Position: 17.22N 035.58W
Wind: E 16-18kts
Course: 245T
Distance Run: 150M
We’re making good progress today over a blue, blue sea under a blue, blue sky as we pass the half way mark with fourteen hundred miles behind us and the same ahead. The wind has moderated a bit so we’ve got the full main up for the first time in a few days and poled out genoa – there’s still a decent swell running so we need plenty of power to avoid wallowing.
The wind is likely to become a bit of a theme in next few days as the weather prophets suggest a big hole in the trades about 400M across opening up early next week between us and Martinique. We’re heading SW now to attempt to skirt round the bottom of the windless patch. Mind you, if we are becalmed a bit of ocean swimming might be a pleasant diversion- the water temperature is up to 27C (from 19C around the Canaries). It’s a spooky experience swimming about in water three miles deep, I always feel a strange sense of vertigo. Anyway the weather man might have got it all wrong – five days is a long time in more than just politics.
