Averages
Karinya
Tim And Vicki Schofield, Captain Cal 7 and Jess 4
Sat 27 Nov 2010 09:49
For those of you who are not sailors, we should be sailing (under sail) in
the "guaranteed" trade winds.
In between bouts of sanity I have consulted the pilot charts. What these
are, are the wind direction/speed/calms etc recorded by sailors since the
beginning of time. Well close enough, you get the picture. Now if you look
at November pilot charts you will see that 66% of the time the wind should
be NE at 20 kts, North 18% East 15% and the other 1% NE, SE, S,W, NW. There
is also a chance of 1 calm day (no wind day). These are fantastic figures
and sailors have counted on these averages for centuries.
Now the problem with averages is:
IT'S LIKE HAVING 1 FOOT IN A BUCKET OF ICE AT -45 THE OTHER FOOT IN A BUCKET
OF HOT WATER AT + 80. IT WONT BE VERY COMFORTABLE BUT ......THE AVERAGE IS A
VERY PLEASANT 35 DEGREES
So what's happened out here is a matter of survival, if you look on the ARC
website the Average time of arrival in St Lucia (yes that word again) is
late Dec/early Jan! The 1 calm day in November has happened, the wind has
generally been from the N and E side but so light you can hardly sail it. So
back to that word average, if we want to keep the stats going, it's got to
blow about 100kts for the rest of this month (thats not a good thing by the
way). From the weather forecast it looks like the wind speed will pick up to
about 30kts, but from the SE which shares 1% of the time with 4 other
directions.
Now the problem with this (not that anyone is complaining) that's the way we
going!!!
Quite a few boats have pulled into...or going to pull into Cape Verde to get
more diesel so they can make it across. Others like us are motoring on 1
engine to try preserve fuel in case the winds don't come. Others are sitting
and bobbing hence the ETA being January for a lot.
Yes the racing boats took the high latitudes and seem to be doing ok, but in
the trades its despair.
As far as we concerned the Race is over, its now a matter of balancing
speed, diesel, direction and wind to get to St Lucia this year. We should
arrive around the 12th of December, but that may be the glass half full!
All our everlasting (like this crossing) love