17:15.34N 24:58.23W

Just North of ILHA DE SANTO ANTAO – CAPE VERDES

28.11.10

Wind 8 knots   Direction S to  SSW-

Cloudy

Heading  W

 

Seems just crazy to sail more than 800 miles at about 6 miles an hour ,  sight land , go within touching distance and not go ashore for a beer. Then again you’ve got to be pretty mad to go to sea in a sail boat in the first place!

So on we go -only 2100 NM  left-What was  happening at New Year anyway?

 

Going around North of this Island and sailing presently, all be it light winds in the lee of it. Wind direction will predict our heading over the next few days, as, although weak trade winds are forecast further south they are still a long distance off and not predicted to last that long.

SW winds very strong to gale force North of us with 4 to5 mts waves and swell, so making West quite hard up there for those boats that choose that Northerly route. But it may pay off in the end as its shorter.( I already picked up on SSB communication describing it as a “Washing Machine up here“So at this point we must keep on sailing on this heading, then turn more south when  possible.We saw quite a few boats heading to the Islands for fuel.Fortunately we have large capacity so no need to.

Hope you enjoyed Debs blog, i think she’s eyeing up the bottle already!

We shall see – Nick’s tomorrow

 

 

We spare a thought for you in Blighty with all that snow.It must be the jet stream which is much more South than usual and is affecting us as well ,just in a different way.

 

Guy

 

Just to note that Federico has ,with a report we get daily by email of current ARC boats positions, produced a Fleet Viewer -similar to the ARC website, so we can now see  all the boat position numbers flagged up on a chart on his computer- even Nick is impressed!

 

Oh and Debs has just made a lemon sponge –yummy!