Bermuda - Azores crossing 39:22.7N 31:09.9W
Lotus
Sat 18 Jun 2011 12:13
Once Ade and Bex arrived the sun came out and the
seas flattened off so whilst they took themselves off to see the highlights of
Bermuda, John and I filled our tanks and went for a
scuba dive. My dive computer battery had died so we had
to borrow a depth gauge from the local dive shop, the owner there was
so helpful; drawing us a map showing the location of the tunnels on
the dive site we were about to do, that we took the opportunity
to book on a boat dive for the following day. I was
a little disappointed with the diving; John however was elated ( he says I must
have been spoiled in the past) the sites had some stunning coral
formations but the fish were a bit scarce and Bermuda does not have the variety
of species like the Caribbean.
After the boat dive we downloaded a new grib file and
decided that we should leave Bermuda for the Azores as soon as possible as the
winds were blowing and it looked like we wouldn't have another window of
opportunity for at least another week. So we got ship shape, waited for
Ade and Bex to get back from their jaunt to the crystal caves and set sail at
8pm.
During the 15 day crossing to the Azores we had decent
wind needing to motor for only 2 days. Most days we saw hundreds
of Portuguese Men of War jellyfish and several loggerhead turtles floating
on the surface; apparently as juveniles they set off from Spain to the Caribbean
on a 5 month journey. I'm glad I'm not a turtle ,as a two week passage
is long enough! We also encountered numerous pods of common dolphins
which came and played on our bow, basking sharks and a pod of 4 Killer
Whales. On one of the 'no wind' days, approximately 400 miles
out from land, we stopped the boat and took turns diving in, we
were in the water for at least 10 seconds! How brave are we?
We had high hopes of success with the fishing rod as Ade
is an experienced 'big game' fisherman (well, he goes fishing now and
again!). In Bermuda Ade bought new lures to attract Marlin, Wahoo and Tuna
but having the big white hunter aboard made no difference as all we caught were
a few tentacles from a dismembered jellyfish.
On one day John decided to check in with an amateur
weather router called 'Herb Hillingberg', this octogenarian has been voluntarily
routing yachts around the Atlantic for decades. He gave us the scare
of our lives when he said that if we carried on sailing North we would
experience storm force winds (over 55 knots of wind with seas up to 15 meters) -
there were several more turtle heads visible for a few minutes. We
downloaded a grib file, called John's brother Gareth for additional information
from the internet and decided to ignore Herbs advise which was to heave to for
36 hours and then to sail south as fast as we could. Only upon our arrival
in Flores did we realize that this advise would have cost us at least 5 extra
days and put us in the middle of strong winds and big seas. All in all and
with hindsight we decided that we'd had a good passage across the Atlantic as
several well found sea worthy boats had taken at least a week longer than us and
had had to spend a week effectively treading water between 42 degrees North and
36 degrees North, without making any easting.
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