Lanzarote to Grenada, day 17
Stravaig'n the Blue
Tue 26 Jan 2021 21:00
Position timestamp: Tuesday 26 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC-3
Distance travelled last 24 hours: 148 NM
Reduction in distance to destination last 24 hours: 142 NM
Distance travelled total: 2548 NM
Average speed since departure: 6.2 knots
Shortest distance to destination: 607 NM
ETA based on shortest distance and average speed so far: noon, Saturday 30 January (21 days in total)
For the last three days, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, the winds have been light, 8-10 knots during the day and 12-14 overnight. Sailing has been sedate but progress has been modest, and not helped by the seaweed. The upside has been not needing to reduce sail area before sunset and, likewise, not increase it just after breakfast - the Blue Water Runner has been out for days. The downside, had we stayed in the light winds, would have been our arrival being pushed back to Sunday.
The forecast indicated stronger winds to the south so we have tracked 15 to 20 degrees below the straight line to Grenada for the last three days and were rewarded with 17-19 knots towards midnight on Monday. The wind has held up well throughout today and, assuming this continues, which it is forecast to do, we should arrive in daylight on Saturday. The quarantine anchorage at St George’s doesn’t look difficult to locate or navigate into but, having never been there before, we’d much rather do it in daylight.
The seaweed has been with us for another two days! There was a brief respite on Sunday afternoon, just long enough to hook a mahi mahi. And then it was back, much less dense than before but in sufficient quantities to clog the rudders, making steering hard work, and cause serious disruption to our hydro-electricity generation (down 70%). We motored for a couple of hours to top up the batteries yesterday evening and will do so again this evening.
The reference to Nelson’s column and elephants in the Day 15 post is to mock certain British newspapers which, when they believe their readers won’t be able to grasp the magnitude of something expressed in regular units (miles, metres, kilograms, etc), turn to obscure and arbitrary measures such at Nelson’s columns (height), elephants (weight) and football pitches (length and area) to help explain things. It rarely does. The weed patch is now over 10,000 football pitches long or, possibly more helpful, about the distance from London to Inverness.
All is well.
Allan