Sorry love, Can't stop!

Serendipity
David Caukill
Sun 2 Mar 2014 03:19

Sunday  March 2nd  ,  2014

North Atlantic Ocean ,   5 58.0N 50 48.6W

Today's Blog by David (Time zone: UTC – 3.0)

 

One of the nice things about this boat, (an Oyster 575) is that it is easily driven.   The corollary of which, of course, is that if you don’t reef early,  pretty much before  you first think about it, things can get very bouncy -  very quickly! It does mean, though,  that in the right conditions we cut along quite nicely. 

 

Well, since the current became favourable as  we turned the corner of NE Brazil early on Tuesday morning,  we have been FLYING along - sailing with a conservative sail plan:  2/3 reefs in the main sail, the stay sail and 2/3 reefs in the genoa in 15-20 knots of wind with an apparent wind angle between 60-90 degrees. We have not been pushing it, not at all, but  aided by a 1.0-1.5 knot current running NW along the north coast of South America,  we have made good  1137 miles in five days (227 miles per day). (For the record, in that period,  we have  sailed  938  miles through the water -an average of 187 miles each day – the balance being provided by the current).  True it is not our fastest passage (that was Durban to Cape Town, see Blog 12/12/2013 – Ed) but for sustained sailing over such a long period, it is “Up There”. Our problem now is  that we don’t want to arrive at our destination (Tobago)  at night (because we can’t park) so we will either have to heave-to until dawn, or slow down our rate of progress and arrive in daylight.  

 

Slowing down is hard to do. If we furl away the headsail entirely, we are left with not far off our “storm canvas”.  Even with that set we are averaging 7 knots through the water and 8 over the ground. If we took any more sail in, (actually, in extremis, we can reef the stay sail and there is another reef or two in the main), we would be slopping around all over the place in the swell.

 

I have mused over this problem before – going into Fiji and again through the Great Barrier Reef – and at least this time we have seen the issue early enough to be able to manage it, I think.  But the next three days are going to be pretty dull, unless we catch some FISH!?!

 

Revised ETA Tobago: Wednesday 5th March – a little earlier than expected!

 

All well here.