Atlantic-ho
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Sun 17 Jul 2011 17:45
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39:53.75N
069:18.78W
Summer Song and her crew are now officially
Azores-bound. We left Newport on a glorious southwesterly breeze at about 1pm on
Saturday, and the wind hasn't faltered since. We had intended to 'sniff' the
wind before we set sail, to see whether it seemed auspicious, or whether we
should anchor up for the night and set off on Sunday. But conditions were so
good that we didn't hesitate.
As we tacked down Newport Harbour, we were just one
of thousands of boats zooming about under clouds of canvas. There was a
slight sense of anticlimax that no-one waved us off with bunting from the
marina, and odd that no-one among the racers out on the water will have realised
that we were off across the Atlantic. It's fair to say that we departed in
perfect anonymity... other than the $190 payment for the night on the
dock.
I suppose you never feel quite ready to leave on a
three week voyage, and this was no exception. Alex, Elise and Chris all worked
like trojans to stow andd tidy and make things ready. But there's always a sense
that something got left behind at some stage. However, once the sails were up
and the land out of sight, a tremendous feeling of calm came over me. The wind
is forecast to be around 15 knots from the southwest for at least the next two
days, which is pretty much our ideal sailing conditions. It is quite a contrast
with the flukey and often light winds we had at the start of the ARC, crossing
in the other direction.
Our course is fairly straightforward. We are
steering southeast until we get just south of the 40N line of latitude. As Alex
sagely said this morning, this line is all icebergs, fog and container ships on
one side and fine, sunny weather on the other. You can guess, I hope, which side
we're interested in. We'll reel off another 40 miles or so on this course, then
turn due east towards the rising sun. After that, it's just the small matter of
1,750 miles to Flores in the Azores. Our Swedish crewmate Elise has handed us a
stiff challenge by saying she'd like to celebrate her birthday ashore on 3rd
August. We could just make it.
In the meantime, she asks just fish (to eat) and
dolphins (not to eat). The dolphin criterion has already been satisfied. Elise
excitedly raised the alarm at about 9am this morning as a pod cruised in to play
around the boat. I must confess that a combination of released stress and poor
sleeping induced me to do nothing more than roll over in bed at this juncture.
Alex rushed on deck with a little more joie de vivre to admire the
beasts.
The fishing has been fruitless so far, but it is
always scant around the full moon. I'm confident that we'll be into a large
tunny before the end of the week. Unfortunately, we forgot to buy ginger root,
so we won't quite be able to match the sashimi experience of the westward leg
with Will and Graham.
Newsflash: Some gigantic sea creature has already
swum off with our first lure, despite it having a steel line attached to it.
Clearly, we were into something in the 100lb plus range. Fishing continues with
our fish-eating-squid combo...
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