Azores to UK - update

Stargazer of Southampton
Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)
Sat 14 Jul 2012 00:06
13.07:12, 48:40.23N 8:54.92W

Finally less than 200 miles to go.  We’ve crossed from the deep ocean water to the shallower plate that the uk sits on and in the space of a few hours the water has changed from inky blue and crystal clear. .  to green and somewhat less clear.  When we first set off and got into Biscay I remember how clear and blue that looked to me as I was used to the murky solent.

We were fortunate that we had decided to put a lot more north into our course yesterday (after looking at various weather forecasts) – today was severe Gale 9 in Biscay and Gale in Fitzroy – we were a bit north of that and this morning we actually had zero wind – the reason was that we were exactly where a new Low was forming, so we had a morning of 1 – 2 knot winds.  I would much prefer that to a Gale.  By lunchtime the wind was coming back and we have been making good sailing progress all afternoon / evening.  I don’t think we will have a lack of wind to bring us back

Had Dolphins with us a lot of the day today, initially when we were slowly motoring in the Low – they must have been very bored to come and try and ride on our bow wave since we didn’t really have one.  But we kept seeing them all day and by mid afternoon we were zooming along at 7 knots and the Dolphins were back and enjoying bow wave riding much more.   We also saw some Pilot Whales today, a small group that kept popping up at random points about 30 or 40 metres from the boat.  I hoped they would come closer but they didn’t, they probably only stayed for 10 minutes or so. Enough time for me to take plenty of pictures of patches of sea where a pilot whale was just a second ago!

Gales again in Biscay tonight – but we’re now north of Biscay and starting to head across the channel toward the south of the Scilly isles.