Aglaia - Suprises from the Atlantic

Just when you think you know what to expect from the weather each night the infinite possibilities of the Atlantic surprise you. All of the weather information suggested we would have lightish wind, rolling swell and struggle to make the direct course to St Lucia we are hoping for. When darkness finally fell yesterday we were doing around 7 knots about 10 degree North of course which looked like solid if not stunning progress. Within half an hour a dark cloud started to form behind which rapidly caught us giving the boat and crew on deck a real tropical wash down and dropped the boat speed down into the mid 5 knots.

Then the moon came out from behind the big dark cloud, the winds filled in to 18 knots and we started a fast 10 plus knot surf directly on course. Everyone helming through the night kept seeing 11 and 12 knots on the boat speed with huge jets of spray exploding from each side of the boat flood lit in silvery moon light.

As dawn as come today we are once again in more of the forecast conditions, travelling at about 8 knots 20-30 degrees North of our ideal course to take us directly into St Lucia, for those of you wondering if we have changed plans and are going directly to Antigua sorry but no, its just the unique challenges we have faced the entire trip due to loosing use of the main sail on the first day.

To explain just how limiting this sail plan is, today we are being presented with a beautiful beam reach direct to St Lucia, normally this would be a sailors dream, however it leaves us with a problem. The the yankee headsail and the genoa both flying from the forestay currently supported on twin spinnaker poles we are limited to sail basically only 25 degree each side of dead down wind. This has made our routing interesting so far such as being pushed well South early on before being able to strike out West finally when the winds turned. Our other option is to drop the yankee and sail under just genoa on the beam reach, this would reduce our sail area by around 40% and in the current rolling seas not provide enough power to keep the boat from rolling side to side and the sail from spilling all the wind every two minutes. So onwards we go waiting for a shift in the wind hopefully tomorrow so we can turn back onto a direct course for parties and rum punch.

It is a great experience though understanding just how challenging navigation must have been for the old square rigged ships who navigated the world bringing spices back from the Caribbean having now crossed the Atlantic under similar sail restrictions.

Fingers crossed for winds from due East tomorrow morning.