High winds and heavy seas
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True Colours
James Scrimshaw
Wed 28 Aug 2013 14:29
41:53.21N 010:51.87W
90 miles off the coast of portugal
28/08/13
14:19 UTC
So we have had a fun night. At 9pm we put a tack in, allowing us to also
pop a reef in for the expected heavy winds. By about 3am the breeze had started
to pick up to about 28 knots, with gusts of 32. We had a confused sea with us,
but were pulling out a good bit of boat speed. James saw a maximum of 13.5
knots. We had a crash gybe that was held by the preventer nicely, and the boat
was swiftly gybed back and a second reef popped in.
When morning came the breeze held steady at 23-27 knots, and the seastate
to match. A third reef was put in to take the pressure off the autopilot. We
have sat like this for a number of hours with very few incidents, keeping a
constant boatspeed of about 6.6 knots. We are quite happily sitting running
along in near perfect champagne sailing conditions, with not a cloud in the sky.
The only issue being the strength of the breeze and seastate, but we cant have
everything! Breeze should maintain until the evening and then start to drop off
slowly for the next few days.
Started a distance countdown.
Distance done 532.7 nm
Distance to go 854.9 nm |