The first part of the journey was good with us averaging 17-18 knots and, with the wind behind us, any spray was kept off the boats. However, the wind and waves increased slightly as we reached the half way stage. At this point I thought that I noticed a slight drop in the port engine revs for a few seconds. A few minutes later the port engine revs dropped from 2,100 to 1,300 and stayed there. This was worrying so I warned the other members of the team and we all slowed down. I altered the throttle settings and managed to get the port engine to run at 1,600 and the starboard one up to 2,000 revs. This gave us a speed of 14-16 knots with an ETA at Cherbourg of a further two hours.
My guess was that the rougher seas had disturbed some dirt in the tanks and this had reached the filters. As a result the engines were unable to draw as much diesel as they need at the higher revs. My hope now was that we would be able to continue at this speed for the rest of the Journey. Fortunately, Jomima got us there without further difficulty.