Coming to the end of day 1. The weather so far is much simpler than the previous passage. There is a high pressure centred roughly over the Azores. Yes finally the Azores high is in place! This means we have nice winds to take us over to Portugal. On top of this finally all the forecasts align in terms of both wind strength and direction so the advised routes are also similar. Not much for the skipper to do! Do we headed around the island and now a little NE. The reason for this is tonight/tomorrow there is some light winds E of Azores and it should be better further N. The other reason is that as you near Portugal the typical wind will be a strong N down the coast and it will be a lot easier on boat and crew if we approach that from the N and not the S.
On the boat we are back into watches. I’m listening to Euro 24 (poor Scotland), Charlie is asleep, again, and Dad cooked dinner. Normally his dinners are excellent. Tonight’s was a disaster, he had bought what he thought was a pasta sauce, turns out it was puréed peppers and salt! We struggled a bit down and then gave up. Epiphany is happy enough, sailing on the wind at 6.5-7kts. Long may it continue but the motor will likely come on at some point tonight. At least we have enough to not worry about running out on this leg.
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