Sunday 30th  April 2023

The Caribbean Sea  20^o 31.0 N 63^o 59.9 W 

Blog by David  (Time zone: BST -4)

We are now 26 hours out from Tortola.  The E-ENE wind has veered to ESE and we are heading broadly in the right direction.  The nearest lump of rock is about  4 miles away – beneath us!

As a measure of progress, we have “made good” 135 miles. We expect the wind to veer further in the next 24 hours after which we will be able to point directly at our destination – if we choose to. “Choose to” because there are anticyclones – areas of high pressure - centred over every ocean. The North Atlantic anticyclone, familiarly the “Azores High”, dominates the routing decision on any N Atlantic crossing.  Normally, we would expect to be pushed north by brisk E - ENE trade winds as we left Tortola and would need to travel quite far north – 7-800 miles pretty much to Bermuda before we find the east going airstream that we are familiar with in northern Europe.  

This spring, depressions have been crossing the Atlantic  further south than normal. I mentioned yesterday that the Azores High his currently squashed and elongated by a vigorous depression. The trade winds are thus lighter than usual (6-12 kts against a more normal 15-20kts) and blowing from further south -  so it may not pay us to follow conventional wisdom; rather we might head for the Azores direct and keep out of the way of the more vigorous cold fronts as they pass.  That has the benefit of allowing us to travel straight there, but if the Azores High expands again we may have more motoring to do than we have fuel. Ho – Hum!

Crew Update

We are a crew of just three.   Our fourth crewman reported a “positive” Covid test on Wednesday, the day before he was due to travel out, and is now tucked up securely in bed at home. He had wanted to travel out later, perhaps today, but we couldn’t risk the whole crew going down with it all at once.  Anyway, ….. too late - we left yesterday!

So I am accompanied by Terry Kellet, a veteran of many sea miles on Serendipity over the years, and by Toby Keppel- Compton, a proud (aka foolish?) boat owner and retired Army Officer – and a neighbour of Terry and Lenie.

Mr Grumpy and his merry men

Time Keeping

I have often mentioned that sailing around the world results in the need to alter the ship’s clock roughly every 4-5 days.  A canny sailor will always travel East to West because each time that adds an hour to the day. Conventionally we add the hour at 19.00 each relevant day, so providing for a “Double Happy Hour”.

Returning West to East, however, the days need periodically to be shortened. Last night it was already evident that we needed to change the clock and there was a democratic discussion among us as to what time of the day to advance the clock: clearly deducting an hour from Happy Hour would have been quite sad, so we settled on 08.00 this morning – which became 09.00 by fiat.