St. Helena to Grenada - Day 16
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 28 Jan 2013 14:41
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05:19.220N 43:14.588W
January 28, 2013
Revenge of the sea gods?
We never did the promised equator-crossing sacrifice to the
sea gods. It's not clear why. It's possible we were distracted
by the bad weather, or the higher winds, or bouncy conditions, or bout of
seasickness, or our fast speed, or maybe we just plain fell too far down into
the pit of passage laziness. Whatever the excuse, it didn't happen.
A big mistake. We haven't seen the sun for longer than an hour or two
since crossing the equator five days ago. That's five full days (and
nights) of gray gloom. On top of that, we've had a constant parade of rain
storms, particularly at night. Granted, the rain hasn't brought
particularly high winds (30 knots, tops), and we do like the cleansing effect
the rain has on all of Harmonie's very salty surfaces, but the storms
also often bring an east or southeasterly wind, which causes us to point
north instead of west northwest. Last night we were hounded by a
line of rain stretching ear-to-ear on the radar screen for hours.
Unfortunately, our less than desired sailing speed seemed to match that
of the rain front's progress, so the two of us were stuck
together for a good eight hours. We were pointed north for a good part of
that time, which eventually would have taken us several hundred miles to
the east of Newfoundland had we continued on that way for another
month. The rain also likes to play hide-and-seek with the wind, which is
equally annoying as the light wind causes our speed to plummet,
leaving Harmonie prone to the will of the waves and sometimes negative
current.
Of course, the real reason we find all this bad
weather so irritating is because it's messing with our predicted arrival
time in Grenada. Having just published (and bragged about) our stellar
progress, and boasted that we were on track to beat our total passage
time estimate by one day, we are now perilously close to recanting that
boast. How embarrassing.
As the Zulu would say, 'I'm tell'n you man! I'm tell'n
you!' it's the sea gods!
(Even after all our whining, progress for the past 24 hours
wasn't really all that bad at 180 miles. It's just that we love to brag
about 200 mile days and the rain last night robbed us of that opportunity.
Woe is us!)
2,580 miles down, 1,170 miles to go.
Anne
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