Slim Quick Serafina weightloss plan

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Wed 13 Nov 2013 16:25
26:29.24N 65:40.49W

Probably Wednesday 13th Nov or thereabouts.


I remember being told once that they only invented weather forecasters in
order to make economists look good.

So the good news is that we are still going strong, in fact right now we are
flying along at 8 knots heading south west under a clear blue sky, but the
less good news is that we will miss the BVI's by around 450 miles on this
course! But ocean sailing is not an exact art and near enough is sort of OK.
We have a plan and it relies on the NE trade winds kicking in on Thursday
evening - but let's go back a bit first......

Monday night was pretty good by our new standards and we sailed pretty
quickly in only moderately bad seas although there was one helluva
thunderstorm downwind of us flashing away for 4 hours, but by dawn we were
no longer in touch with any of the yachts we had talked to the day before.
However we had a new 'best friend' in the 43 cat 'Blue Sky' who were only a
few miles behind us and another unknown yacht ahead and slightly downwind of
us.

The skies however were grey and dominated by monstrous towering black clouds
and there was no doubt that these beomouths pressaged nothing good. We
tracked huge squalls driven on by the 20 knots SW wind using radar and it
was around 0900 hours that the first of these engulfed us. The rain was
monsoon like and the wind sent the wind gauge spinning as it climbed rapidly
to 35 knots across the decks. Visibility was down to 50 yards at best and
being over canvassed we had to bear away a bit and run before the wind to
reduce its healing (tipping) effect. Not really a problem in open ocean
normally, but we had this other yacht sitting almost directly on our line of
flight. So since Sarah was still off watch and being tossed around on the
trampoline we used to call our berth, I had to stick my head out into the
elements constantly to scan for any sign of the yacht ahead of us.

A lifetime later (possibly closer to 45 minutes) the rain began to ease and
the wind dropped a few knots and Sarah came up on deck and we hove too and
reduced sail. Now we were able to continue under more controlled
circumstances, but the seas resembled the confused vortex you see in the
heart of a Dyson vacuum cleaner! The SW wind was buiding an impresive set of
marching waves which were colliding with the standard big Atlantic rollers
that were running with the ocean stream up from the SE. Very messy indeed
and it excuses (I hope) why there was not a full blog yesterday.

Tuesday continued to give us the SW winds at 20 knots all day, but the big
threatening squalls all seemed to pass either in front of behind us for the
time being. We made great speed though and despite Serafina alternating
between launching off the tops of some waves and driving semi-submerged
through others we covered a lot of useful miles South and East. It was
during the afternoon that Sarah discovered that a large bottle of detergent
had split under the aft heads sink and the soapy soloution was making its
way into the bilges. She managed to clean up a lots of this, but I expect we
will froth a bit when we come to empty the bilges later!!

In the early evening as darkness fell, Blue Sky called us on the VHF to give
us the latest update from our weather routing service and we were looking
forward to hearing that it was at last all behind us now and we could expect
a couple of days of light and variable winds before the Trades kicked in.
Well it is what we were told yesterday.

The news was a bit grimmer sadly. There is a trough lying south of us and
this is now spinning off squalls that we should expect to hit us with heavy
rain and sustained winds of 30 knots with gusts up to 40 and potentially 50
knots. And to help things along as we speed southwards, this trough is
moving north to meet us.

So the three options we faced were:
1. Reef right down, sacrifice speed and distance so that we can take the
squalls and ride them out in some semi-organised manner.
2. Sail on into the night keeping our normal 4 hour watch system between the
two of us, but drag the off-watch one up on deck everytime a squall
threatened so as to reef the sails down each time.
3. Summon up a sense of complete conviction and belief and shout into the
night sky, "Beam me up Scottie."

I am here to tell you that option three failed, so we adopted option one of
course as the second best. As it turned out we had a pretty good night and
only two squalls hit us and neither of them had any real power or wind in
the event. Any numer of bigger and nastier looking sqalls again passed ahead
and behind us which was a relief all round. Sadly the seas were still no
better and by this morning (Wednesday) we are being thrown around possibly
more than before although a good deal less dramatic than a few days a ago
(was it really only a few days ago?).

So this morning at 0800 hours the nice folks on Blue Sky called again to
give us the weather update. Please God, this is dying away and a day or so
of light and variable before the Trades.....

Come on, what did you expect? Stephen King could be a good novelist if he
any imagination! There is a deep low forming to the north of us (behind us)
and the forecaster (Chris Parker) is worried (he is worried!!!) that this
will stall the trough we are in and send the sqalls back southwards and over
us again. But he promises that the Trades will blow from the NE starting
Thursday evening - Oh yes and the cheque is in the post.....

So we are faced with another 36 hours of this maelstrom which makes the
heart sink (how far can a heart sink before it hits the floor?) so all
together now: BEAM US UP SCOTTIE.