Day 3 - Azores to Dartmouth
Talulah's Web Diary
Paul & Anette Morris
Wed 18 Jun 2008 12:13
Noon, 18th June 2008
Yesterday was pretty horrible, with wind Force 7 and gusting 8's on a rough sea. But by late in the evening, and just after a torrential downpour, it had died down and the wind had veered and dropped, and we shook out all the reefs in both mainsail and jib. However we stayed very wet until early this morning when the dawn brought with it a dank, unsure start to the day, and a weak sun rose above the horizon. The weather promises to be a mixed bag for the next few days - judging from the fax and grib files we receive over the SSB radio.
Although the charts tell us that the North Atlantic Current should be helping us East; we seem to get pulled and then pushed in all directions by different ocean currents at various speeds of up to around a knot. It may be the effect of the numerous weather systems prevalent now in the Atlantic. It would be nice one day to 'work them' all - if that's possible?
In yesterday's weather, we got such a bashing that the PC decided to switch itself off, then re-boot itself on several occasions, and in the process lost some vital settings for the Weather Fax Meteo program. To say we were not pleased is a bit of an understatement!, but after a couple of hours I managed to reinstall the missing data and it 'seems' to be working OK now.
A large ship (first in 3 days!), passed us by at 4.30 a.m. this morning. I saw it's lights about 7 miles away and then watched it on the radar as it got closer, eventually passing us just over 2 miles away. The frightening thing was that at about 2 miles, all its lights went off, and although I could see it on the radar screen, it was invisible to the naked eye. Whether that was poor visibility, or the ship actually switched the lights off, or the angle of sight was an issue, or what, I don't know. But I'm going to keep the radar on "Alarm Watch" at night now for the rest of this trip - especially as we get closer to the main shipping lanes.
Anette is baking today - Yahoo! fresh bread and cake for tea!!
143 miles covered in the last 24 hours, and only 817 to the 'Lizard' now.
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