All Clew’d Up, Mid-Atlantic
We had to tighten the clew on the main and add a second tie as the existing one was showing signs of wear.
Year: 2014
Sunsets, St Martin to Azores
17 sunsets but not all sunsets are worth capturing as they are either obscured by cloud or it’s a clear sky
End of the Line (A Fish’s view on Fishing!)
Fishing a couple of hundred miles southwest of the Azores with a 200lb line, and this is what the fish see
A big “Thank You”
A big thank you to all who emailed us at sea. It eased the journey and on the ocean is the equivalent of TV, Internet, dinner with friends, and Cinema all rolled into one. A tremendous thanks to our amazing shore team who never missed a beat and emailed every day. It was so appreciated. We will be publishing photos from the voyage over the next few days.
Azores
The boat that overtook us on our last night was a 1984 Moody looks like a 425 and boy did those guys get some performance from it! We later started closing on them but we were reaching 10kn speeds and closing the island too fast in the dark so we reefed to main only and 6-7kn. Gradually Faial emerged from the dawn and we ran down the south coast. The sea roughed up as closed the channel between Faial and Pico. With the island backlit by the rising sun the channel itself was a little obscure. We arrived opposite the
Azores in 5-4-3-2-1
We were overtaken by Hamish on yacht Low Profile early this am! So there I was writing to you as this 13m yacht crept up behind and I thought shall I, no it’s 3am, maybe I should, ah no it’s too much, but I really should… And that’s when I decided that it was on and that I had to defend our place. Turning to windward I put up the main, tweaked everything, got an extra 0.8 of a knot out of the downwind run, but calm as a cucumber along comes the very friendly Hamish, has a chat, and
Rolling downhill to Horta
We are bouncing along in the usual lumpy sea but unlike a few days back we now occasionally get a favourable as well as adverse current. We are under genoa only and it’s small so only making 4.5 to 5.5kn in 15-22kn tailwind. No point in speeding up as we can’t go fast enough to get to Horta in daylight so we will slow it down and arrive on Weds morning. Wind is due to continue through next few days. Now seeing lots of seabirds. For a moment we heard about two words on VHF but unable to find any
Milton Cleans
The gribs say wind is coming and we now have a W F5 at midnight. Too late to mess about with the main, can wait til daylight. Been motoring all day because the swell was bigger than the wind (9-11kn) and the full rig bangs & shudders in the rolls sending aftershocks through the hull. Seas from the west and north at the same time. The correct sailing strategy would be to bear away and head to Flores and gybe back down to Horta to avoid rolling as wind is dead astern. It adds miles and the reluctance stems from
Where’s the Reindeer?
In 24 hours we have gone from T-shirts and shorts to fleeces! As I went to bed tonight a new sensation; it felt cold. Daytime temp. in the saloon now a lovely 26 deg C down from 34C, water temp 23.7C down from 32.6C. We have 460nm to go and we have been a bit roughed up over the last 18 hours whether there is wind or not. This last section feels like it’s going so slowly…we yearn for land because we know it’s there. Today’s discussion ‘which bar shall we go to in Horta?’ ‘Cafe Sport is the yachting