End of Day 21 Beaufort NC USA towards Guernsey

This Blog entry is an edited version of the message we intended to send back whilst we were on the passage.  Unfortunately the laptop we use to work with the modem connected to the HF/SSB radio failed on 13 June so we had no way of sending it at the time it was written.

2359hrs (Z, GMT) Thu 18 Jun 2020

Dear All,

We had a good 15-25knot wind overnight which kept our speed up at 7 knots or more.  It was a dark night with no moon, not helped by overcast conditions from a weather front passing over us.  That brought some rain.  But when it wasn’t raining it was lovely to watch BV speed along in a glowing pool of phosphorescence.  It was particularly bright tonight so not only did we have a bright wake but also the white water around BV was also glowing as she bowled along.

Our nice overnight southwesterly winds flipped abruptly (within a space of 10 minutes) to become northwesterly at 6am as a rather drizzly weather front passed us by.  But they stayed in the 18-20 knots band so we still made fast progress east.

Sunshine, blue skies and lighter winds in the late afternoon

At 1000hrs Nicky got really good SSB radio comms with Tim on Rohkea.  He had downloaded the GRiB files for our sea area over the next 4 days and went through them, again painting a word picture of what he could see.  Fantastic!  The extra detailed information was both reassuring and incredibly helpful for us to confirm our routing as the depression moves across our area.  Tim will be arriving in Falmouth late tomorrow evening so will be nicely out of it all whereas we will not be far enough east by then to miss it.  However, the strong winds will be for a relatively short period with the worst associated with the cold front passing.  Tim’s detail gave us a pretty good idea of the passage of that front so we should be ready for it.  The GRiB files also suggested that the winds could be a little less than previously forecast, but we do need to take that assessment carefully as GRiBs are not the best for predicting peak frontal winds or where there are local effects such as around headlands.  Our strategy of tracking as far east as we can still looks good though and if we do find it all a bit much we can just heave-to for a few hours and sit it out.  Once the weather front has passed the winds look favourable for turning towards Guernsey.

Our midday to midday run was surprisingly good:  171nm through the water and 175nm on the GPS, which put our average speed at over 7 knots for the whole 24-hour period and not just for the overnight period.  All good stuff for getting us a step closer to home.  At midday we were also far enough east for another hour change so we are now running BV on Z time (UTC/GMT).  Add in that the distance to go to Guernsey is now under 800nm and it’s starting to feel as though we are really getting close.

Mystery shoots as a side salad with lunch

We decided to eat our mystery shoots [mystery because the seed packet was unmarked] at lunchtime today.  They’ve been growing nicely and might well have benefitted from a few more days’ growth but we thought that neither they nor the growing tray would benefit from being thrown about during the forthcoming gale.  And very tasty they were too.  We ate them, with a light dressing, as an accompaniment to sandwiches and found them to have a good peppery flavour and enough substance to have some decent crunch and texture, somewhat like a larger version of cress but with a bit more oomph.  We’ll definitely experiment again with the sprouting tray and will try out a variety of different pulses and seeds.

After the rain, drizzle and low cloud this morning, the weather this afternoon and evening was delightful.  It’s difficult to believe that we’ll be approaching gale conditions in 24-36hrs but that’s what all the forecasts say.

We spoke to Chris Parker this evening and received his update on the situation.  He reckons that we would be better placed if we were at 45 degrees of latitude, saying that at 46N we will definitely be hit by winds of 30 knots+, gusting to 40 knots.  Ideally, we would stay at 46N but be about 100nm further east than it is possible for us to get in the time available, in which case we would probably see winds no more than about 25 knots.  However, by moving south to 45N we should experience those lower wind speeds, despite being that bit further west.  Obviously, the disadvantage is that we will have lost 60nm in northing that we will have to regain after the low has moved through, when the winds are forecast to be really rather light.  It seems to be one extreme or the other!  Anyway, we have decided to sail east-southeast towards 45N 014W in the hope of reducing our exposure to the strongest winds and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 18 Jun: N46 32 W020 46

Position at midnight 18 Jun: N46 29 W019 19

Midday to midday distance through water: 171 nautical miles (average 7.1 knots).

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 175 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water (23 hrs because of the time zone change): 152 nautical miles (average 6.6 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination (23 hrs because of the time zone change): 152 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water:  3239 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 780 nautical miles

End of Day 21 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey