On our way to Panama (eng) 10.5.2011
Andromeda
Michael
Tue 10 May 2011 21:14
Sailing from George Town, Grand Cayman TO
Bocas del Toro, Panama
5.10.2011, 1655 hrs
My first multi-night trip! So far, we have not sailed more than one night, not more than 30 hours or so.
But now we've got a big part of water in front of us - approx 600nm to Bocas del Toro, Panama!
The weather report for the next day looks pretty good, medium winds from NE-E to E, 7-17 knots. No storms, no calms.
Difficult to estimate how much the currents will be in our favour, but we calculated about 90 hours of sail.
We left George Town, Grand Cayman this morning at 1025 hrs and had a lovely smooth sail so far.
Wind has been great and we're doing 7.5 til 8.5 knots. The sea is relaxed. For a few hours the waves have even been parallel to Andromeda and she was gliding very gently through the water.
Now the waves seem a bit more confused and she's rocking more back and forth and sideways, but it is still calm enough to do some stuff on the computer - like organizing our iTunes and writing in the blog!
Not much happening here anyway. Only one gas freighter just crossed our course in 1.3nm distance and thanks to AIS traffic even at night is not too much of an excitement.
So far, we've been about 6 hours sailing and did 48nm through the water and another 548nm to go til waypoint.
If we continue this speed, we'd arrive in about 75 hours - which is not good, as that would be at 2000 hrs in the evening on the 13th. But nothing to worry yet of course anyway. Still far too far away and we expect to encounter calms and counter currents.
Just hope for a continuous relaxed sail and comfortable night shifts.
PS: have been trying to send this email via ssb for 20min now, but many stations seem pretty busy and many others have a lot of static. would probably help to turn off the sailing instruments for a few minutes, but that shall be my last resource...
keep trying!
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