Pinball Wizard (Day 8)

‘There’s got to be a trick, how do you think he does it….sure plays a mean pinball’

Awoke to an overcast sky, first in ages, and a radar screen smattered with squalls, probably about eight at any time. As we edged the front of each squall we were catapulted to 8 knots, shot across the face and out the other side, then wallowed in a turbulent sea making about 3 knots until we crossed the next when again we were pinged forward. And so it continued for around 3 hours, ping, ca-ching, prrrrt, ching – we were the pinball.

Come noon the sun burnt the squalls away and we were back to making a steady 6 knots on 060 deg T. Sightings on AIS one tanker and one cargo ship; no visuals so plenty more of nuffin’. Today’s job was to make a small dyneema strop and raise the headsail a couple of inches to stop it chafing the guard rail at the pullpit as well as enable it to set better. Next to sort out is a bit of creaking on the port side. Now in contact with ARC yacht Beagle and Andromeda of Plymouth so we are scheduling a little rendezvous in Horta.

We passed the 1,000nm sailed mark today and will shortly be at the halfway point (1,100nm). This side of the line there’s always a feeling of an uphill struggle; it’s taken that long to get this far! But once we cross the mid-point we are on the downhill slope and at under 1,000nm we know it feels like the numbers roll away quite quickly. So maybe 8 days to go but we are heading direct for the centre of the Azores High where we will be becalmed in 3 days time.

Thanks to Marc on Axonite for sending us some routing calculations. We are looking at the suggested path.

DTG 1164nm
Galley: Turkey salad sandwich, thin sliced beef seared in black pepper with horse radish & mash.
Barometer 1022