The Sails of change
22 May 2009 | 38 54.40'N:37 03.13'W
sarge
Day 18
I have lost track of the chronological sequence of blog days and i'm confident we have missed more than one day. My best guess is i'm reporting on the close of Day 18. Not much happened on Day 18 so i shall sneak a bit of day 19 in as well. Apologies to Andrew, but as you are witness to Andrew is never short for words............... The most westerly Island of the Azores Archipeligo is Flores and it is only a tantalising 250 -275 miles away ( 2.5 days sailing ). That to some of you may seem a long way, to us with over 2000 miles already behind us 250 miles is very much the final furlong. There has been much discussion as to which island(s) we should visit. Flores being the closest is a strong contender, but it is the least developed and it may not afford us the facilities we need / water / diesel / laundry / showers etc , and our latest weather download indicates a force 9 gale on Wednesday for Flores, I reckon on that basis we shall sail straight past little Flores on route for Faial and / or Terciera. The island with the best facilities is Faial and it is an extra 120 miles ( one average day sailing ) beyond Flores . The first choice is currently Terciera which is a further 70 miles beyond Faial. As we have to pass Faial to get to Terceira we have these two islands as an option. It may be that world events dictate our stopping off point. Man Utd play Barcelona on Wednesday 27th May. I anticipate severe crew unrest if we are not on dry land in good time to watch the game. Sailing be dammed Footy comes first. There has been very little wind these last few days and we have struggling to maintain 4.00 - 5.00 knots, the last time we all prayed for wind we ended up in a force 9 this time around we are all agreed if it takes an extra day at 4.00 - 5.00 knots to reach Terciera so be it. Irrespective of which island(s) we stop at we expect a swift turn around in the Azores as there is a tight time frame for arrival in Portimao - Portugal l ( 6-7 further days sailing.) This morning ( day 18 ) my watch was 3.00am until 6.00am and for the first time on the passage i saw the sun rise. Every other time i stood this watch the sky was grey and completely clouded over. It was a real treat, Dolphins at dawn, unfortunately i missed the bio-luminescent light show Tom saw as it was too bright, i then saw whales, pretty far away one broached and several other oblidged with the classic " thar she blows " as you would expect i was unable to restrain myself, unfortunately the crew appeared on deck just in time to miss all the whales. Day 18 and Day 19 have been dominated by the light winds and the obligatory, and most of the time, totally non beneficial sail changes, but hey, what else is there to do in mid Atlantic and it does build team spirit Fortunately young cabin boy and YMC do the heavy lifting and Aisling and I usually stand and watch in awe and admiration.
In closing todays blog I have a competition for all you mathematicians out there. I'm sure it's just a simple arithmetic or geometric progression,but it is long time since i did hgh school maths, Here goes; there are 3 sails, genoa, cruising shute, main sail. There can be 1, 2 or 3 sails flying at any one time and any sail can be on either the starboard or port side of the boat. How many possible sail combinations can there be. If you are really in to sums you can factor in the engine as we tried have motor sailing as well. So far in the last two days we have had 29 variation of sail settings but I'm sure there have been duplications so you mathematicians out there please post you answer to the blog of the maximum number of possible combinations, hopefully it is not more then 29 proof can wait until I'm back in Cayman, a bottle of Zapaca is the prize for the first correct answer posted to the blog. Sarge.
Latenews flash The YMv ahs now adivsed there is staysail we shall be trying out tomorrow.
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