Atlantic crossing from Bermuda 15.
Thisbe
Sat 16 Jun 2007 20:22
|
Saturday 16th June. 4.30pm.
By dawn today
the weather had settled down. Still a brisk wind from the North but
the cross seas smaller so not making our Easterly course to
uncomfortable The odd bunch of big waves seeming to wait until coffee or food
preparation time. For the last few days we have been moving along the 38th
parallel of latitude on which the Azores
lie.
Twenty four
hour run till 8am this morning 155 miles. Quite a comfortable day
today, reading, chatting and fishing of course. Helped Sue to
resurrect a frozen meal she had prepared before leaving
Bermuda, together with a potato and tomato salad it made a very nice lunch.
Most went down throats but some onto laps unfortunately. The weather
forecast from the Gribfiles which we downloaded yesterday were wildly inaccurate
as usual. The low moving slowly north a long way behind us, which
has been responsible for our good run, can be seen on the diagrams we
downloaded before leaving Bermuda.(Gribfiles are a diagrammatic description of
expected wind direction and strength over a wide area of the ocean). The
forecast for the last 24 hours told us to expect a windshift to the south
west which didn't happen.
We have been
making our navigational decisions based on Gribfile
predictions
which, apart from the low predicted at the
start, turned out to be nonsense nine time out of ten. 117
miles to the Azores, weather permitting we should make it
comfortably by noon tomorrow. The skipper is still looking for a
chance to go over the side for a look at the prop. The autopilot still goes on
the blink from time to time despite having tightened up some slop around
the rams. Nothing else to report, still no fish. Tomorrow this time
hopefully tied up alongside. Manny
|