Sunday 28th June 2015 44:21N; 17:5W

Scherzo AZAB 2015
Eddy
Sun 28 Jun 2015 18:24
Such good progress yesterday afternoon, but followed by the expected lull.  At one point we were bobbing around with no wind in seas left over from a brisk afternoon - and becoming irritable and unable to sleep because of the violent motion of the boat and the frapping and flogging of the sails.  Still, at 3 in the morning we were able to put up the light coloured genoa and Harriet managed to find some wind to beat into - and we settled down and made steady but very slow progress to the North for the rest of the night.  Now we have 8 knots of wind.  This is what you might expect to ripple through your hair on a good ‘travelator' in an airport or when running for the bus.  Incidentally, my hair is getting so long that i can sense the wind with ease.  We are moving in roughly the right direction (of the Faeroes) in the company of ‘Yenda', a J109, being sailed single handed.  Lots of tweaking of sails to keep ahead.

We were in a sea fret all night and then it has rained all day with pretty poor visibility.  We haven’t seen anything with the naked eye - but actually we haven’t (other then Moby Dick) since Sao Miguel.  It’s a big ocean and the only way you know someone is out there is by AIS (a fantastic system using VHF radio waves that plots the position of all boats within radio range - normally about 10 to 20 miles- it means you can make small alterations to course to avoid getting close to other shipping and they to you many miles away.  For instance I know Yenda is there to our South, as i know there is a tanker 36 miles away to the East heading in this direction at 17 knots, but likely to miss us by 3 miles in about 90 minutes.)  God help you now if you don’t transmit AIS, because it is impossible to see another boat in this visibility until you are upon her.

We are approaching the famous crease in the chart that signifies that one can see journey’s end on one page.  Within a few hours we can turn it over and be focused on making a land fall.

We have made an inventory of the fruit and veg basket and are pleased to find a couple of extras we had overlooked - so still tomatoes, cabbages, apples, rather black bananas, peaches, pears, Azorean grown pineapple, onions, garlic, aubergine (slightly manky) and courgettes (also on the turn.) Harriet making a ratatouille for supper today.  Lunch was mushrooms on fusilli with parsley and a home made fruit salad with a showing of many of the above.


Sophisticated charting software...



Daddy, Mop-head and whiskers: