Of Brest

We are heading east

To avoid a beast

Of a storm

Sorry, I got carried away with the breast/ Brest thing.

This is one of the biggest weather related detours we have taken on the whole circumnavigation! We headed down to Santa Marta in Columbia from Curaçao earlier than planned in order to avoid hurricane Matthew but that was not a diversion from our intended track. We had forty knots of wind in Fiji but that was within the island group and there was no big sea running. We just heaved to and listened to the chatter among the other yachts on the VHF! We’ve had squalls, thunderstorms, 30kts of wind on many occasions but this is the North Atlantic and in the absence of any is settled summer weather pattern and with a new low pressure system headed our way we are not taking any chances. Just in the eastern edge of it we would be in wind to 30kts with gusts to 40kts. If it comes further to the east or south than forecast we could be in serious weather. There is a high pressure system over northern France and Biscay that will check its progress east but as the high pressure develops and moves west it will form a compression zone between it and our low pressure system to the north with strong westerly wind between them.

The plan is to stay just outside the low and then follow the outside of the SE edge up to the Bristol Channel. We will know on Thursday afternoon and overnight into Friday how successful our strategy has been. In the meantime the forecasts will change and we will adapt to these changes. We were predicted to be sailing all of today but have been motor-sailing with lighter wind than forecast to keep our speed up ahead of the low pressure.

In the meantime Annie has decided we need to fill our freezer with fish to take back to Bristol. A lure was out all afternoon but despite a couple of false alarms was unsuccessful. These are lures used to catch the likes of Mahi Mahi and tuna but unless climate change is having a bigger impact than even we realised we imagine that tropical species are unlikely to be this far north. Maybe our lures are a bit exotic for these waters although I think I am right in saying there used to be big runs of tuna past the UK in years gone by…….. In the absence of fish we have made enough chicken casserole for supper and to see us through any bad weather on Day 8.