Yacht Cerulean Atlantic Adventure

Log:6908 DTW 511; BTW 044deg 44deg 05'N 015deg 40'W COG: 075 SOG:5.3 Wind NNE f4; baro 1029 Satus: Sailing 1 reefs main /100% staysail / 100% Genoa

Boat time 015:00 (UT)

Day 06 at sea

Hares are harmless but mackerel are not

Hares and rabbits dancing across the sky That hare has morphed into a french poodle there's Dumbo and a hedgehog dancing together. but no Beethoven yet.

Our world of grim grey cloud and drizzle that has enveloped us for an eternity has suddenly given way to blue sky and fair weather cumuli,as the front passed by.

oh no, the French poodle has come apart! it's body and head separated from it's rear legs. now its head has exploded into cotton wool. The puppy has turned into piglet.

Great Britain is alone, an island by itself. No sign of Europe, I hope that's not the case. I had grown quite fond Europe, with the French Hypermarket so close.

Dumbo and the hedgehog have now passed by. The piglet is now a cat curled up. lots of indistinguishable cotton balls, embryonic as they turn into herd of wilderbeast.

What's this, a patch of mackerel sky? it beautiful for now, but what it doth bring, rain and strong winds will follow on hares are harmless, but mackerel are not

Richard Rowley Mid Atlantic 507NM SW of Bishops Rock 11/06/2019

Anyway Alison is enjoying the sunshine after such a dismal few days

Well after a few days of endless cloud, drizzle, strong winds and lumpy seas, the wind suddenly backed from NW to NE bringing with it a brief period of rain and calm. What little wind there was was pushing us nicely east to La Coruna for a while, but that is not where we want to go. If we tack we go north west, not where we want to go either, so we stick to the east, at least that is sor tof in the right direction, we need to east and we need to go north, north east would be ideal, but mother nature won't let us do that the easy way at the moment. Give it time and the wind will ease back round to the north and round a little further to the north west allowing is to lay a course north east for the Scilly Isles and the UK. We may bypass the Scilly Isles and head straight for Falmouth depending on the weather. ETA 14,15 or 16th June...maybe.

Yesterday evening it got so windy we resorted to hoisting the storm jib, with winds up to 25kts or more, along with the part furled staysail and two reefs in the main we were balanced quite nicely and making a fair progress to windward. The wind shift to the NE came at about 3am, and soon dropped off to 6-7kt of winds and our boat speed dropped to less than 2 kts. Too tired and too dark to sort the sails out we furled the staysail and resorted to the motor for a few hours til daylight. At 6am the wind had picked up we dropped the storm jib and set the genoa again, not a straight forward task as we have to sort out two sets of sheets, it took half an hour or more bouncing around on the foredeck with the bow plunging into the sea and waves break over now and then, not helped by the fact that the sole was flapping off my Dubarry sea boots, and they are only 10 years old and have only done 13,000 nautical miles, I expect better for £180 they cost. With the genoa set and reef taken out of the main and now 12-15kts of wind from NNE we were back sailing again, making some progress to our waypoint, but the wind is gradually moving back round to the north west and we are gradually getting back onto our desired course.

We are racing with a series of depressions coming through either to the north west of us or to the south east of us, and we are squeezed in the middle, hopefully we will make landfall before the next big one comes through on our track. We are expecting to get a bit of a south westerly blow for a few hours...but that is sailing for you.

Generator is not working, my sea boots are falling apart, the bilge is filling up with water, other than that all is good aboard Cerulean.

PS; in the time i have been writing this blog the wind has gone round to the NW and we are now back on course. The great thing about 'Old Harry' the Hydrovane is that he keeps us at a constant angle to the wind and goes round with it with out us having to adjust anything, we just have to keep an eye in our course and make sure that we are heading in the right direction or best course to windward as appropriate. ;^)

Richard and Alison yacht Cerulean of Penryn

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