Dec.5 Brian 18:26.703N 031:29.308W

Erasmos
Ron Stubbington
Sat 5 Dec 2009 12:25
Hello Everyone,
 
Ron is on watch, Kevin is catching some sleep, the bread is rising before going into the oven. It has been a busy morning, 11:20 UTC right now. Voncouver and Victoria minus 8 hours, so 3:20 am  PST.
 
This morning after breakfast, (oatmeal and canned tuna for the brave) I calculated our new Great Ciircle track  to our  initial arrival point in the center of the channel separating St. Lucia and Martinique. There was 1717 nm remaining to that waypoint and another 19 nm to the dock in Rodney Bay.  The dilema that we have as sailors is the direct track to the initial arrival fix is  280 degrees magnetic. The wind has been quite steady at 060 from the NE since we left the Cape Verde Islands. Our point of sail to this wind has been 310 degrees magnetic, occasionally we can get down to 290 magnetic. This makes our track made good further north that we want and our daily mileage not directly at the initial arrival fix. We are making good boat speed through the water and advancing to the west at a steady rate. We will deal with the deviance from our desired track (280M) and our actual track (310M) in either of two ways or a combination of the two.
 
First as we are still quite far east we will continue to West by the current point of sail. Looking at the North Atlantic Pilot Chart (this chart shows the wind speed and direction for this sector of ocean over a considerable period of time) for December, we can see the average wind will begin to back to a more easterly direction for  a higher percentage of time. This will enable us to change our heading to one more favourable direction to our destination. The second  way to deal with the the deviance is to sail as we are and when necessary to sail a corrector tack to effect a correction to our northerly bias.
 
The noon day fix that you see on the header is supplied to ARC control and plotted on our Mercator Projection Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean, Southern Part. We are currently sailing over the Cape Verde Abyssal Plain, 385 nm  West of Porto Grande, Cape Verde Islands. The other factor affecting our progress will be the North Equatorial Current which varies from .5  increasing to 1.5 kts  along our track, and on our  tail.
 
Last night for dinner we had fresh pan fried Mahi Mahi on Curry Rice with chopped cabbage. Tonight it is chili  as we clean up the last of the bell peppers or Caspiams as Kevin calls them. The tangerines and apples are doing well and we still have 25 to 30 firm tomatoes,  lots of onions and loads of garlic. Life is good aboard Erasmos.
 
Cheers
The crew of Erasmos.