End of Day 23 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) Sat 20 Jun 2020

Dear All,

Nicky handed over the watch to me at midnight with BV marching along to the southeast at 7½-8knots.  At 2am the chartplotter highlighted that even with this extra dogleg down to 45N, we had just 600 miles to go to Guernsey.  When we get to the current waypoint at 45N 013W, we’ll turn to track due east for a few hours until the weather front passes through and then gybe and set best sail for the Inshore Traffic Zone off Ushant; from there it’s under 150nm back to Guernsey.  It’s really rather exciting to think that we’ll soon be back in familiar, home waters.  If we can keep up an average speed of 6kts then we could be back by Thursday 25 June but that might be a case of counting our chickens before the eggs have hatched.  The forecast is for the wind to get a good bit lighter after this low had gone past and we don’t have the fuel aboard to motor half the way home.  So, there’s potential for a frustrating few days, particularly given the strong tidal flows around the Brittany coast and the Channel Islands……

“Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning…?” 

At 1015hrs we arrived at our 45N 013W waypoint and turned to track east.  The wind was fairly steady at 28kts but I did see the odd gust up to 36knots.  BV continued to march along at 7½-8½kts still with 2 reefs in the main and the staysail set.

BV took the 25-30knot winds very easily and felt totally unstressed by it all

And that was the theme for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon; sailing down to 45N had worked well for us in avoiding the 30 knot winds with 40knot gusts.  However, at 1430hrs we did have a bit of a drama.

The staysail is furled around the foil and laid down
the port side secured to the safety rail with tie-wraps

Nicky called down to me to get dressed and on deck sharpish.  It turned out that the toggle fitting at the top of the inner forestay had broken and the only thing holding the inner forestay and the staysail up was the halyard.  There was a huge risk of the foil folding and being wrecked so we needed to furl the staysail and somehow get the whole sail and furling setup carefully lowered onto the deck.  Far from easy with 25-30 knots of wind over the deck, 2½-3m seas running and BV rolling about because of the following seas.

Working at it in stages we managed to get the staysail and furling setup round the outside of the mainsail and boom and back onto the port side of the boat.  Lines were all messed up around it so each of those needed to be undone and rerun so that we could continue to sail.  Once the halyard was disconnected, we used plastic tie-wraps to secure the sail and furling foil to the safety rail.  The tack and furling drum are still connected to the deck which hopefully will mean that the whole setup will stay where it is for the rest of the passage.  It’s surprisingly long and the top of the inner forestay and foil stick out over our port quarter by about a foot.  We hope that when we get back to Guernsey the only part that we will need to replace is the sheared toggle unit that connects the top of the inner forestay to the mast.

Nicky working out the right amount of weather helm for Georgina to steer a straight course with just the mainsail up

“Wot no staysail!?”

We still had lots of wind blowing so we continued on just using the mainsail which still had 2 reefs in it.  The big question was when to turn to head towards Ushant.  We had somehow expected that the front would pass us by quickly and we’d get an obvious wind direction change and brightening of conditions.  But instead we stayed in drizzly grey conditions with the same wind for the rest of the afternoon and early evening.

It really doesn’t stand out on the photograph but we had 3 metre following seas

BV sailed east on the N45 degrees parallel for all of that time until we got as far as the W12 degree line of longitude.  That was at 2200hrs and it seemed that we had left enough time for the worst of the front to move north head of us.  The wind had also eased a little and so, conscious that the wind was supposed to drop to very little after the front, we gybed to head northeast to start making progress directly towards our next turning point inshore of the Off Ushant Traffic Separation Scheme.  Fairly shortly after our turn the wind did drop off to 10-15knots so, whilst Nicky talked to Chris Parker in Florida on the SSB radio about the weather conditions for the next few days, I shook all the reefs out of the mainsail and poled out the full genoa to port.

The upshot of Nicky’s conversation with Chris Parker is that we should have enough wind to sail as far as Ushant but then the wind will drop off completely for the last leg of our passage up the English Channel to Guernsey.  How frustrating!  But it’s just as well that we still have some diesel in reserve which should just be enough to get us into port.  At midnight we have 330 miles to run to the Ushant turning point and a total of 457 miles to run to get to Guernsey.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 20 Jun: N45 00 W013 40

Position at midnight 20 Jun: N45 11 W011 50

Midday to midday distance through water: 175 nautical miles (average 7.3 knots).

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 182 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water: 166 nautical miles (average 6.9 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 174 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water:  3573 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 457 nautical miles

End of Day 23 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey

End of Day 22 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) Fri 19 Jun 2020

Dear All,

Nicky’s midnight to 4am watch was largely uneventful but as she handed over to me it started to rain and shortly after that the wind reduced to nothing.  With a gale to dodge, I switched on the engine, set off again and furled away the genoa.  Half an hour later there was just enough wind for the sails to be productive so I unfurled the genoa and we continued on at slightly reduced revs, motorsailing at 6½-7knots.  I guess the day will aptly fulfil the adage that, “when sailing there is generally either far too much wind or far too little!”.

Motorsailing east-southeast at dawn

By 0630hrs we were back on form with 15kts of wind on our starboard beam and our 7kts speed seemed to meet with the approval of a couple of passing dolphins who darted in to play in our bow wave whilst I trimmed the sails to get the best sailing speed. 

The impromptu fruit loaf – perfect with butter and a mug of tea!

I must have been half asleep though, because when I looked in the galley locker and saw just half a loaf of bread, I completely forgot that there was another one, that I had baked on Wednesday, in the locker just forward.  So, I set to mixing up flour, yeast, sugar and water  Fortunately, when Nicky got up she reminded me of the other loaf so I was able to add half an American stick of butter to the dough and switched it to being a fruit loaf with lots of raisins, sultanas, dried cranberries and the zest of an orange.  A bit of a made-up recipe so it will be interesting to see how it turns out [Ed: It was very god!].

Fast cruising conditions

As the day progressed the wind picked up a little more, to 15-20kts just aft of the beam, and the ride became faster.  The waves have passed us at an acute angle all day so it has felt as if BV has been accelerating down the front of them constantly.  Add in the clear blue skies and we’ve had perfect fast passage-making conditions with the speed staying closer to 8kts than 7kts.  Champagne cruising, and a real boost given that we want to get down to 45N latitude by midday tomorrow (Saturday) and as far east as we can at the same time.  It seemed best just to let Georgina get on with steering and to ‘supervise’, sitting in cockpit enjoying the sunshine and a good book (plus some fruit loaf and a mug of tea of course!).

This picture makes it all look rather calm and uneventful but we had great sailing conditions all day

As I finish this off, just after midnight on Saturday 20 June, BV is zipping along to the southeast at 8kts with 2 reefs in the mainsail and just the staysail flying forward.  The sea is starting to get lumpy but with that sail plan she is making really good and comfortable progress towards our 45N waypoint.  Just after the OCC Net at 2300hrs, Nicky spoke to Ocean Viking on the SSB to answer his questions about the weather.  He too was heading east to avoid the worst of the winds on the low pressure system tracking to the north of us but he is down at 44N whereas, at the time, we were a good bit further north at 45 30N heading down to 45N.  At 44N Ocean Viking only had about 15kts of wind, in comparison to the 20-25kts that we were experiencing and, from what Chris Parker told us, it seems unlikely that they will have anything more than about 20kts that far south.  Using his IridiumGo! (or similar sat comms system) Ocean Viking said he could see the OCC’s Atlantic crossing fleet on the Predict Wind tracker and said that there are several other OCC yachts roughly in our area.  So, there could be a bit of a race north when this troublesome front has passed through tomorrow afternoon.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Footnote:

After we had arrived in Guernsey Charlotte showed me some screenshots she had taken showing our track and the low pressure system that we were running away from.

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 19 Jun: N56 02 W17 38

Position at midnight 19 Jun: N45 31 W15 35

Midday to midday distance through water (23 hrs because of the time zone change): 143 nautical miles (average 6.2 knots).

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination (23 hrs because of the time zone change): 139 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water: 169 nautical miles (average 7.0 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 169 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water:  3407 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 612 nautical miles

End of Day 22 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey

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

End of Day 20 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 (N, GMT -1) Wed 17 Jun 2020

Dear All,

Dawn on day 20 of our passage

Dawn on the 20^th day of our passage was accompanied by the chug-chug of our engine.  The wind had died away at 3am and was expected to stay that way all day.  So with the engine pushing us east a bit to try to get us away from the absolute centre of the low pressure system that is coming, we spent the day making preparations for weathering the gale force winds that will hit us on Friday night and all through Saturday.

Whilst I was off watch in the morning, Nicky managed to get workable SSB radio comms with Tim on Rohkea. He painted a word picture of what he could see on the GRiB files that he had downloaded that covered the area from 40-52N and 25-04W for the period Friday 19 to Sunday 21 June.  That was incredibly helpful for us,  and adding bigger picture information to the detail we had been given by Chris Parker the previous evening.  Tim has been a star and said that he will aim to do the same again tomorrow (Thursday 18 June), which will be his last full day at sea; he expects to make landfall in Falmouth on Friday evening.  The ‘so what?’ from it all is that there is no avoiding that we will get hit by gale force winds on Friday night and Saturday.  However, in the interim we’ll keep tracking east on the 46 30N latitude to try to keep us out of the worst of the winds a little further north.

(Right) The MV Chiquita Trader passing us by and (left) how close the AIS paint looked on our chart plotter

Nicky had a busy watch and ended up calling MV Chiquita Trader which seemed to be on a course to pass extremely close to us.  The officer on watch confirmed that he did have our AIS signal and that he’d alter course to give us a wider berth.  The ship actually passed us by at less than 1nm and that’s after it had altered course to miss us – a worthwhile radio call on Nicky’s part, I think!

At midday I came on watch and over coffee and cake we briefly celebrated passing the milestone of 3000 miles sailed on this passage.  We also discussed what we needed to achieve in the way of preparations for the weekend’s weather conditions.  Mid-discussion there was a bit of a distraction as 2 pilot whales surfaced right beside us.  But they were only with us very briefly, passed us by and went on their way.

We were still motoring and so far on this passage we’d used about 40 hours of fuel, so our first task was to open up the connecting valve to transfer the fuel from our forward tank to our main fuel tank in the keel.  We run the fuel in this way so that the fuel gauge gives a clearer indication of fuel consumption but the only fuel feed line to the engine is from the keel tank, so at some point before we empty that tank, we need to move the fuel from the forward tank to the keel tank so that it is available to be used.

The galley was a busy area all afternoon

Super rich chocolate brownies

With the prospect of several days of rough seas, we decided that one of the best uses of our time was to prepare some passage food to eat over the coming days.  That way whoever is cooking will only need to reheat the meals rather than cooking from scratch.  Between us we made lots of butternut squash and parmesan soup, a smoked paprika pork and green pepper stew, some extra chocolate brownies for when we need a quick energy fix, and a fresh loaf of bread.  Clearly, all much easier to do now in the calmer weather.

Smoked paprika, pork and green pepper stew cooked ready for easy meals in rough conditions, and another successful bit of bread production

At 1330hrs, part way through all of this food production we had the unexpected bonus of getting enough wind to sail.  We hadn’t expect to be sailing until early evening and it was really nice to be able to work in the galley without the engine thumping away alongside.  And, of course, it saved us a bit of fuel.

Bimini stowed and Georgina hard at work in the sunshine

There was quite a lot to do so Nicky stayed up for most of the afternoon rather than sleeping off watch.  On deck we stowed the bimini sunshade to reduce windage…..

(Left) For our practice hoist of the trysail we kept the mainsail up so that we didn’t slow BV down but for real it would just be the orange sails set; the mainsail would be lowered and lashed onto the boom.  (Top right) The storm job has an extra piece of fabric which goes around the furled staysail to support the sail’s luff.  (Bottom right) The trysail goes up on its own track so we left it attached to that but secured in a sail bag at the foot of the mast so that it’s all ready to go

… and then we dug out the storm sails (trysail and storm jib).  We’ve never needed to used them in anger so we did a practice set of them so that we are fully refreshed on rigging and hoisting them if we need to.

(Left) Nicky varnishing the sole under the chart table.  (Right) ‘Police Line – Do Not Cross!’ Something makes me think that she doesn’t trust me to remember that there is wet varnish under the chart table

Perhaps not what you would expect, but Nicky also did some varnishing.  She had noticed that the varnish on the sole under the chart table has ‘suddenly’ worn through.  Obviously, it hasn’t suddenly worn through at all, but has gradually been worn away over the years but it has, just now, reached the point where there are lots of pin-prick holes in the varnish and the wood underneath is starting to get wet, which is noticeable by dark spots appearing.  That area is going to get a bashing over the next few days, particularly because we are likely to sit at the chart table wearing wet oilskins and drip water onto the exposed wood.  So, Nicky gave the whole area a quick sand and a hurried protective coat of varnish to seal it whilst we are on this passage.  As she said, it’s by no means a beautiful job so when we are back in Guernsey she’ll do a proper job, sanding back to solid varnish (or bare wood) and then layering on many thin coats of varnish to build up a good, solid protective layer, hopefully without dust and motes in it.  There are several other areas in the cabin that need the attention of the varnishing brush too, particularly places around the chart table and the galley which we frequently touch, either holding on for balance or because we are working there.  Here the satin finish top coats have worn away to reveal the harder-wearing gloss underneath, but without a few touch-up coats this will, in time, wear away and surprisingly quickly too.

Varnishing complete, Nicky finally manged to get some off-watch time before coming back on for the first night shift.  With all the time zone changes as we have moved east, that watch is now quite a busy one with SSB radio traffic.  First up, currently at 2000hrs is our evening check-in with Glenn Tuttle, callsign KPK, of the SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association) daily.  He passes on our position to the OCC who are keeping an eye on our progress (and the progress of other OCC yachts who are also crossing).  At the top of the next hour is Chris Parker’s weather forecast session, which usually takes about half an hour as he gives a custom 5 day forecast to us and any other yachts who call in.  Finally, at 2200hrs there’s the OCC Transatlantic West to East radio net, for which Nicky is net controller on Wednesday (tonight) and Saturday.  Four hours passes very quickly with all that going on and plus a few sail trim adjustments and reefing to keep you on your toes!

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 17 Jun: N46 40 W24 55

Position at midnight 17 Jun: N46 37 W022 54

Midday to midday distance through water: 144 nautical miles (average 6.9 knots).

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 132 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water: 147 nautical miles (average 6.1 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 145 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water:  3087 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 867 nautical miles

End of Day 20 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey

End of Day 19 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 (N, GMT -1) Tue 16 Jun 2020

Dear All,

Today is our 19^th Wedding Anniversary and as a surprise anniversary present, we had a full day of unexpected 10-12 knots northerly breeze.  So, we managed to sail east all day at somewhere between 5 and 7 knots, depending on just how hard the little wind cherubs puffed.

In another bonus, Nicky finally caught up with all her astro nav calculations.  Her sights and calculations have been most successful in that after 18 days at sea, yesterday’s sights put us only a couple of miles displaced from the GPS position at the time the sights were taken.  Excellent news but if our run of overcast weather continues, we will end up like navigators of yore, entering the English Channel on days’ old sun sights.  Thank goodness for GPS!

Less of a bonus was the discovery that one of the valves on a part of the aft heads pipework had become too stiff to operate.  We had left a cleaning solution in the aft holding tank and when I came to pump it out, I realised that the critical valve to enable this would no longer operate.  So, I spent an hour or so dismantling, cleaning and rebuilding the valve.  What else do you do on your wedding anniversary when you own a yacht?  To be fair, I would have left the job for tomorrow but the forecast we had at the time suggested that there would be a good breeze on Wednesday and the job was one far more suited to as calm a day as possible.  Inevitably, it now looks like tomorrow’s wind is delayed until Thursday……

On the subject of weather forecasts, we didn’t manage to get radio comms with Tim on Rohkea this the morning which was a shame.  And we also failed to get comms with him this evening on the OCC’s Transatlantic Crossing net, which is most unusual.  We had hoped to get from him the most recent Met Area 1 forecast (UK High Seas forecast); maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow.  However, I did manage to speak to Chris Parker in Florida this evening.  The low pressure coming out of Canada will start to affect us from Friday, with gales on Saturday.  But at least the winds will be primarily southwesterly, which is good for heading homeward bound.  Chris has recommended that we head east for the time being to try to avoid the worst of the winds and given that there is likely to be virtually no wind for most of Wednesday, I guess we’ll motor east and then as the wind fills in sail east.  By the time that it really starts to pick up from the southwest we’ll still be no further east than about 16W so we’ll have plenty of sea-room on the French coast and on Biscay too.  I guess that tomorrow we’ll be making a stew and a couple of soups and maybe baking some more bread to help to tide us through the strong winds.  Meanwhile, in better news, we now have less than 1000nm to go along our route, though the direct line route to Guernsey is actually about 50nm less at present.

Pork tenderloin flambéed with rum and cooked with
caramelised onions, garlic and cream

And finally, we couldn’t celebrate our anniversary too outrageously whilst at sea but have plans for a nice restaurant visit when we make landfall in Guernsey.  Nonetheless, Nicky started the day off well for us by making pancakes to go with our fresh fruit for breakfast.  Later we shared half a bottle of fizz for sundowners and made a pork tenderloin dish flambéed with rum and cooked with caramelised onions, garlic and cream.  Not bad passage meals at all and, given that we spent our honeymoon sailing the tides along the Brittany coast (and consequently had many a very early start) it seems appropriate that we should be celebrating our anniversary at sea on passage.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 16 Jun: N46 34 W027 38

Position at midnight 16 Jun: N46 28 W026 08

Midday to midday distance through water: 120 nautical miles (average 5.0 knots).

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 115 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water: 153 nautical miles (average 6.4 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 133 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water:  2939 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 1000 nautical miles

End of Day 19 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey

End of Day 18 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 (N, GMT -1) Mon 15 Jun 2020

Dear All,

At midnight the wind had dropped off to just 5 knots and so, after several hours of ghosting along under sail at around 4½ knots, but with the speed now down at 2½ knots, it was time to switch to engine power if we are going to maintain any sort of progress east.  We could have just drifted and waited for the wind to build again but, based upon Chris Parker’s Saturday weather forecast, we felt that we ought to keep moving so that we are on the edge of the big low pressure system coming at the end of the week and not in the middle of it.  The big question is where the fronts will be and where along them the predicted gale force winds.  We plan to get another detailed update on Tuesday so today’s task was just to keep progressing east to put some distance between us and the expected centre of the low.

Dawn – with near glassy seas

And that’s not a lot of wind.  Not a lot of wind at all!

For the first 13½ hours the was so little wind that we got no help from the sails.  Nicky had furled away both the genoa and staysail shortly after midnight but the mainsail was still up, hanging limply.  However, finally, at 1330hrs the wind started to increase just enough to sail at 3½ knots so we poled out the genoa and switched off the noise-maker.  We went for that sail plan because we didn’t think that there was enough wind to fill our spinnaker/MPS and lift the weight of the sheets and guys.

We have been running the engine at 1500 rpm to conserve fuel so, whilst we weren’t sailing fast with the engine off, it was a lot better than drifting or using our precious fuel supplies.  We still have enough fuel to motor for 3½ days (84 hrs) but are expecting to have to motor more on Tuesday to keep making easting and stay clear of the depression and then want to keep the remaining fuel in reserve for when we are in the English Channel and potentially have to deal with a no wind situation with the strong tidal flows there.

No speed records broken today!

Creeping along at 3¼-4 knots was the theme for the rest of the day and night.  It feels like slow progress but it is progress and in the right direction too.  On the HF/SSB radio we are talking to yachts which are a couple of hundred miles southwest of the Azores and which are struggling to make any reasonable headway towards Horta because of winds on the nose and very confused seas.  In comparison we are very well placed and in far more comfortable sea conditions.  We have also used the HF/SSB radio to speak with Tim on Rohkea, another yacht on the OCC Atlantic crossing radio net that we help to run.  He’s about 570miles to the northeast of us and had been aiming to make landfall in Falmouth but is now looking to divert into Cork or Bantry Bay in Ireland to keep clear of the depression that we are heading east to avoid.  He is able to download the same meteorological charts and GRiB files that we used to get before the laptop failed and has kindly agreed to talk us through what the weather situation when downloads the files tomorrow.  That will help immeasurably in understanding how and where the depression develops and will also prepare us so that we can ask the right questions when we talk to Chris Parker in the evening.  We have to talk to Chris in the evenings because he is based in Florida and our SSB will only work effectively at those ranges after the sun has set.  That’s according to radio propagation theory, but Florida still a long way away and, in reality, clear communications with Chris are not guaranteed, hence the extra support from Tim on Rohkea is really appreciated.
Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 15 Jun: N46 30 W030 13

Position at midnight 15 Jun: N46 34 W029  6

Midday to midday distance through water (23hrs due time change): 111 nautical miles (average 4.8 knots).

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination (23hrs due time change): 121 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water: 110 nautical miles (average 4.6 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 118 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water: 2787 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 1122 nautical miles

End of Day 18 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey