Running South 43:14.1N 20:23.0W
Ellatrout3
Sat 9 Aug 2014 16:25
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Friday 8th August 2014
When we turned South, at 45 degrees
north, Bertha was on the American coast winding herself up to give us
and the UK a nasty surprise. As you know our friends tipped us off
and we spent a beautiful sunny day going backwards. The wind died at
midday and for the next 7 hours motoring south and with no autohelm we had
to take it in turns to steer.
Despite the good weather it was an anxious day knowig that
a tropical storm was coming, and getting stronger AND swinging our way,
passing us at 46 degrees north and not 48 as first predicted. The
storm centre is 5 to 600 miles wide, about 10 degrees of latitude so ideally we
wanted to be 5 degrees south of the centre at about 41 degrees. We did
everything we could to gain as much distance from the centre, motor sailing for
a while before the wind began to pick up and the first signs of Bertha appeared
on the horizon. We started reducing sail, taking reefs, as dusk fell and had a
very disturbed night; Bertha was arriving!
Love Patch, Sarah and Poppa/Dad/Roger
Ps Our computer stopped workig for a while but we seem to
be up and running again, I believe the problem was a corroded USB port.
We've configured another so fingers crossed it keeps going. R
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