A slow day..winds are around 10K most of the day today. The suns shining and small following seas but 10 K wind is hardly enough to keep the spinnaker full, let alone propel us along at much speed. Speeds are between 4.5 and 5.5 K with this wind. Hopefully it won't drop off too much more. Overnight the cooler air should help us a bit if the breaze holds.
Dec 3 and 4
A slow couple of days with winds 8-12K, but still managing to sail and keep up an average 5K which is OK. Forecast is for light winds for the next few days. Nice sailing again and the weather is warming up more. Jen is making mousse chocolate for Olga's birthday tomorrow. She had to wait till evening as it's too hot during the day to make it fluffy...
Large squall heading this way as I type. The first boat of the Atlantic odyssey arrived in Martinique this morning. Well done Gordon, Louise and Phil on board the larrikin.
Aviad had a swim off the swim ladder today to cool down while Sephina dragged him along at 4-5K
Dec 5
Balancing act..
The last few days of light wind we have been happy to cover 120-130M per day, averaging just over 5K, but the forecast is for little or no wind in a day or so, lasting for a few days. This puts us in the position of possibly having to motor for a couple of days, or drift around the Atlantic a few hundred miles from Martinique for a couple of days waiting for wind. Either option is OK but to give us the choice we are hoping to conserve enough fuel to have the option of motoring. We have approximately 180l of diesel left, which should allow 90 hrs of motoring at 5K, so 450M. We just passed 500M to go at 0100 so we,re hoping the wind holds for another 24hrs or so.
Another issue is arrival time. We would prefer arrive in daylight as the entrance is a little tricky with a twisting channel and possibly unlit buoys. So as we draw closer we may need to slow our progress to arrive early Tuesday 9th rather than late on the 8th. Over the coming days we will refine the plan..
One of the nice things about long passages is that we don't have to think too much about arrival time during the passage. With shorter trips we always plan our departure to arrive in daylight and generally have to keep to a minimum speed to achieve this
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