Yet another absolutely glorious morning. Is the glorious weather getting boring?  Not on your life. Very little breeze and Port Esperance is almost glassy calm. We motor out to the channel and before long there is a great 10-12 knot north west breeze pushing us along at a steady 6 knots. Yes there was an incoming tide helping us along also.

After an hour or so the wind died altogether and we fired up the iron mainsail and idled along at 3.5 knots while we made some fresh water with the desalinator for another hour until the breeze started to come in behind us from the south east at 10-12 knots.

This wind remained until we arrived at Kettering where we headed for the Oyster Cove Marina for fuel, water, clothes washing and showers. Over the past 17 days, many of them full days of motor sailing, Nashira used only 95 litres of Diesel. I have not worked it out exactly yet but it appears we are burning on average less than 2.2 litres per hour.

Nashira is fitted with a Brunton Autoprop on the saildrive. See https://www.bruntons-propellers.com/Autoprop/Autoprop.html . The Autoprop adjusts the pitch of the blades as required and is excellent when motor sailing. With the sails up and less than 10 knots of breeze we can still cruise at 6 knots with no more than 1,000 rpm.

Kettering has a long wall on their upgraded marina for visitors to pull up and stay the night.  About 10 vessels fit along this wall and presently it was full. We stayed put at the fuel wharf and handled laundry, showers etc. until, with the help of new acquaintances, we found a home for the night.

Dinner again at the Oyster Cove Inn and back to write these blogs.