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