left. The fridge has been turned off, posts for the blog have to be handwritten first to minimize computer use, no Sex and the City and we have to use as little fresh water as possible since the watermaker is rather power consuming. We are almost close enough to the Azores to manage on the water we already have in the tanks. Our plan is to fill up some spare water tanks (plastic foldable) next time we run the engine and then stop using the watermaker.

Before I finished my watch I spotted the third problem, one of our main's travellers has disappeared, but I think we will manage quite alright without it. That's enough problems for one day, hell, that's enough for the rest of the trip. Now we could do with some luck.

Today the wind has decreased, from time to time we can hardly sail. The weather shifts very fast here, tomorrow we will have strong winds again as the low reaches us. These last days we have changed course, not going further north, maybe we can escape the worst wind. We will see…/ The Captain