Motor Sailing
12 February 2010 | S 10 deg 12 min; W 10 deg 59 min
Tom
Now that we have left St. Helena behind us it's to look at what,s in store for the next phase of the journey.
St. Helena is a natural stop if one is going north-wards to Europe or west-wards to South America and or the Caribbean Islands.
Going to the Mediterranean Sea we usually continue on the same heading to the Cape Verde islands for another stop. That is fine when sailing a mono-hull vessel that can go to windward much easier that our catamaran.
The North Atlantic weather is dominated with a high pressure system that stays in the Azores area, Much like the high to the west of Cape Town. With the high over the Azores the prevailing winds flow from Gibraltar over the Canaries and curving west-wards past Cape Verde across the Atlantic towards the new world. Unfortunately for us we can not follow a more direct route so are heading for a point to the west of Cape Verde where we will be able to sail northwards having the wind more on our beam than from the front. Once reaching a point south of the Azores we will be able to turn towards Gibraltar. This does give us more distance to cover but should be a lot easier on the boat. Hope you have all got your school atlases out and have an idea of what we are about.
Life continues on the blue sea and whist there has been a lot of cloud most of the time today is clear with a temperature of 30 deg. We were motor sailing earlier but there is so little wind that is only the engine working for us now.
In spite of being still 600 miles from the equator there is little difference between the day and night temperatures. The last few days have averaged 25 degrees at night and 30 degrees during the day. Unlike on land where the land mass governs the temperature here the water mass is more stable and so we have little variation between night and day.
Wild life is still conspicuous by its absence there is very little bird life around and that, that there is has tried on a couple of occasions to roost in the self stacker ( the canvas bag that the main sail folds into when one takes the mail sail down). On the fish front we caught a fish.... about 50mm in circumference and about 1m long silver coloured and looked very much like a barracuda, that is where the similarity stopped this little chap had eyes about the size of a R5 coin and a lower mandible / jaw that extended out in front of the upper- needle sharp teeth lined- jaw l,d in the gap between the top jaw and the tip of the lower jaw was a 'pin cushion' of darning needle thick spikes 15 to 20 mm long. Obviously a denizen of the deep up for the night as it was on the lure as we recovered it for the
night. Needless to say, it still lives to swim another day.
The ships clock is set to UTC. We are moving west at about one degree per day and it is quite noticeable the daily changes in sunrise times at the moment it is about 10 minutes later every day, currently it is at 0631 and sunset is at 1910.
Cheers Tom, Mark and Troye.