Ponta Delgado-St mary's 02
08 June 2019 | 40:56N 021:26W
Richard Rowley
Trip:287 Distance to Waypoint 825; Bearing to Waypoint 045deg 40deg 56'N 021deg 26'W COG: 060 SOG:5.5 Wind N f5-6; Satus: Sailing 2 reefs main / 50% staysail
Boat time 23:00 (UT)
Day 03 at sea
from: Ponta Delgardo towards: St Mary's Isles of
We are on our third night at sea on this passage and it is very dark, there is a bit of moon laying on his back shining through the dark menacing looking clouds that are dotted around the sky. Did I say the moon was wanning the other day, apologies, i think it is waxing.
We have NW to N force 5-6, whatever 20kts plus for most of the day. The wind is not a problem, it is the lumpy confused with waves/swell coming from the north and north west at the same time, not a particularly big swell at that, 2-3m but a short period between. We have been crashing into waves all day with the odd one stopping the boat and sending spray right over the boat and soaking the cockpit with the odd dribble making its way through the sprayhood and dribbling and dribbling down the companion way. We reduced the stay-sail a bit, which has slowed the boat down a bit and made the motion a bit more comfortable (bit still enough to spill your G&T).
In this sea and having a bit of heal on does make preparing, cooking and eating supper a bit of a challenge. It was a scrummy chicken curry with coconut rice today, a joint effort in cooking and preparing between me and Alison, Alison done the hard work by cutting up the veg, I just put it in the pan and done the rice. The leftovers will make a nice soup for tomorrows lunch.
It has turned quite cold now, a lot colder than we have been used to...I suppose that means we are getting close to home. The sea temperature has dropped from 20.5 deg C to 17.5 deg C in just two days, you know about that when the sea chucks a few bucketfuls over you in the cockpit.
Hopefully the wind will go back round to the west and we might be able to pick up speed at bit be in somewhere on the 15th or 16th June, current ETA has slipped a couple of days. It had been out intention to stop of in the Isles of Scilly, but I am not sure if the weather is going to be settled enough to go there, so where we will end up I do not know...France, Spain, Ireland, England...From: Ponta Delgardo Towards: St Mary's Isles of Scilly it says in the log book but who knows.
We have seen quite a few large pods of dolphins, at least one pod a day of perhaps 10 to 20 dolphins in each pod, Short Beaked Oceanic dolphins, sometimes they play in the bow wave and swim around the boat, other times they just head on by in search of food.
Wind seems to be easing little bit now, suppose I better go and have a look around and make sure there are no ships around. Last night it was quite busy with shipping we must have been crossing a major transit route form the Med to North America, we had several ships passing less than 2nm.
Good night
Richard and Alison yacht Cerulean of Penryn
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