Day 187 - Preparing for Real Weather

It is easy to forget about tropical storms and hurricanes once they depart the east coast, many of us forget that these same weather systems continue on across the Atlantic, sometimes even providing Europe with a feel for the tropics. I have been watching passage weather for days, warning Bob of an approaching system. Only after two things happened, a call from True World Marine (were they were preparing for Tropical Storm Andrea) and I opened CNN to see a map with the track of Andrea, the Tropical Storm, did I realize the system I was following was all related to the storm. I am afraid I have panicked Bob by mentioning the word hurricane. The map below is the wind forecast for Monday noon. I have been emailing an occasional weather map to Bob but it is very slow and cumbersome to send attachments on the satellite phone. Bob tried to download a hurricane track but found that unwieldy as well.The good news is there are people out there who can help with routing in situations like this and we have reached out and initiated the process to get a little help with this one.  We'll keep you posted.

Hi Everyone,

Moving north-northeast at a snail’s pace for the past couple of days.  Hardly any wind.  We have run through a fair bit of our diesel fuel so we either get wind or we sit.  We just got a wind shift and enough wind to make five kts over the ground towards our waypoint so that is good.  Hoping it lasts.  We also sailed out of a veil of clouds and mists that we have been wallowing in for the last three or four days and we finally had a little sun for the afternoon.  It really brightened the mood.  The Azores will always leave a bit of a sour taste for me.

We spent the morning doing prep work for heavy weather sailing.  According to the weather reports we will be wishing for calm instead of wind within the next 48-52 hours.  We think we have taken care of a number of weaknesses.  Mostly trying to stop small leaks and rebalance the boat as we have used up stores and diesel etc.

I made mushroom and pepperoni pizza today with chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  We are on our new time schedule using UTC which is the same as the old Greenwich Mean Time.   This should be the correct local time until we get to Norway.

I started going through navigation and route planning for our arrival in Ireland.  I usually rely on Kim for this stuff because she is so good at it and I think she really enjoys it.  Grandpa is zero help.  He thought Mark and I would do it and besides he is red/green color blind.  Also he can't see much unless he has his special whale watching glasses on.  He told me he is trying to retrain his eyes to see distance by not wearing his glasses.  I don't think anything on his body or mind is re-trainable.

As I am writing this a new wind is filling in:

            Current Position:
            20:22 UTC
            42 28 N
            29 16 W
            spd 6 kts
            Hdg 28 degrees True
            Wind 13 kts
             running a broad reach full main and full genoa at the moment it is very peaceful.

We have been seeing hundreds of dolphins today but they are not very social and many seem to be different species than we have seen so far.  In the calm water you can see all sorts of creepy jellyfish and worm like creatures, some that are eight feet long.  Looks like stuff you would see 10 million years ago.  We also saw three turtles today but strangely and sadly it looked like they were all dead.  One large ship passed about five miles in front of us.  We have one more meal of fish left in the box so grandpa tried to catch more today with no luck.  I think we have been moving too slowly to catch fish.

All for now,

Love Dad and Grandpa