12 52 895N 041 42 643W

Fair Do's VII, Atlantic 2008....
Professor John Shepherd
Thu 4 Dec 2008 06:16
Good Morning Chris,
 
Our position is: 12 52 895N 041 42 643W
 
Current:
Heading: 295 (starboard tack, A2)
Boatspeed: 6.5 knots
WInd Strength:7.2 knots
Direction: 088 (calibration wrong)
 
Historical (last 12 - 24 hours):
Heading: 180 - 360 (more generally 335 and 260, but we have done a fair bit of chasing our tails.......)
Boatspeed: 4 - 8.5 (less in some of the proper light spells, 2 - 3)
WInd Strength: 4 - 9 (saw 14 briefly in cloud driven pressure overnight, which we suspected may be a squall - this did not quite materialise)
Direction: 080 - 160 (wrongly calibrated)
 
It has been an interesting 24 hours! We have seen an awful lot of rain and very little wind, tremendously frustrating in fact, but we took some heart from the positions issued at 1800 to us as we had made good gains on the boats around us again.
 
Principally we have focussed on keeping the boat moving (in almost any direction) trying to ensure that their remains some west in our course, ideally on the making tack either due west or to St Lucia. In practice this has meant gybing from starboard to port when we were heading around 230 - 235, which gets us to around 270, and back again when we are seeing about 230-240 on port, this is giving us 299 right now.
 
Last night took the 'normal' blacker than any of us have ever encountered to a new level, it was almost too black to see any clouds, really challenging sailing with a lot of people experiencing real disorientation whilst helming - just steering a vague straight line seemed a real achievement. We have tried to take some motivation from the fact that if we are finding it this tricky, if we try to be particularly bloody minded about it, work hard and concentrate as hard as we can, we should be able to make gains on the weaker boats who allow it to become a bigger issue - who knows......? Time will tell.
 
P.s. excuse spelling/punctuation as I am awake for 2 minutes before starting typing.
 
P.P.S. We have also now resorted to rationing facts as the timescales grow longer.........(MORE KIRSTY PLEASE, FOR OUR SANITY)
 
Regards
Duncan