Ascension Northwards - Day Three 06 30.984S 019 56.891W
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Wed 16 Apr 2014 19:47
Another factor that has helped today is that we have changed direction - from 282 to 296. Not a huge change, but enough to move the wind from the port side to the starboard side. That fits with the sail change we did the other day - puts the wind on the side we like it! That has contributed to the improvements today. It means that today we've decided to miss FdN and head direct for the Caribbean. So rather than the 860 miles to go that I reported yesterday, we now have 2,700! We can change our minds again if conditions change and the decision will only sort of be final once we're passed FdN. On this course we should pass around 190 miles to the north east of it. A factor helping to make the decision was the slow progress we were making. Our plans are based on our average passage times and if we don't keep up we'll have problems later.
A couple of the boats 300-500 miles ahead have been having a lot of rain and squalls, with sudden wind increases up to 30kts. We hope by heading more north, which the new heading gives us, we might miss some of these. We hope so!
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