Training for home waters
NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Wed 13 May 2009 13:14
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Training for home
Waters?
38:32N 36:57W
13th May 2009
For the last sixteen hours we have been motoring
over a relatively calm sea the greyness of which has merged into the greyness of
the sky. Cloud base has been around five hundred feet at best and the
moments of good visibility have been interspersed with regular periods of heavy
drizzle. Training for UK waters?
The whole boat is damp as the
relative humidity is high and it is impossible not to bring damp clothes
down below. This has been somewhat helped by the heat given off by the
engine. Just to think that it was only a month or so ago that we dreaded
the engine casing getting hot. Now we long for it.
Nevertheless morale is good. When we turned
the engine off this morning for our radio schedule the wind filled in slightly
from the SW, where we have been expecting it from, and we are now sailing on a
broad reach before ten knots of wind. Doing a stately 5.5 knots through
the water we are being helped by nearly a knot of current as we have been all
night. Pre GPS sailors never really knew what the
current was doing but one of the few downsides of the GPS combined with an
accurate log is to tell you whether you are being helped or hindered. For
many this is a big plus of course but for the passagemaker long periods of the
latter are very morale sapping.
The forecast, silly boy that I am to ever believe
them, is for this wind to build and to whisk us the final 273 miles to
Flores. Or as Tennyson puts it 'At Flores in the Azores where Sir
Richard Grenville lay...' one of the bits of poetry that every school boy
knows. It tells us of the battle between the Revenge and a large
Spanish squadron.
I must go, sunshine is coming in through the
cabin windows. I want to see what it is like plus an excited mate has
called to say she can see white horses on the surface of the ocean and I note
the GPS is showing our speed to be nearly seven knots.
Happy times
David
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