Sunday - Adverse currents
Intrepidofdover
Andy Gibb
Sun 23 Jan 2011 13:50
Counter current for the last 36 hours. Essentially the Equatorial Current
flows Westward from a line between Morocco and Florida, (from where it turns
North to become the Gulf Stream heating Britain up (or preventing it from
being even colder than it already is). Anyway, at the south of this
Equatorial current south of a line between about Guinea and Venezuela the
current turns round and flows east - the Equatorial Counter Current. Which
is not good news if like us you are trying to go West. The Gulf Stream can
flow at anything up to 6 knots, the Equatorial Current flows at more like
2-3 knots. If you do 6 knots this makes the difference between 9 knots
towards our destination (if it flows with you) or 3 knots (if against) - so
it matters when all we dream about is a bed that doesnt roll and pitch and
buck and try to throw you out. The wind is from the NE so when the current
flowi E towards it, it kicks up high 4-5 metre waves that tower over us but
forunately dont (yet) break over us
I am trying to make whitebait out of flying fish that litter out deck, Nicky
is trying to dump the lot overboard - I suspect she will win but want to at
least try it out. Jonny is our desert island disc host today - 5-8 of the
most important music of his life - except he says he only lives for the
present so we are going to get his current 5 favourites. Martin cooked an
excellent meal yesterday and is looking Kilos thinner - the sea air and fish
diet clearly do him good provided he stays off oranges.
We have a salt water pump on Intrepid which we increasingly use to rinse off before we wash up - we over-indulged on fresh water early on and need to use less if we are not to start our 80 litre emergency reserve.
We have 460 miles to go which can mean 3.5 days to go so we get in late
Wednesday and get a still bed on Wednesday night at the remote jetty in
Cayenne or could mean
4-5 days if we continue to get adverse currents. Fortunately our
calculations are doing well and we are just starting to get the current that
flows North West along the coast of South America and are ideally positioned
for this so just maybe...........
Have a good weekend
Andy
Sent by satellite phone, www.mailasail.com weblogs/intrepidofdover has our
latest postion and stories