Different kinda High

At home we think of High’s as light breezes, flowers, honey bees, barbeques and days on the beach…let us introduce you to an Azores High! There is good reason that it’s stable at 1032mb it’s powerful.

Today’s new issue consisted of a drawer under the chart table which holds heavy tools smashing it’s plastic latch and launching into the saloon. We redistributed the heavy stuff, took a latch from a cabinet elsewhere and managed to close it again so we can still get to the forward part of the ship!

Close reaching all day in 18-22kn SSE wind at 7.5 to 8.5kn (but have foul tide of 1.2kn all day!). Life a bit harder being cranked over but miles shrinking. We have 1048nm to go as of 8pm UTC. Seas have been about 2m, sunshine. Heavily reefed down tonight in case of squalls.

Fantasea just emailed to say his buddy was dismasted and just crawled into Horta which determined the reef – a good tip Michael. Making about 5kn on course of 060T for tonight. But that didn’t last long. An hour later and the 18 to 22kn headwind (28kn apparent..) has continued to build the sea and with our double reefed sails we started making 6.7kn closing our comfort gap in case of a squall. Now being forced N on 040T and motion at sea untidy. Temp is down and this could be the end of 24/7 T-shirt and shorts?

Just after lunch Claire saw a patch of grey water 25 feet off the port side of the ship. The patch of grey then moved, turned and at about 5 feet away from the guardrail she realised it was a whale and it then dived/disappeared. Sophie then caught sight of it behind the boat swimming away happily. It was a small one of probably 20 feet or less but was a little bit to close for comfort.

DTG 1021
Galley beef & potato salad, vegetarian ravioli (tinned)
Barometer 1024