Weather have been very good, one might say close to excellent, but not any more. I’v been focused on avoiding to be becalmed, and missed to look at the gust forecast. Luckily Kerstin has not. yesterday afternoon she pointed out to me that we are in for some potentially nasty weather. And yes we were, the approaching cold front has plenty of rain and gusts to offer. Something we would like to minimize the impact of. We changed our strategy went down wind with pooled out genoa direct to the front to shorten the distance with bad weather. After a few hours the wind shifted almost 180 degree and increased to about 20 knot true, soon also massive rain. Unfortunately the thought might have been right but probably wrongly executed. We are now since early last night sailing up wind in 18 to 20 knot true wind, speed ok, course not so good, and the ride is rather uncomfortable with large swells sometimes confused a lot of hammering. Even small issues like making a cup of coffee is challenging, making a bowl of cereal or with milk requires two persons. But this is not all on Wednesday a new weather system might develop to some really bad, Chris Parker our routing man suggest heaving to in such case.
So no cheese and cracker sailing any longer, however maybe the only thing we can eat now! as cooking now not only difficult but a bit hazardous.
Distance last 24 h 159 nM
Distance to go 969 nM
Still life is good.