12/Dec/2009, 686 Miles East of the Caribbean.
Ten-days at sea and 686 Miles to Barbados! Closest land is still French Guyana. It will be Suriname tomorrow. So far, 1,384 Miles covered since Cabo Verde. Currently running Ship's time on +3:00 from UTC (ie 3 hours before GMT).
No nasty squalls last night. Hurrah!! We succeeded in being picked up by Herb Hilgenberg last night and received a personalised forecast. Herb warned us about convection activity brewing near our position so we moved 5 miles south and missed it all, we could see the ominous clouds on the horizon giving attention to where we might have been:-) Andy's Dad, Ray, is pulling a medley of weather data out of several sources, editing it and emailing it to us each day. Overall this is a much more efficient way of getting weather, uses less time on email downloads via the SSB radio. Thanks, Dad!
Herb is a well known HAM radio enthusiast who is also an accomplished weather forecaster. He runs an evening schedule on 12,359KHz under the user name of "Southbound II", where yachts can check-in at 1930UTC ... and for an hour he provides information on weather around the Atlantic... but in practise he does a lot more. A couple of nights ago the motor yacht "Barbara", some 300 Miles North West of Bermuda, called in with rudder failure and a rising gale. Herb spent the next half-hour liaising with the yacht, advising them how to do a jury-rig, what Latitude/Longitude to get towards to miss the worst of the cold-front hurtling towards them, and providing a link with the US Coast Guard and Bermuda Harbour authorities. So tonight we, along with many other yachts, will log in to "Southbound II", radio propagation allowing, to see what might be in store on a very local basis.
| News & Updates |
|
Comments [0]
11/Dec/2009, 810 Miles East of the Caribbean.
Nine-days at sea and 812 Miles to Barbados! Although, the closest land is now Brazil and French Guyana at about 700 Miles to the South West. So far, 1,255 Miles covered since Cabo Verde.
A couple of hours before dawn this morning we were caught up by one of the dreaded white cloud weather convection cells. The dark ones bring rain but not too much wind, this one gave us a short period of Force-8 winds, fortunately only wandering between the South East and North East in direction ... a bit of hasty reefing of the twin running head-sails and we zoomed on at 6 knots. The wind eased just in time for breakfast and the early morning radio schedules, very considerate. Apart from that another day running in ideal trade wind conditions, averaging 135ish miles per day, perhaps the sun a little too warm for comfort. We mainly stay below with regular pops out to have a look around, periodically flashing up the radar and looking for new convection cells creeping up astern.
Probably too early for predictions .. but on the current forecast we will hopefully arrive in Barbados on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning next week. We are looking forward to seeing Barbados and meeting up with folk from some of the other boats on the MadLantic Radio Net, apart from four people we met in La Gomera, the other fifty are just voices in the Ether. There are already mutterings on the Net about a beach party for Christmas.
| News & Updates |
|
09/Dec/2009, 995 Miles West of Cabo Verde
Seven-days at sea and 1,056 Miles to Barbados! 1000 Miles covered so we are past the One Thousand Mile Waypoint! The Mahi-Mahi for supper (again) was very tasty. ... there is twice what we have already eaten still packed in the fridge. Hmmmm, steak or Mahi-Mahi for dinner tomorrow, lots of hard decisions out here:-)
We heard on the MadLantic Net at 0830utc that other boats behind us were losing their wind and getting tropical downpour soakings. Our turn came to lose the wind but the squally downpours passed ahead, behind and to the side. The infernal combustion engine was used for just over an hour to stop the awful rolling and slatting with almost zero wind. The trade winds, with blue skies and fluffy white clouds re-established and we are rocking along at 5.5 knots in 15 knots of wind. That was the first time we have taken the sails in for over a week.
| News & Updates |
|
09/Dec/2009, 940 Miles East of the Caribbean.
Eight-days at sea and 939 Miles to Barbados! 1,122 Miles covered since Cabo Verde - Next milestone will be the "two-thirds of the way there" tomorrow night some time. Another celebration on the rolling party boat:-)
Just after dawn this morning we were greeted at our breakfast in the cockpit by two "Tropic Birds" wheeeling around overhead, probably waiting to see if we disturbed something edible in our wake. Later in the day a "Booby" (either a "Masked Booby" or a "Brown-Booby" or a "Blue Footed Booby") came for a visit and circled around a few times before heading off to the West. If only they stayed a bit more stationary and dangled their legs below we would know:-)
Good progress today with a stiff breeze from the East. The wind has now gone round to the North East bringing our old friend the uncomfortable cross-swell back to visit.
| News & Updates |
|
08/Dec/2009, 855 Miles West of Cabo Verde
Six-days at sea and 1,193 Miles to Barbados! Water-maker was put through its paces today... some clothes washing done, boat cleaned through and the water tanks are full to the brim. A great invention these "Reverse-Osmosis-Water-Makers". The steak meal was good last night and more steak tonight... unless ... the fishing line has been streamed and a careless Tuna might just change the menu:-) STOP PRESS! Not a Tuna, but a 3 foot long Dorade (Mahi Mahi), must be a 12 pound fish.
Here is a night-watch poem from Sue, just shows some folk don't have much to do on watch:-) ...to be honest, we have both read two books since leaving Cabo Verde as well:-)
Where shall we go to? My love and I? Deep deep oceans with a pale blue sky. Fluffy clouds spin across the horizon, Tropic bird sings as he circles around us. On the magic carpet we sway, to and fro is the rhythm of the day, Spruce hums a tune of creaks and vibrations, She takes us to far off destinations. How lucky are we, my love and I to sail together as the days go by.
| News & Updates |
|
Great blog, following it avidly. Wondering which reverse osmosis watermaker you fitted?
07/Dec/2009, 725 Miles West of Cabo Verde
Four-days at sea and 1,318 Miles to Barbados! We are a third of the way there, celebration with a steak dinner tonight! A small tipple, perhaps Cape Verdean Grogue, to boot:-) We have some photos to upload but our allowance of SSB radio email minutes is fast being consumed for weather data, the Trinidad HF radio email station, for some reason, is only managing very low data rates so we are moving our email traffic through Nova Scotia or Belgium... also slow ... but not as slow. Apologies for lack of piccies but should be possible to get more bandwidth in a couple of days when we are somewhat closer... quite amazing we can send email 2,700 miles through the ether to get it to the best internet connection anyway:-) If you want a preview of "Eolica" try www.eolica-crosiere.com
Now ... that dog! Imagine our surprise to see a sail gradually approaching from astern. The "Eolica", a French yacht, also out of Mindelo, and heading for Martinique, in the Caribbean, called us up on the VHF radio for a chat then passed nearby so we could take photos of each other. As she overtook there was that dog with a short tail, the one who persisted in barking at the Rallye Iles De Soleil organiser at Mindelo. He was chasing up and down the deck barking for all he was worth, presumably to repel any attempt we might make at boarding. We certainly hadn't expected to be barked at by a dog in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They say stranger things happen at sea:-)
| News & Updates |
|
