17 26 622N 26 16 511W
Fair Do's VII, Atlantic 2008....
Professor John Shepherd
Fri 28 Nov 2008 06:38
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Hi Chris,
Position is:
17 26 622N 26 16 511W
Present windspeed is 19 KNTS Direction (according to uncalibrated instruments) is 124 (average 115) Boatspeed: 10.5 Knts under A5 (blew the A3 up last night just after dark) Present heading is around 240. Range has been between 90 and a 130, and windspeed
has been 13 to 23, though we believe this is significantly under reading
downwind at points (pretty sure we had in the region of 28 - 30, possibly 35 at
some of the more exciting moments.....
In a nutshell we held on on port too long this
morning, unaware of accurate true wind direction, which left us struggling to
get down to meet our waypoint off the shallows near NW verde islands. We were
forced to run downwind at points without a spinnaker - main only, before
going to Jib top to get low, and safe enough in a pretty big sea on port to
clear the shallows - which would not have been a good place to be for obvious
reasons.
As you can we are heading South West, hoping
to stay in decent pressure and continue looking for the trades. We are looking
for some inidcation of pressure difference accross the course between sailing
the rhumb line 280 (which is presently impossible) and going South to get trades
so we can try and factor the gain versus our gybing angles (through approx
95-110) ultimate trade direction to help wiht this would assist
greatly.
All in all being a challenging night, everyone
pretty tired, though safe and mainly in good spirits. We are hoping to put up
the A4 come dawn and get the throttle on again.
Had a good mileage yesterday (235 according to our
GPS, 215 according to ARC???) and we have a boat race on the cards with our
immediate opposition, who we can almost smell, which essentially is
why last nights shennanigans were particularly galling.
No doubt bacon butties will boost morale come
sun up, otherwise we'll continue to have fun at the expense of an unsuspecting
member of the crew as usual!
Regards,
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