This may not have gone through first time it was for early 29 May.  If its a repeat sorry!

 

OK so having escaped the Azores and the comms blackout created by the Bank Holiday weekend in the UK delaying the update of sat phone minutes we managed to post two blogs yesterday (we hope??). One was for the 25 May not long after we had left Horta and were heading East between Pico and Sao Jorge, the second was for mid afternoon yesterday when we were approx 200 NM East of the Azores.

 

So what had we been up to for the 70 odd hours and 380 NM in between (that is straight line we had covered about 480 NM). The first leg down from Horta to Sao Miguel was quite slow, most under the motor, we did try sailing a few times when the wind would get up to 10 – 12 knots and then die on us!!

 

Having finally got south of Sao Miguel we did a quick fuel stop in Ponte Delgarda where the marina staff, customs, immigration etc were some what surprised by our desire to book in and then straight out again. They appeared to think there were places we should go sight seeing!

 

Having topped up the tank were were off and heading East in a strong breeze, the problem was the direction, it was from the East!

 

As we mentioned the strength of the wind resulted in us being under just jib for quite some time and we spent most of the time pointing at Arquipelago Da Madeira (nice place we understand?) or NE for the Bay of Biscay not Gibraltar! We were having to cover 150/160 NM for every 100 NM towards our WP.

 

Things started to improve last night with us finally getting to the point where we could point at Casablanca, another nice place? However last night turned in to a bit of a saga with a series of squall's that had the reefs going in and out as the wind went up and down and round and round!! Crew comments in the log include “wind being a ******” and “thank god for watch change!” The wind then died completely?? So much for the forecast!

 

So what will the rest of the day have brought well that will have to wait for after I have had some sleep and try to get back into the routine of an evening blog.

 

On a plus side the fixes from the sun sights for both the 27 and 28 May were within a handful of miles although cloud may stop play for todays ones!