Culebrita to the Turks and Caicos (Day 3, Sunday 20 January 2019)

When I came on watch at midnight, the moth had flown off and the wind had got up a little to 18 knots, so BV was scooting along at over 7 knots and generally had a lot more hustle and bustle about her.  That’s a good thing because we really want to be at sea for just one more night, arriving at South Caicos early on Monday, to avoid being caught by the imminent strong winds.  A good run today should make that possible.

Still very benign conditions on Sunday morning

There was no forecast from Chris Parker today, being a Sunday.  The picture that we’ve been getting from our downloaded GRiBs have the front reaching the Turks and Caicos and the strong winds starting somewhat later than the timings Chris was forecasting yesterday.  Is that because the front is slowing down, or because Chris was wrong, or because the GRiBs are wrong?  We’ll never really know the answer to that, we’ll just know what we get when we get it [Ed: though we will start to see the signs about 12hrs ahead].

Our path diverting north from our intended track.  We’ve highlighted the awash rocks and coral with yellow warning markers because the depths don’t show unless you zoom in on the chartplotter.  We are running it zoomed out to provide early warning of any ships the AIS picks up

As the morning progressed the sea built from behind us, with a 1½ - 2m swell, and the wind veered to the southeast which pushed us to the northwest and off our desired track.  We wanted to gybe to close back to track but 10 miles to the south of our track is a series of shallow and dangerous reefs.  The closest to our track is Silver Bank and, had we gybed as soon as the wind started to veer, we would have ended up heading straight for that.  So, rather than join the wrecks marked on the chart where the coral and rocks are awash, we kept diverging from track to give ourselves some sea room to gybe into.

Sailing on port gybe

We gybed at lunchtime when we were both up.  It all went very smoothly and, as the day progressed, we were able to rejoin our desired track.  During the afternoon the wind veered further, to the south-southeast, so we were on the right gybe to be able to continue heading directly towards our waypoint.

The sun setting on a clear horizon. We both saw a distinctive green flash just as it dipped below the horizon.  Even though it has not been captured by my photo it was definitely there

A full moon nearly as bright as daylight

At sunset the wind got up to around 20 knots so we put in a reef in the main and rolled away some genoa to keep things easily under control for the night watches.  As I write, BV is still making over 6 knots and so it will be interesting to see how far we’ve actually sailed from midnight to midnight.

The full moon was already up when the sun set and will remain up until gone 6am so we are in for a bright night. The photo (right) doesn’t really capture how bright the night sky is with the full moon and no cloud; it nearly seems bright enough to be able to read a book in the moonlight, it’s certainly light enough to do deckwork without a torch.

Despite or because of the reefs, the sailing for the first half of the night was all very relaxed but we still made a good 24 hour run of 157 nautical miles.  The wind stabilised at around 15 knots with just the odd gust up to 18 knots, so maybe we hadn’t needed to put in the reefs.  But it’s always easier to shake out a reef than to put one in, especially solo on watch in the middle of the night.

Passage Statistics:
Position at Midday 20 January:  N20 59  W69 17
Position at Midnight 20 January: N21 29 W70 31
Midday to Midday distance:  152 nautical miles
Midnight  to Midnight distance:  157 nautical miles
Total miles covered:  371 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go:  58 nautical miles

End of day 3 position Culebrita to the Turks and Caicos