Not such a good day
Neroli
Charles Tongue
Sun 7 Dec 2008 16:25
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16:37.00N
43:09.00W
Not such a
good day.........
Yesterday
everything seemed to be going so well but, shortly after writing our daily
diary, we found ourselves in the middle of a depression with torrential
downpours and flukey and variable winds. During the afternoon and night the wind
veered through 270 degrees involving numerous sail changes, three spells of
motoring in flat calm and a complete drenching for Neroli's crew.
 Graham at work
on the diary in 'the office'.
At first light
the storm clouds rolled back, the sun came out and once again we were drying the
boat, oilskins clothes etc. We were soon joined by a school of Dolphins and
morale on board improved significantly. The forecast even promises us some
stronger tradewinds from tuesday onwards.
 Sunrise this
morning.
For those who
are not familiar with sailing it is perhaps worth explaining the logic behind
crossing the Atlantic at, what might seem back at home, to be a
rather cold and miserable time of the year. Firstly, of course, it is not cold
down here between the Tropicof Cancer and the Equator. Secondly, for obvious
reasons, it is important to avoid the hurricane season which ends in late
November and thirdly the tradewinds traditionally blow in a NE direction at this
time of the year, blowing sailing boats 'across the pond'. In recent years this
traditional weather pattern has changed and the Azores high which normally
dominates the weather in the North Atlantic has been split by a series of
depressions. This has made it been tricky and testing for us, and has kept
down our daily miles logged. Because we are travelling from East to West we have
to adjust our ship's clocks backwards by one hour for every 15 degrees of
longditude we cross in a westerly direction. We are currently 2 hours behind you
but it will be four hours by the time we reach St Lucia.
Our noon day
run yesterday was 132, still very disappointing, but by midnight tonight , we
should have less than 1,000 miles to the finish in St Lucia. The first of the
bigger yachts are due to arrive today!
Sunday 07.12.08
1630 GMT
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