Atlantic Crossing - 1001 types of Wave
Stargazer of Southampton
Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)
Wed 5 Jan 2011 16:32
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05:01.11, 13:50.93N 42:04.68W
Making good progress over last few days - we've
managed to do 160 miles per day - this is good as we usually assume average of
120 to 130.
We have become obsessed by waves, there isn't
really anything else to look at. Before we set off on this part of our
journey I think we expected the trade winds to be steady i.e. little variation
in strengh hour to hour and same for direction, they are steady in that so far
it has always been windy - but vary from 16 to 26 knots within quite short
spaces of time (that's without hitting any squalls or anything), the wind does
also make lots of small direction changes - I suppose all this affects the
Waves.
One minute you have a steady rolling sea with large
widely spaced waves, then for no apparent reason, 10 minutes later - you have
white horses all around and waves coming from all directions. . . then you have
a flat see with hardly anywaves . . . then big rollers appear . . . it goes
on. We have given up questioning the waves (and they never give a sensible
answer anyway) and are concentrating on just riding them. Since we have no
wind vane steering only autopilot we can only tell the boat to steer to a
compass heading - the last few days we have been busy on each of our watches
adjusting the heading for the changing of wind and wave directions, this keeps
us pretty busy but keeps the ride as fast and smooth as possible, even so
- we still have some good bruises.
More kamikaze flying fish removed from the decks
this morning - if you ate fish I am sure they would probably be quite nice on
toast, they are about sardine sized.
The sky is much more cloudy now we are approaching
mid atlantic and we even got rained on today - haven't been rained on since
Madeira while sailing.
We get to eat tinned peaches and bounty bars today
to celebrate 1 week at sea - we know how to live it
up. |