Our sail to Cape Verde took rather a suden change of route and destination,
which was unexpected but not unwelcome.
Half-way down we encountered increasing Easterly high winds and a
lively-confused sea state - we were actually reducing sail to nearly nothing
in order to slow Barada down as we were now racing downwind with the
sea/waves/wind coming from behind. The odd thing was the sky was blue, the
sun was shining, the sunsets and rises weren't bad and there were no adverse
weather reports, all very puzzling at the time.
24 Hours later I realised that we had run into the Easterly Tradewinds
belt - the E winds were constant and blowing us West, and I said to Rosie
"we are in the tradewinds, so there is no point in struggling down to the
Cape Verde Islands when we have these perfect winds blowing us across the
Atlantic - are you game for crossing?" But really neither of us had a
choice, the wind dictated where we were going - and that was west to the
Caribbean.
So folks, one year on it looks like we may be in the sunny Caribbean by
Christmas or the New Year.
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