13 00 191N 044 41 372W
Fair Do's VII, Atlantic 2008....
Professor John Shepherd
Fri 5 Dec 2008 06:16
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Good Morning Chris,
As promised the last 24 hours have been more active
weatherwise with squalls and thunder and lightning so we thank you for that, but
not the rain for 15 continuous hours - we are still drying out!
Current information:
Wind strength: 11 knots
Wind direction: 145
Heading: 275 (A2 port tack, have been principally
since 2215)
Boatspeed: 8 knots
Historical (last 12 - 24
hours):
Wind strength: 8 - 12 knots (24 knots in
squall at 1015 yesterday am)
Wind direction: 080 - 158 (dodgy calibration but
relative, TWD always about 20 - 25 within the extremes)
Heading: 260 - 330 (we have been aiming to gybe at
either end of this spectrum)
Boatspeed: 7.5 - 12 (pretty consistent
in the 7.5 - 8.5 range)
The game plan has been to take the making tack, get most of our port out of
the way, and to keep southish (near 13N for the greater pressure). Yesterdays
positions indicate that the boats in the north are pretty unstopable so we
are concentrating on making up the ground we need on the boats around us.
Looks like Desna, Nova One and Stormvogel did pretty well to the south of
us over preceeding 24 hours. During last 4 hours the guys took a 40 minute hitch
onto starboard to avoid a lightning storm, of which there were three around us,
which did not yield a great angle on the other tack but was seamanlike and risk
free.
Right now I am assuming we will continue to do more of the same and be
looking to get onto starboard for, hopefully, the long run in (953 nm as of
right now) as soon as we see the breeze going left. We will certainly appreciate
the increase in pressure as it really does make a difference with 2 or 3
extra knots for us. We could also do with the boats to the East and
North parking up for a while, to give us a bit more buffer in that
respect.
For the blog viewers I have it on good authority
that an amendment to yesterdays "guest blog" will be issued later following some
corruption of our outgoing e-mail with respect to JK's life changing experience
- more to follow.......
Regards
Duncan
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