Lookin for the wind shift
Wallace's Sailing Adventure on "Arbella"
Mike and Vicki Wallace
Mon 4 Nov 2013 05:01
enter Monday. Conditions are acceptable, BUT we are looking for the wind
shift which will allow us to sail more south. We expected the wind to start
shifting to out of the southwest and west tonight but we are not seeing
much yet. We are basically sailing straight southeast. In the end this
will not be too bad as we hope to end with the trade winds coming out of the
northeast and east carrying us into the BVI's...but we are anxious to see
the shift! We are heeled over a steady 25-30 degrees, so getting around the
boat is tiring, and since we still take spray into the cockpit occasionally,
we huddle under the dodger when topside....both effects make the boat feel
smaller. For dinner, we placed our orders at 'Caps Burger King' ... it was
'have it your way' burger night! A little oceanography for those
interested....we are in an area, east of Bermuda, where the ocean bottom
looks like the foothills of Denver with the deepest being about 5,000
meters, and scattered peaks defined by a depth of 2-3,000 meters....so we
have underwater mountains about 9,000 feet high. These are all called
'seamounts' and they have individual names like: Muir Seamount, Nashville
Seamount, Kelvin Seamount, New England Seamount, Rehoboth Seamount, and
more. A very large area surrounding Bermuda is call the North American
Basin, and Bermuda pokes up as part of the 'Bermuda Rise'. So, while it is
a big ocean, the peaks and valleys are named, much as they are in Colorado
moving from the flat plateau of Denver into the Rocky Mountains. The depth
here is pretty much consistently about 5,000 meters or 15,000 feet. Near
the BVI's we will go over parts of the 'Puerto Rico Trench' where the depth
is about 7,700 meters, or 23,100 feet!