17:23.8N 23:50.2W
Lanzarote to Mindelo. Day 8. Sunday 5th February 2023. Noon GMT report. We had a reasonable night last night. The wind and swell was within tolerance – except it wasn’t the lovely conditions normally expected for this passage, but the whole year has been a little odd with sailing weather patterns. This morning saw a cauldron of a sea. It’s still with us. The latest grib showing stronger winds than we’d like and stronger still to both the east and west (good job we’re not going there). We’ve been in up to 5 metre seas, with a period as short as 5 seconds; every few waves, there’s a cross set of swell that really pushes Stargazer over. Clipping on is essential – and we do! We’ve managed to set pretty much the maximum reef on the poled out genoa. This took about 10 minutes, vs about 20 seconds in, say, normal Solent conditions. It looks like we can’t slow Stargazer down too much more – it wouldn’t be sensible anyway in this swell. So it looks like we might be a bit early for the Sao Vicente channel, which is our approach to Mindelo. If we are early (pre-dawn) then the only thing is to head on through the channel, fully reefed, and stooge around in the harbour seeing what we can see. At least we’ll be sheltered from the swell and most of the wind. We’ll just finish by saying that Stargazer is fine and taking the seas well, we’re doing pretty well ourselves but this is pretty tough going by anyone’s standards. Must dash, we have to be on deck… We’ll report in from Mindelo. Andy & Jo |