The blocking "low"
Persephone... Cruiser/Racer
Nigel & Karen Goodhew...
Thu 5 Jan 2017 11:26
This year, the Azores high has been replaced by a Madeira low! All the wind systems are being reversed. Southerlies and south easterlies blow in the straits of Gibraltar, and here in the Canaries, we have south westerlies. To the south, between the Canaries and the Cape Verdes, is a great big area of no wind, the normal winds being arrested by the anticlockwise flow around our predominant Atlantic feature in or near Madeira. And the darned thing will neither move or fill.
We are therefore delayed. We do, of course, have the option to sail off into the low, by heading north west to where there is wind, but the models show that we cannot sail around the top of the low without going way off course, almost to Bermuda and we will have rough weather, rain and big seas. If we go south, we have lighter winds, no wind in 3 days time and the dead patch is so big, we cannot carry enough diesel to motor through it....some 750 miles! And we will still have big waves, emanating from the windy low.
So we wait! The forecasts are tantalisingly attractive in a few days time, but then they have been good next week for the last 2 weeks. The computer models seem to be impregnated with innate optimism that normality will prevail- just not yet.
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