Position @1200 UTC
35⁰ 31.08 N 53⁰ 26.22 W
Nautical Miles traveled in last 24 hrs:- 111
Our mileage is well down and we had to run the engine all night due to a total lack of wind but the up shot of this was we all enjoyed a good night’s sleep, no tossing or falling out of bed due to heeling over or big waves. We did hear that a number of boats are running about 120 miles north of us and were experiencing 40 knot winds, we are happy to be where we are!
For the first time all 4 of us were about this morning, which was nice, so Andrew did one of his famous fried breakfasts, though I don’t know if Paddy (Grainne) could quite get her head around an english breakfast!
With the engine being on for so long and as the sea was calm we decided to re-fill the main fuel tank, easy to do in these conditions, murder to do under sail with winds! We put in 20 gallons which filled them to the top so we are ready for anyhing. Naturally the generator is also full of fuel but as we ran the engine for so long yesterday and again over night, we havn’t had to run the generator, yet!
Today, being 5 days out of Bermuda, it was time to consider our overall position and stratagy and know how far we had come in actual fact and how much further to go. With the strong currents we are experiencing we were not too sure so here are the figures:-
Total Mileage through the water in 5 days: 734 Nautical Miles.
Total Mileage great circle route in 5 days: 615 Nautical miles
……………….you will notice the difference of 119 nautical miles that in fact we have sailed but actually stayed still!!!!! The good news is thgt most of the fleet are in the same positiuon.
The Bond film in todays BBC was “Live & Let Die” the first Roger Moore made and following this Paddy (Grainne) cooked dinner.Sheused the salted fish we bought as an experimemnt in Bermuda. A little salty but this was due to the fact we hadn’t soaked it long enough in water to clear the salt. Anyway werenjoyed ot with Garlic Rice and Spinach. It went down a treat and for future refrence, I willl buy salted fish again when we provision for a long passage. It had never occured to me before but it keeps so well.
This afternoon we made contact with another sailing boat(not part of the ARC) and they can download GRIB files on their Sat Phone: this musteither cost them a fortuneor they have found a supplierwho camsend compressedfiles;I wil try and find out tomorrow. Anyway they shared their GRIB file info with us, the bottom line is the earlier winds to the North of us are now gusting 50 Knots and are headed our way! We are now heading East/ still close to the rhum line, but are hoping the winds veer so we can take a course East,South East and get below 34 degrees by tomorrow night to avoid much of that bad weather coming through. By Friday it should have passed and no doubt we will be too far south for any other winds! So climbing back North East could be a struggle, so here we are “between a rock and a hard place”, dammed which ever waywe go: Exciting times though! More on this tomorrow no doubt but we are gearing up for a bad night tomorrw.