Blog for today day 48 Thursday 17:02.05N 29:13.53W
Voyage of Wanderingstar
Ben Bonnick
Fri 24 Nov 2017 10:55
Hello all Today started off very frustrating and has ended up being very enjoyable. I'm now sitting in my cockpit, moon shining down, temperature low eighties and a lovely gentle breeze blowing as I write this blog. My frustration earlier in the day was due to lack of progress as I wanted to do an average of 4 knots an hour today giving me 100 miles for the day, but the winds were not in my favour and actually for a large part of the day they have been against me. So what do I do, I put the motor on…….and I was getting hot and the weather was getting hot, then I started to worry that I was burning up too much fuel……. then finally when the wind fcst came it showed the earliest I can expect any meaningful wind is MONDAY!…..I turned the motor off with the realisation that there are powers at play here that I just have to go along with. At this point I had a sleep. I woke up about 2 hours later and decided to work out exactly what the impact of no wind until Monday will have on my progress and meeting my target Antigua arrival date of 15 December (when Lyn arrives). I looked at the chart and took an estimated measure of 1800 mies to go…..(since leaving la Palma I have completed 970 miles). Now, if I assume I only do 1 knot an hour until Monday (the Azores current is 1 knot) its about 100 hours until Monday morning at 10am (when I measure my days from), so that's 100 miles I can take off leaving 1700 miles to go from Monday morning. My average miles a day since leaving la Palma is 88 and it's not exactly been windy so…….1700 miles divided by 88 miles a day is 19 sailing days to go from Monday and including Monday next week.That takes me to exactly the15th December. …and from that point on my day has improved, as have my spirits….I've enjoyed tweaking the sails and learning how to squeeze out that extra 0.25 knot…...and to bring it full circle I’m now sitting out in my cockpit with the moon shinning and the stars out in a lovely temperature and I’m sailing and doing 2.3 knots which I’m delighted with and it's all fantastic….. Sun set earlier today   |