Kinsale to Porto Santo Madeira Archipelago - Day 3

It was pretty calm overnight so, knowing what was coming, Nicky took advantage of the still weather to dig the storm sails out of storage in the forepeak. After breakfast, we rigged the trysail to its track and then rebagged it and lashed it to the bottom of the mast.

The wind remained under 5kts through most of Friday morning before gradually picking up enough so that we could sail again. We ran the watermaker to top up the tanks and to keep the system clean and in good condition.

At lunchtime we were both up and, though the wind wasn’t strong yet (about 15kts), the morning GRIB files showed that it would pick up to around 25kts by the end of the afternoon and to about gale force by midnight. Since we’d not fitted the storm jib for a while, and since Nicky wanted me to have an undisturbed afternoon asleep, we fitted and hoisted the storm jib after lunch, which meant that we sailed rather slowly all afternoon. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, since by then the wind had gone around to the south and the seas had increased so we were heading more west than southwest.

By the evening it was clear that the low pressure system had slowed down somewhat. The wind wasn’t increasing as fast as had previously been predicted but it was still rising. Since we didn’t want to have to wrestle the trysail at night in a rising gale, we set it just before sunset, whilst there was still sufficient light to see what was going on. Just as well really, since we could see the possible chafe/load points between the trysail sheets and the bimini struts and were able to re-run the lines to keep them clear. All the articles on flying a trysail that we have read have talked about running the sail between the lazyjacks. We have a separate trysail track on the starboard side of the mainsail track and decided to try hoisting the trysail to starboard of both sets of lazyjacks, both of which we eased far more than normal to allow the trysail to set without chafing on hem. It seemed to work really well. The sail set correctly (as much as a trysail can be said to ‘set’), we didn’t have the faff of trying to feed the clew down the length of the boom between the lazyjacks whilst we were hoisting and there doesn’t appear to have been any chafe either. A win-win we think!

Passage Statistics:
Position at midday 5 Sep: N46 41.7 W011 14.9
Position at midnight 6 Sep (0001hrs): N46 32.9 W012 02.9
Midday to midday distance through water: 153 nautical miles (average 6.4 knots)
Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 135 nautical miles
Midnight to midnight distance through water: 107 nautical miles (average 4.5 knots)
Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 81 nautical miles
Total miles covered through water: 386 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Porto Santo): 832 nautical miles (1170nm passage)

Kinsale to Porto Santo - Day 3