Fw: Position Update N30:09.21 W43:34.53
PASSEPARTOUT
Christopher & Nirit Slaney
Sat 5 May 2012 20:14
Saturday morning and day eleven of our crossing. We are
still heading due east and will probably stay like this for the coming few days.
The day began with the usual routine; but today being a Saturday we treated
ourselves to fresh pineapple for breakfast. When you have four people on board
you never become really tired as each one only stands a two and a half hour
watch every night. This morning we have finally moved the clock one hour
forward, this will bring sunset and daybreak more into line with what seems
reasonable - dawn was at 3 a.m. before we moved the clock!
Next part of the routine, Shmulik cast his bait out
before even having coffee. He was in luck, day eleven brought us a big Mahi-Mahi
as predicted by our friend Phil O'Loughlin in a previous e-mail. Once the fish
was on board Shmulik gave Yaeli a lesson in pelagic anatomy and I must say she
watched bravely as the catch was dissected and seemed to be listening
attentively. We have already had MahimMahi sashimi for lunch, it will be fish
steaks for dinner and plenty more to in the freezer. Landing and cleaning a fish on board is a messy job but surely
worth the effort. After the fillets were safely in the bottom of the freezer
Shmulik had to be stopped from casting out another line.
The routine also includes hand steering for an hour in
the morning and again in the afternoon. This way each one of us steers two hours
daily in order to give the autohelm and the batteries a break.
Since lunch we have been sailing through sheets if rain
and rapidly changing winds. This seems to be a warm front passing over
us with the message that there's more wind to come in the next twenty four
hours, the barometer has sunk steadily to 1008 Mb. We have reduced sail but now
have trouble holding our easterly course. Every fifteen minutes or so we switch
between large and small headsails and get soaking wet in the process. If this is
the warm front then it's at least twenty four hours ahead of the forecast,
not a bad thing as we were worried the passage of this low would
delay our course change in the direction of the Azores until Wednesday at the
earliest. Chris is about to download some fresh weather data from the
satellite and we'll maybe have a better idea of where things
stand.
No more trade wind clouds and no more north
easterly breezes, there's still plenty of seaweed about - a variety known
as Sargasso Weed - we've checked and it's not at all tasty. As we are moving
along latitude 30 North the weather is still quite mild but Horta in the Azores
is at 38 North so we sill have some distance to go, probably around 400 nautical
miles from the point where we will hopefully change course. As for longitude, we
set out from St Maarten at 62 west and Horta lies at 28 west, so
still have to cover quite some distance eastward. If we were able to sail
a direct course to Horta we would have less than 900 miles to go, but not
knowing where and when we can turn north is likely to stretch this out some
more.
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