Saturday 6^th May 2023

North Atlantic Ocean 30^o 23.3 N 51^o 34.7 W 

Blog by David  (Time zone: BST -4)

The day broke fair yesterday morning – clear skies and a pleasant wind allowing us to make good  progress down the rhumb line to Horta. We had made good 163 miles Thursday and went on to do 173 miles yesterday!

The weatherman had recommended a change of course that morning.  There was light weather ahead so he said to the effect why not “bear away north as far as practicable and  gybe through the cold front when you cant make north of 045 true” .. and he signed off.

Well, “gybing through a weatherfront” isn’t my favourite cup of tea, but we did bear away and were making good about 040 True. (BTW the deviation here is 17^oW!).  The wind duly veered around 12.00 and your valiant crew went forward to gybe the down wind rig -  we were pleased to accomplish that in about 45 minutes.  Back to the cockpit to set the sails.

I glanced NW and saw a black barrel cloud extending across most of the NW quadrant -  we assumed it was the cold front, (errr ….  12 hours ahead of forecast, one which had been specially prepared fo us only 6 hours before…..?). The last time I had seen anything like it was approaching Australia. Ted B (who was on board with Terry and Lenie at the time) observed that,  had he seen it off Melbourne it would have been a “Southerly Buster” – and, 1000 miles further north of Melbourne,  bust-us-it-did!  It was a line squall.

And ….. bust us this one did too!  Strong wind, really heavy rain and hail for probablly 30-40 minutes , a big veer in the wind and then things settled down – and then …… the wind began to back – back to where it had originally been – and the barometer continued to fall. The front was yet to come.

Many of you will be familiar with the term “wrap” not in the Pret-a-Manger sense, but as a nautical term. It refers to a fairly common SNAFU in which one manages to wind the spinnaker (aka ‘Kite’)  around the forestay and get air pockets that wrap it up even tighter. Untangling one can be a nightmare.   

Here is our Kite – unwrapped- which we dusted off in BVI – Funnily, it was the only sail we didn’t use yesterday!

Now, ANYONE can wrap a kite  - we’ve done it several times on Serendipity (we have also managed to sail over the kite – but that is a different storyJ), but  ….  not many people know how to “wrap” a staysail.  Well, ….. WE do!   And SNAFU it was (more FUBAR, actually) because once we were ready to set the sails as the line squall had passed us by, the staysail resolutely refused to come out to play. Somehow, in all the wind, it had become a “wrap” – tied up wih the sheets in an unholy tangle. That necessitated a visit to the foredeck by our intrepid foredeck man (Toby) and the driving rain - avoiding the old boots that were being hurled at him – but after perhaps only 10 minutes the sail was untangled, and all was well with the world.

Exceept that water – the rain – had got in everywhere.  While Toby was on the foredeck, the “life tag system” that continually confirms everyone is stil on board, lost track of Toby and triggered a man overboard alarm – which dominates the chart plotters.  Clearing the alarm didn’t help because, as far as the Lieftag systemn was concerend, Toby was still overboard and triggered the alarm again….. et seq.   So there was much pressing of buttons on a very wet chart plotter which , since the show was over, has been playing hard to get.  Hopefully it will be talking to us when it has dried out. 

Oh – and the radar has stopped talking to us again …..

Tant pis.   

Well that’s about it. When the cold front did pass by it was comparatively uneventful. It’s about 05.30AM, the skies are beginning to clear  and I need to get some beauty sleep – before donning my glad rags to mark this auspciious day!