Saturday 6^th May 2023

North Atlantic Ocean 31^o 15.3 N 50^o 57.1 W 

Blog by David  (Time zone: BST -3)

By now, King Charles III will have been crowned.  God Save the King! We will celebrate a little later today.  In fact we have already started by declaring today only 23 hours long, as we move the clocks forward to BST-3.

Progress Report

We don’t have enough fuel to motor even half the remaining 1,175 miles to Horta. Therefore our weather guru has been routing us northwards for the last couple of days in order to keep in the wind – (he certainly found some yesterday!)  - sadly,  there’s also a 1.5Kt current against us.  A bit of a double whammy really,

We are steering 035^oT when we want to make good 065^oT. Any maths student will tell you that – even if you have sailed 167 miles through the water in the last 24 hours you are not going to be anything like 167 miles closer to Horta – only 133 miles in fact. We are going to be heading in this general direction for at least three days – maybe four – thereafter we will be heading directly to Horta.

Since the front came through early this morning, the wind has settled into a W-WNW 8-15 Kt air stream. We are now making good about  030-035^o.  The sky is cloudy -  but not quite a cloudy as this:

Yesterday’s approaching Line Squall (aka “Buster”)

We have had some showers, but not quite like this:

It blew a little yesterday J  (perhaps 36 kts), hailed a little and rained a lot  (note how the rain flattens the sea)