Wednesday 23rd July, over Bill Bailey's Bank
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Wed 23 Jul 2014 12:20
The mushrooms were fabulous, the same cannot be said of the sailing. After yesterday's promising start with a force 4/5 from astern we have had reducing visibility and ever reducing wind strength. The visibility closed in and by 5 pm we were slopping about in a grey murk at around 3.5 knots. The wind also backed slightly forcing us off our proposed route but in order to maintain some speed we were forced to deviate by about 15 degrees. The upside of this was that we spotted whale blow and the back of what might have been a minky whale, whatever it was it was big; about 15 metres, plus some smaller finned mammals beside it, we think pilot whales.
The wind picked up around 8 pm and we experienced the strange sensation of rushing through the mist at 7.5 knots with no sensation of the horizon. The odd sea bird appeared from time to time and shocked us with how close the visibility had become. Its at times like this that the radar really comes into its own. We used it on the maximum range (12 miles) and hoped we were not running into anything out there. This electronic assistance eats battery power so we also tested the generator.
Overnight the wind died to nothing. Cue the engine and rather wobbly progress through the swell. The rain and grey have not improved this morning; we are in sea area Bailey and are somewhat behind our plan. Better conditions are hoped for later this afternoon.
Good luck to all our friends rowing in the Cambridge Town Bumps tonight; we were thinking of you all at "cannon time" yesterday evening. Don't get too sunburnt.
We did put the Short Wave radio on yesterday evening and will do so again this evening but reception was very poor and we could barely tell if anybody was transmitting, let alone understand. We _think_ we might have heard G4ABQ for few seconds, but couldn't be sure.