Yacht Aditi

Roadblock!

Hard fought miles. Our boat has gone quiet, food from tins, sleep is poor, bilge alarm goes every hour and this is our 11th day on a fairly close starboard reach. Our waterfront apartment as was has been transformed into a noisy, shaking, crashing condo over by the brickworks with a 24/7 earthquake thrown in. It’s midnight local time and although things are supposed to have eased they haven’t. Wind cycles through 13 to 22kn all the time and we are mostly on a reach in 18-22kn making about 6kn. Our cage is being rattled!

Woke up this morning and thought the boat was going slow so things must have eased. Arriving in the saloon I saw we were doing 9kn peaking at 9.4! We took in more sail. Got stopped by a roadblock at 11am. Sky was blue. Horizon became completely grey, wind shot up to 30kn headwind and seas doubled. We reefed down to rags and unsure what we were in we were close to turn with the wind and start running. Dropping our speed below 7kn was hard but we eventually fell out of the south west corner of the system and kept sailing slowly at 3.5/4kn to let it drift north, diagonally across and away from our bow. Nothing at all on radar. For four hours the weather went across our bow, following which we put out more sail and went up past it’s east side. It was a squall 15nm wide and 30nm deep! Took 4 hours to round. We also discuss (for the n’th time) why we are doing this? I think the answer will be found at the bottom of a beer glass in Horta! Fingers crossed weather eases per forecast and we all get a break soon.

Can someone email details of England’s first world cup match fixes – when and against who? Thx.
DTG 903nm
Galley; bad weather rations – ham & cheese pickle sandwich, baked potato with tinned chilli.
Barometer 1028 so must be nearing the centre of this High.

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