Hi from CATRYN. Our apologies for the blogging silence on this trip so far. The bad weather has kept us rather busy and there’s no respite in sight for a while. We left Lewisporte early last Thursday morning in fine weather and sailed through beautiful Notre Dam Bay, then SE across the Grand Banks down to the warm and friendly Gulf Stream. We chose this route rather than the shorter Great Circle route across the Atlantic to avoid the succession of lows which would have made life unpleasant. This has proved a wise decision as we have avoided at least two major gales so far. Our route has not been particularly comfortable either. Crossing the Grand Banks we had 2 days and nights of continuous fog, icebergs and 6 hours of darkness to manage – ever played Russian roulette?!

 

We finally emerged from the fog on Monday morning sailing into warmth, blue skies, brilliant white wave crests glistening in the sunlight. Life felt good again ........... until the midday weather forecast! But that’s sailing, ups and downs. A deep depression is approaching and due to pass over us on next weekend. Unfortunately the Azores High hasn’t yet established itself as this would have kicked the low further North and out of our way. So we have decided to had for the island of Flores in the Azores, still some 500 milea away to the SE. This will create quite a dog-leg in our passage adding about 600 miles to the overall distance. But we’ve never been there and we ARE on holiday!!

 

Dai