Theres no F in whales

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sun 6 May 2012 15:25
26:12.5N 69:16.6W

Sunday 6th May

Saturday stayed pretty flat with 10 knots of wind frustratingly coming from
the north which forced us to sail rather further west than we had hoped.

Overnight this light wind vanished altogether and we have been motoring
across an incredibly flat Med style sea. Perfect for spotting wales, but so
far they have remained elusive. We were joined briefly by some Atlantic
Spotted dolphins (or were they Pantropical Spotted Dolphin - the jury is
out), but they seemed pretty disinterested and headed off rather sooner than
we had hoped! A Tropic Bird fluttered around the boat - Sarah is
constantly amazed that these seemingly inefficient fliers could be 300 miles
away from land.

Stunning sunsets and sunrises and doubtless we will be posting our attempts
to capture these on camera, on the website once we reach the USA.

Forecast has the wind building this afternoon and by tonight we may well be
back in 20+ knots with 30 knot gusts. Overall the next few days will be
pretty trying as these fronts go over as we have been told to expect lots of
wind and a load of big wind shifts to keep us on our toes, with the peak
coming on Wednesday evening.

The key point though about the forecasting is that we must not reach the
point where we plan to cross the Gulf Stream until Friday morning. The
weather forecast currently shows that the conditions in the stream at our
crossing point will be wholly untenable until Friday.The Gulf Stream rushes
north at at least 2.5 knots and if there is a northerly wind blowing against
it, it creates huge and dangerous waves; with a southerly wind it is more
of a sleigh ride! That is fine, but this is also a small window of
opportunity because having crossed the gulf stream, we still have several
hundred miles to sail until we are safely in the Chesapeake, including
rounding the notorious Cape Hatteras. It seems that we HAVE to be beyond
there and in the Chesapeake by Monday afternoon, or we are in big trouble
from the next big weather front. Should all work out fine, but it is
certainly a good deal more complicated than simply sailing across the
Atlantic!

It may be that these logs 'dry up'for a while if conditions become
unpleasant, but we will at least try to put our poistion up if we can.

Many thanks to those who have been emailing us so far. It helps a lot to
know you are out there.

To those in the UK, we hope that your weather improves - I gather that you
are experiencing the wettest drought since records began.....