From Angra do Heroisma It is now a week since we arrived in this Renaissance city in the middle of the Atlantic. Terceira ( literally “third” in Portuguese ) may have been the 3rd Azorean island to be discovered , but rapidly became the most important due to the excellent shelter provided by the little […]
From Back across the atlantic Our last day at sea was remarkably pleasant , going to windward in 10 to 12 knots on a lovely sunny day. With 30 miles to go the wind dropped and once more blew directly from Horta so we reached for the ignition switch and motored in. Horta is heaving. […]
Quick update – Festina arrived in Horta early this morning…
We are still engaged in our private battle of wits with Neptune. We decided the wind would veer ,so headed off on a long port tack , went on to starboard well short of the layline – classic upwind tactics even if the layline in question was 100 miles long. I have to admit to […]
Well , Neptune has thrown down the gauntlet and directed the wind to blow direct from Horta. Just to prove a point he has thrown in a bit of leeward going tide as well but all he has achieved is to put us on our mettle and we have shifted to upwind racing mode. The […]
A much nicer day today with sun and the kind of cumulus streets that I associate with a nice force 4 on a summers day. Except we don’t have the force 4! The wind is mostly around 4 knots , and frequently blowing straight from Horta , but every so often it pulls round into […]
Thursdays Child has far to go –343 miles anyway, which at our present 3 knots is going to take – well, a long time yet. The wind has been astonishingly flukey both in strength and direction leaving us the option of using a windvane and heading alternately to Carlisle then CapeTown but minimising the trimming […]
The weather situation continues to be intriguing. It seems we have been travelling East at the same rate as the High pressure . As we slip back , so the wind increases to 8 knots and veers south , only to drop and back as far as ESE an hour later as we run up […]
Tuesday sees a shamefaced skipper and a boat without a kettle. This is their sorry tale. The night was VERY slow , and what wind there was came from dead astern . On my watch in the middle of the night it died altogether and I put the engine on. Out in the middle of […]
Yesterday we broke all records with a noon to noon run of 188 miles! This was all the more remarkable as the last 6 hours were very light indeed , and we even changed to a small jib for the night ( we try and choose a night time rig that will ensure minimum effort […]
The last 24 hours have brought 2 major milestones ( can you have milestones on the sea ˆ they sound unlikely to float so maybe they should be milebuoys?). First to go was the under 1000 mark ˆ its very encouraging to only have 3 digits on the clock . Next was 900 to go […]
Saturday The days roll on with little change , other than we are back in 1.4 knots of Westerly current with its accompanying chop and slowed up progess over the chart. Looking ahead our latest information is that the high we are trying to circumvent is going to move NE so rather than head up […]
Our slow and gentle progress continues. We are casting a wary metaphorical glance astern as it looks like we will have some “weather “ in 3 or 4 days time. If we can keep our speed up we may just keep pace with the high as it retreats east and so the kite goes up […]
The problem for the next few days is how not to get engulfed in a high in front of us. We trundled along happily through the night dead downwind , but by dawn the wind was down to 10 knots and there followed much examining of tea leaves and grib files to work out what […]
As expected the wind died at 1300 yesterday and we settled down for a 12 hr chug , but it was not to be . A little breath came out of the SE after only 4 hours and we dribbled along until midnight when the expected veer and increase had us up to speed once […]