Sunday 28^th November – 230 miles North West Cape Verde’s

The more observant of you may have noticed a slight abnormality in our track line between 18.00 and 20.00 last night. I contemplated explaining it with complicated algorithm of vectors, meteorology and nautical lore. Unfortunately even I couldn’t think up a feasible story. The truth is I can’t begin to explain what was really going on. As we left the North West corner of the Cape Verde’s, the wind died and veered, forcing us to sheet in the sails and sail close hauled on a starboard tack  turning North West to maintain momentum. We were at that point, almost sailing back in the direction from which we had come.

Shaya Moya will comfortably tack through 55 degrees either side of the wind and a sensible option was to tack and this should have returned us to our original course on the opposite tack. With the tack complete we were heading in the exact reciprocal of our recent course, i.e. we had turned through 180 degrees . I put this down to an unusually large wind shift during the tack, which I have experienced before although not usually to this extent. At this point I sensed the skipper looking at me through the corner of his eye wondering what the eejit on the helm was doing. I allowed the yacht to settle again which takes a while with a heavy yacht and only 4 kts of wind. I was fairly tired at the time so began to check and double check my logic, it all reconciled. To save my reputation as a mariner, I conferred with Don and suggested “we” try again, which we did. In these situations when things appear to be going wrong, I find it’s always best to share the authority for decisions making! The long and the short of it is, we tacked twice more and each time ended up heading in the opposite direction. Some hours later we ended up crossing our original track line several miles behind the point from whence we had started. Between us we have a few sea miles under our belts, but collectively we had not a clue what had just happened.

On my personal “weird shit O’life” meter this is well up the scale. However when you consider we are in the Atlantic Ocean where weird stuff happens, it’s probably not that odd. For instance, yesterday I washed and ironed some clothes, definately unusual? possibly Possibly weird? The skipper makes me drink non alchahol beer and then gives good quality rum to dead fish, definitely weird?

One of the weirdest things out here though, and I gave this some thought yesterday afternoon whilst we were wallowing around with no wind, are the flying fish. Now I understand the only time they attempt to fly is when they are being pursued by something that wants to eat them. I would have imagined the scaly little beggars have developed a degree of prowess manoeuvring in the wet stuff, so why fly? My thoughts are that if you were being chased by a Lion intent on getting himself on the outside of you, you would probably just peg it using any tried and tested method of propulsion. It’s highly unlikely that you would choose this time to start flapping your arms trying to master an element normally alien to you. See what I mean, weird!

So, overnight the wind freshened and behaved in a reasonably predictable fashion. We are currently storming along at 8-9 kts in 23 kts of wind on a heading of 285 T which is backing and giving us an occasional look west  towards our destination. The ARC is supposed to consist of 90% down wind sailing. What are we doing beating to windward? The forecast for the next 48 hours is very much the same and it could be a tough run for a while. The swell is up to 8m and the wave pattern has become quite choppy. Not sure how the rest of the fleet are fairing, there was talk on the radio last night of a wind hole South East of the Verde’s and I know a number of yachts have taken that route. I wouldn’t like to be stuck there hearing  that yachts further North are flying.

I don’t think there will be any gastronomic extravagancies tonight as the galley resembles the inside of a washing machine.Sandwiches all round me thinks. Don is trying to fix a small leak in the forward cabin, it looks to be like working inside a cocktail shaker in 40 degrees of heat, what fun. No pics with this one.

All the crew  and Skipper are well.

First Mate

Dave