Lat: 37:31.2. N : Long: 042:10.0 W.

Sunday, 15^th June, 2014 – Noon Position, 525 nm to Lajes Marina, Flores in the Azores, North Atlantic.

Dear All,

Wow! What a difference a duvet makes to a night's sleep! Neither Alan nor Nelius could be tempted up early out of their beds this morning. It was way too comfy beneath their warm eiderdowns.

Hence, sorry, but Alan missed sending his midnight email to Chris, to give him the position and speed update he requested for our Met Report today. We got one nonetheless and, although  it did look more positive three hours ago, when we were sailing nicely along, on course, at around 8 knots, we are now having to resort to motor-sailing in a leftover sloppy sea, with not enough real wind to keep the main boom from banging around.

One big problem is that the wind has no real sense of continuous direction or strength to it and so fluctuates up and down widely, making it hard to keep the right sail angles and compass heading combination working well.

So our optimistic outlook (viz. that we might just keep to the East of the High sufficiently to avoid getting swept up in its windless centre and be able to sail all the rest of the way in) now looks like it might have been no more than a pipedream. We'll see. However, it still pays us to try to keep in with keeping as far to the East of the High's movement ESE as we can, so motoring now may well pay dividends later on. We still have 500+ litres diesel left, so, thanks to our earlier sailing speeds and distance covered, we can do this for a while yet before we start to get concerned about shortages.

We could pretend we're purist sailors and just sit around trying to sail the whole way, but the fact is there is a bunch of beautiful islands to visit and explore just a few days ahead of us and there are no prizes to be won for those who sit around out here the longest! Anyway, let's be realistic for a minute, we are all looking forward to that first cold beer in Peter's Cafe Sport Bar when we do get to Horta eventually, too. We are only stopping at Flores first because we want to see the island before we head further East, as it is 140 miles to windward of Horta and is the one we are least likely to get back to later on.

So, all is not too bad in general. We have the leg of lamb defrosting in the cockpit readying for this evening's big Father's Day supper. We have sunshine and a reasonably calm motion, we have warm clothes and warm beds, and we still have some fresh fruit left in our overhead string net hammocks, together with some cabbage, a couple of watermelons and a pineapple to go, from our fresh produce bought in Antigua. The remaining small mangoes are not looking too great and really need Sue's magic skill to turn them into a delicious smoothy, but otherwise things on the food front are still pretty healthy.

A big fish took the whole of our flying fish bait yesterday evening and just left the pink squid lure and hook behind before it took off no doubt laughing with satisfaction at having outwitted us, but, when we pulled in the line later for the night, the whole lure had obviously been taken by something else, but,if it was the same fish come back for another bite, it will have been left with an unpleasant lump in its throat. 

As I write five small, Common Dolphins have just appeared to sport in our bow wave, so this is another sign we are nearing the Azores, as the area is reputed to teem with big sea mammals like Dolphins and Whales.

That's all for now.

Alan and the "Sulana" crew