Around 4am the dark clouds around Guppy finally stop shedding rain curtains over us. Most of the night the wind is very variable, so we’re very busy changing sails and trying to keep Guppy going under wind power as much as possible. As in the morning the sky slowly turns from black to blue, we see beautiful clouds all around us. We are no longer in a thick blanket of dark grey. Instead, the sky is like a beautiful painting with amazing cloud formations laying on the horizon, tricking some of our young crew to think its land.. We have been sailing for most of the day now over a very quiet and beautiful sea. Besides starting school work after a short holiday break, the day is spent on sanding some of Guppy’s woodwork outside and we also worked on the spinnaker boom mast slide which has broken. We’ve solved it for now by fixing the end of the boom to a dynema rope loop fixed to the mast. Now we are working on fixing the aluminium cast slide which involves some more creativeness 🙂 and after that, we are teaching the guitar to those who want.

For those interested;

Guppy has a 17kw generator which runs for about 1h a day when we are under way. Mostly to let the dryer run and also to charge the batteries if it’s very cloudy like the last days.. Most of our other appliances run solely on our huge battery pack consisting of 24v 800Ah Victron lithium batteries, which are charged by 1300w Solbian solar panels. The generator is able to put in a huge charge current in very little time through a 8kw Victron charger/inverter. Guppy also has a 100L per hour watermaker which can run on our solar power solely and which has been a real blessing with so many young people still learning how to be frugal with supplies we have onboard. 😉

Laura