Transat Day 14 - 7th December 2008 - easy sailing
Position: 15:51:50N
40:40:20W Transat Day 14 We’ve had an easy 24hrs, with
10-15kts and calm seas. Winds
mainly from ESE, but this morning they backed round to SSE and we’ve actually
taken the pole down and are 3-sail reaching – a rarity. Since early morning, we’ve been dodging
nasty rainclouds, using the radar to track the cloudbursts. The rainclouds are weird in that they
stay stationary relative to the gradient wind, so you have to be careful and
watch even the ones that are downwind. Despite the wind not blowing more
than 15kts, we’ve done 131M in the last 24hrs, which is respectable. We appear to have covered 132M over the
ground as well, which is better than the last few days, where we appear to have
had some current against us. It is
odd – the North Atlantic Passage chart indicates we should have ½ to 1½ kts of
favourable current , and we’ve just not had that, since we left. Given this current is supposed to form
part of the North Atlantic rotation, with the We had a flying fish land in the
cockpit in the night – quite impressive aim, to make it over the top of the
guardrails, and below the cockpit roof.
The first we knew was something sounding like, well, I suppose a wet fish
flapping on the floor! It was
quickly dispatched from whence it came – what a story to tell its mates! I am waiting to catch a flying fish mk2
– these are the ones that can navigate straight into a frying pan and bring
their own little slab of butter and herbs… Sally’s just done our first
pirhouette of the trip – wind’s all over the place. Sounds like we might need to set loose
the 40 horses that live below the cockpit sole… Hope all’s
well Ollie
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