We have been making much slower progress towards Ponta Delgada on São Miguel island in the Azores than we had hoped. The cause has been unfavorable, stormy weather with rough seas, driving rain and numerous squalls with some massive lightning storms. The wind has, and continues to be from the North East or East, we want it from either the South East or North.
We still have 1,607 nautical miles to go (as the crow flies) but the actual distance to sail will be longer than that, as all of PredictWind weather routing models have us going North of the Azores and then back down to make landfall.
Here is a screen shot of the local weather forecast from a few days ago:
We have seen some dolphins a few days back, but no ships at all for several days.
Our supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables are almost depleted, so we will have to start getting creative with dried and canned goods for our once-a-day cooked evening meals. Tonight John P is going to cook risotto with chicken, last night Kelvin made bratwurst fried with onions, tomatoes and baked potatoes on the side. The night before that I made a pork stir fry with toasted peanuts and Penang curry paste with steamed rice.
We spend most of our time reading inside the pilot house, hoping for breaks in the rain, listening to music on the stereo and taking naps, as moving around inside the cabins is quite challenging. This weather re-confirmed for me the decision to buy a pilothouse yacht! PredictWind is however promising lighter winds that should veer around to the South East, so we are looking forward to some easier going in a better direction. Tonight, if the lighter winds stay in the 20s, we won’t reef down quite as conservatively as the last two nights, so we can keep our VMG (velocity made good) towards Ponta Delgada as high as possible. The downside of this is that we will need to lower the high wind speed alarm to 25kts or so, which increases the likelihood of being woken up in the middle of the night to reef. When we turn in at night to sleep, we don’t say “see you in the morning” but “see you at reef O’clock”!
The VMG has been 4-7 kts today so far, with just one reef on the Genoa and the main, so that is good going if we can keep it up as the winds slow down.
