Bay of Biscay day 2 at sea

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Mon 31 Jul 2017 18:20
During the night the wind decreased and today the ocean has flattened making it overall a very comfortable ride. With clear skies and a perfect temperature this is all a motortrawlercrew can ask for. On top of it we saw two spermwhales aft of Dora Mac and one of them passing quite close on our port side before diving.
Traffic has been scarce with only a couple of ships passing to port during the night and French navy heard on the VHF radio twice during the day interrogating a fishingvessel from the U.K.
Only downside has been the variable speed over ground with a bottomspeed of 4,2 kts and topping 6,7kts on 1600rpm.
We find no other explanation than current (wether of tidal origin or oceancurrent/combination is for us unknown) and allthough looking for info on the distribution of currents in the Bay of Biscay on the web what we found was not very substantial.With a speed of 6,4kts at the moment ,E.T.A remains 23.00hrs on Tuesday.
According to recent weather downloaded from Predictwind the margin to the southwesterly gale coming in early Wednesday morning is shrinking. For that reason we discussed to retreive the paravanes (to gain some speed)but with the long oceanswell out here and only two crew we decided to wait until making landfall in Camaret. Right or wrong we will know once tied up in Port Vauban in Camaret sur Mer.