The Catamaran Adventures of Noel and Ceu

Finally Some Wind!

Friday, 17 June, 2011. 13:10 GMT. 38 05 N 18 57 W

After motoring for 200 miles due east in glassy seas, and having visions of
taking two weeks to actually get to Portugal, the wind finally filled in a
bit yesterday evening.

At supper time we put up the spinnaker with the main in about 5 kts on a
broad reach on port. Barely enough, but it meant we could finally turn off
the engine.

Ah, the silence!

To maintain the broad reach so that the spinnaker wasn’t blanketed by the
main, we had to head up about 20 deg above our rhumb line course. This took
us up to the 38th parallel again – same latitude as Flores – but meant we
could keep up our speed of about 4 kts.

Overnight the wind freshened to as much as 15 kts and veered, allowing us to
drop back to the rhumb line course and now even a bit below us.

This morning it is at about 10 kts and we are zooming along in pretty smooth
seas at about 7 kts. Much better!

We have about 470 miles to go. The forecast now shows that this should
remain for the rest of the journey, so at present we are hoping for a Monday
or, more likely, Tuesday arrival.

We shall see!

With the calm winds and smooth seas we have just been chilling out. The sun
finally came out too, so we could air everything out. We edited some video
(which we will post when we get there), adjusted the regulator on the port
engine alternator to improve the charging rate, read books, watched movies,
and played chess.

Not to bad, really.

One Response to “Finally Some Wind!”

  • Heidi:

    We are not short of wind here! Windsurfers and kiters are charging up and down the Solent, the trees and whooshing and the laundry flapping. It was so windy in Holland that we could not walk against it. Don’t know why you thought there was not sufficient wind for windsurfing in Lee.

Leave a Reply