Monday 4th
Noon Position 20N 25W
Day’s Run 180M
Wind NE 20-25 knots
After five days at sea we’re about 150 miles N of the Cape Verde Islands. Having made a good step SSW from the Canaries to pick up the trade winds we are now heading pretty much West directly toward Martinique. There is a new moon tomorrow so the nights are dark and the stars brilliant. We can see the Southern Cross shining to leeward while Polaris is still visible – if strangely low to North Sea eyes – off to windward.
We are about to change charts, from ‘Lisbon to Freetown’ to ‘North Atlantic, Southern Part’. The different scales (3.5m:1 on the former, 10m:1 on the latter) means our daily progress across the paper will fall from a handsome hand’s width to that of a meagre thumb nail or so – but none the less we have the sense that we are actually getting somewhere on this long passage.
