Day 23 - 16.02.2026

This morning around 6:30am GMT-1(the wind had progressively disappeared during the night) so the Oxley was brought down and the engine was started. We had deviated a bit from our course during the night but we preferred to leave the spinnaker manoeuvre for daylight. The temperature also was pretty hot today, we were walking around in our bathing costumes, no wind to refresh us and the engine heating up the inside of the boat... 

We motored today for a bit more than 12 hours waiting for the wind to pick up again. It was a funny scene: all of us walking around with headphones on and dressed in the bare minimum ahah, luckily we had all packed in a pair of noise cancelling headphones which proved to be quite necessary for life under motor! Tonight thinking about this made us laugh: it must have looked so funny from an exterior point of view ><

At around 19:00, just before sunset, we decided we should give the asymmetric spinnaker a shot considering the wind strength and direction, and see if it could allow us to switch off the engine albeit having to go for a less direct bearing. We went from 287°T under motor to 260°T-265°T under sail + Rudolf the hydrovane. We would rather go the slightly off track route and not have the engine on during the night. We don’t have an auto-pilot, which means we should have continued helming continuously - not very pleasant at night when you’re tired. 

That’s your explanation on why it seems that we are heading more south than predicted :)