Lat: 35:41.3. N : Long: 048:38.8 W.

Friday, 13^th June, 2014 – Noon Position, 850 nm to Lajes Marina, Flores in the Azores, North Atlantic.

Dear All,

Friday 13th. An suspicious date for anybody, but a real testing time for us, as we are still (just) hanging on to the tail end of the Low whose winds we sought to get to blow us Eastwards across the Atlantic to the Azores. The problem is these winds, being on the tail end, are of a very fluky and fickle nature. Sometimes we have too much sail up, sometimes too little; sometimes we are hard on the wind, struggling for speed and to maintain momentum in the sloppy sea condition, sometimes we are fast close reaching again, at good speed.

However, the over-riding factor is that all these changes keep on happening at varying intervals, but often only minutes apart, so the guy on watch has to keep on adjusting the sails and altering sheets and shaking reefs in and out.

There is no peaceful lying around in the cockpit, just keeping an artful eye open for shipping and whales (none of those seen yet!) whilst reading one's book.Oh no, Sir! We have to keep on jumping up and adjusting stuff all the time. And this has been happening now since before midnight last night, so the aft cabin was not a good place to try to get to sleep........

Squeak! Creak! as the genoa sheet gets eased! Whirring and grinding of winches, as the sheet gets pulled back in two minutes later; flapping of sails as the reef gets taken in, followed by a greater angle of heel forcing one harder into the leecloth one is trying to rest in. Then, to cap it all, Bang! goes the fridge door, as the on-watch decides enough is enough and goes for a quick midnight snack.....hunting for the milk, to make a coffe or tea, to go with his bowl of noodles.

It's all a bit of a challenge, but at least we are maintaing a good average speed, as we had hoped. We are not burning diesel and we hope to continue hanging onto the shirt tails of this Low for at least another day, maybe a day and a half, before it peters out and deserts us.....

So our ETA in the Azores is now only 4-5 days away, making a 13/14 day passage for us a likely possible/probable.

In the meantime, in order to keep up with Will, who has done a fair bit of excellent cooking and food preparation so far, Jason cooked us a super, spicy, chorizo, cabbage and potato soup/stew last night for supper, which went down very well. Nelius, not to be outdone, has got his first breadmaker loaf rising nicely just in time for a late lunch, so we are all waiting with tongues hanging out, drooling like Pavlov's dogs! We didn't fuss about any little black bits in the flour, as weevils are a well-accepted part of shipboard life, aren't they!

A slice of fresh warm bread will be just the thing to take our minds off the fact our bare toes are getting colder in the daytime now, too! It seems ridiculous to even be considering wearing long trousers and socks and shoes, but the fact  is both Nelius and Jason have now taken to wearing their 'beanie' hats at night, for warmth......

The sextant sight taking has reached new peaks, with our first star and planet sights being shot last night at twilight, including Jupiter, as it set towards the West on our port aft quarter and an almost completely full moon as it rose in the East. Will had a little trouble finding the first star in his scope, but once a good one of some magnitude of brightness had been found over our port bow, it was quickly shot and reckoned to be Deneb. Three sights were taken, including Arcturus, as there was a fair bit of cloud about, but we are now awaiting the final calculations to be completed, as these are fairly long-winded to do, but, as well as providing Will with some personal satisfaction, will also help check our Dead Reckoning positional plots.

Notwithstanding that Jason just got to withhin a half mile of current GPS position on his Noon sight, which was, surprisingly, only a minute or two away from the calculated Local Noon time. It was never that close when we were on the Equator, crossing the Pacific!

On matters of personal hygiene, we need to run the watermaker again today, to refill our water tank, but. more importantly, we all, probably, need to use some for a shower and then today's our laundry day to change the bed sheets!

Pity, but it seems we will just be missing meeting up again with our good friends, Roberta and Stephan, on their Oyster 62," Luna of London", as they plan to depart the Azores, bound for Sardinia today.

Sadly we will also be missing the fabulous launching party at Ipswich of Leo & Karin's beautiful new Oyster 625, "Bubbles", but Sue is standing in for me there.

We wish Leo, Karin and Subhir many, many happy sea miles safe sailing on her and hope to meet up again somewhere in the not-too-distant future.

May you always have at least a handsbreadth water under your keel and a full gin & tonic glass, complete with ice made by your super solar panel bimini top!

Yours Aye!

That's all for now, folks, so Adios from "Sulana".