motoring, motoring, motoring

I am beginning to feel concerned as it is obvious that we cannot motor sail to the Acores. At 6 p.m. today, we still have around 70 hours of motoring in the tank at 1400 rpm, which gives us around 3.6 knots. That's 250 miles but we still have 1,427 to go. We need not only to manage the use of the engine as efficiently as we can, but also, we must find wind.
I had good communications today, morning and afternoon with the two canadian radio-networks and their forecast is not all that exciting. More light winds followed by head wind. Not the best combination. We will try and go north as much as we can so that when the NE comes we are close to the latitude of the Azores. Long way to go . . . .
Today, we found the source of the leak in the forward hatch. It is a part that tighten the hinge against the glass that lost a screw and the plastic part that presses against the glass. Jean-Paul used a tape that was given to me by Scott and which is normally used in the building industry. But he told me that he used that on top of hatches and it works well. This should be a good solution until we get to the Azores.
This morning, we had strong violent thunderstorms, with lots of rain, thunder and lightening. This afternoon, more squalls, but this time without vertical circulation, with some rain but still no wind.
At noon today (TU-4), our position was 28:44 N and 55:19 W. We had covered 109 miles for the day and we still had 1449 miles to go. Water situation very good. For the fuel, we have been motoring now for 46 hours and the consumption looks to be around 0.7 gallons/hour.
Tonight, steaks and sauteed potatoes.



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