Day
1
So
we’re finally heading back to the UK! Quite exiting, but
weather wise we have to take a long way round for a short cut! At least it
looks like the seas won’t be too bad. So far so good!
To
get into westerly winds we have to head well north of the rumb line for a
couple of days to get on the north side of a long ridge of high pressure
stretching from the Azores to the Bay of Biscay.
Even then, we will have to keep going NNE for another 3 days to about 50N
before we can finally swing east, for the final 4 days to Plymouth. There is no wind in the middle of
the ridge and adverse wind south of it. We picked our departure time so
that we could make the most of a brief zone of westerly winds near the Azores, knowing that they would die out after a day and
leave us with no wind that we would have to motor through. For the first 18
hours of the passage we had stronger winds than forecast from the WNW and made
good speed until the wind dropped and went to the north at around 1.30am. So
now we are motor sailing north in a dying breeze. We have to keep heading
north for another day then the gribs are showing the wind turning to the
west/north-west so we should be able to sail again and start to head in a
better direction.
Not
seen any wildlife – even birds are few and far between but as always we
get the feeling that there’s something just lurking beneath the
surface! A couple of large ships have passed within sight of us but
that’s it.
Position
21 July 06.30 GMT: 041:13:6112N 027:15:4311W
24
hour distance: 161 miles