Xplorer –
Sailing Update
I have now
decided to take back control of the laptop from Tin Tin and write a sailing
update rather than hear more abusive tales about his shipmates. He has been
keel-hauled for insubordination and is now fixed firmly in the saloon with
heavy duty Velcro!
We are now
about 250 miles west of the Cape Verde islands. We seem to have been about this
distance from Cape Verde for a long time. Having headed south we turned west
about 250 miles north of these islands and have been on a never ending arc
around the west side. We are now almost 1000 miles from Las Palmas and just
over a third of the way across.
The first
week has been characterised by cloudy skies, rain on and off, and variable
winds. Most days the weather has resembled a summer day in the English Channel.
We’ve all got soaked at some point and had resort to foul weather gear. We’ve
had some great sailing in 15-25 knots of wind and several patches of very light
wind. Yesterday was very frustrating with the wind even going round to the West
so we had to go close-hauled and even tack a few times. Yesterday evening it
all changed. Finally a patch of blue appeared, the clouds parted and we had a
magnificent night sky with stars as I’ve never seen them before. Today was been clear, warm and sunny, and it feels like the tropics at last. The wind is only around 7-10 knots but
throughout most of today we have been managing to go broadly in the right
direction at about 6 knots. Its dropped off this afternoon so we are bit slower now.
Those
watching the Fleet Viewer will have seen that we decided to head south first.
We knew that it was a longer route and not as quick at first, but the aim is
that we’ll have stronger and more reliable trade winds in the second half. The
trade winds are typically from the east or north east. The forecast guided
through all of this by our own view of the weather forecasts and with the help
of a couple of experts on shore running routing programmes. The forecast from
Wednesday onwards is looking encouraging but we are probably going to have to
go quite a way further south as the trade winds are not fully developed further
north. We are currently at 18 degrees north and we need be below 15 and
possibly 12. Its probably going to continue to be a bit slow until then and we won’t actually be pointing at St Lucia for another couple of
days at least.
We hear
that the boats that went north are ahead of us but that’s not a surprise. For
them it all depends how some low pressure systems develop in mid-Atlantic over
the next week. Could be good or bad for them.
On the
domestic front, we’re all going through the round of our first showers – 40
seconds each. Anna is baking bread and doing press-ups. Tom is still trying
unsuccessfully to fish off the back of the boat, Tony is reading and unusually
not eating, and Tin Tin is…… oh my god where has he gone, I’d better go and
find out what he is up to now!
Peter
Bamford