Wilmington to Bermuda Day 6 Saturday

32:22.51N 67:04.42W

6^th  June 2015

550 Miles from Wilmington 

9345 Miles from Ramsgate by log.

             Before I start I have to admit to making a mistake on the previous two blogs, they should have read day 2 and day 4 respectively so here goes with day 6. (All corrected this morning 8/6/15)

I honestly expected to be in Bermuda today but we are still slogging our way to windward. It has been a 48 hour motor with no wind followed by a 400 mile upwind beat so far, which is not exactly the pleasant cruising I had hoped for. On Thursday afternoon the wind was forcing us ever higher so that when we expanded the plotter we were actually laying a course for somewhere near Belfast and so I decided to put a tack in and drop south in order to position ourselves for the predicted wind shift later in the day. After 8 hours of heading directly for Cuba the shift came and we tacked again only to have the wind shift back almost immediately. Our course now was for the Azores and so with my bottom lip sticking out I decided that we would press on and see what happened. As the day and night progressed the wind moved from SE through S and eventually we were seeing a bit of SW occasionally and so our course dropped accordingly as we followed the wind. First we were pointing at Portugal and then the Canaries and finally at some point in Sub Saharan Africa. The point is though we are now tracking just to the south of Bermuda hard on the wind and bowling along at 6-7 knots in a force 5-6. Living life at a 20 degree angle is not pleasant and when combined with a whole series of squalls, heavy prolonged showers and five crew moving around in wet gear Spectra is now almost as wet inside as out, or as I like to say all yukky.  

But, as of 8 O’clock  this morning we find ourselves some 115 miles from Bermuda and so should be there tomorrow. Spectra has held up well as have the crew who have all gelled in a remarkably short space of time. Our predicted daily run competition, for the much coveted prize of a chocolate bar, has now been won by Adamant twice, myself and Steve once and the girls not at all, so they are without chocolate which in my experience can be a dangerous situation.

All of the systems have been working well apart from the wind indicator which must have been knocked or come loose as on Port tack it shows us sailing at up to 30 degrees from the wind (I wish) and on Starboard at 65 degrees at best. Someone will have to go up the mast in Bermuda and realign it me thinks, but who I wonder while sitting here looking at Steve! The other problem has been water forcing its way into the anchor lockers via the chain holes which has never been a problem before. But then again I have never buried the bows under the waves every 5 minutes for three days before. The accumulated muck and the odd bit of weed collected as we anchored along the ICW found their way into the forward bilge and promptly blocked the pump. I cleared it with a bucket and got the pump working again and then temporarily stuffed the chain holes with rags and taped it all down, so we should be good to go again.

Wildlife: we haven’t been fishing for the last couple of days, in order to conserve the Atlantic fish stocks you understand, but we were visited by our first dolphins on Thursday night and a large shark was seen below the stern yesterday so the synchronised swimming practise has been cancelled yet again. Two flying fish have now attempted Kamikaze attacks on Spectra and were both found dead on deck in the mornings.

That’s it, Bermuda is squarely in our sights and we are tracking directly on target for an arrival on Sunday so next blog with pictures from there…….. Or if not without pictures from somewhere else.