Day 9 – Halfway!

Yesterday, after 7.5 days at sea, we passed the halfway point between Annapolis and Horta.  We opened one of the gifts from family in celebration.  It was Almond Butter, which sounds really good right now.  The last few days were tough with thurderstorms, winds up over 35 knots, really light winds, and consistent ugly sea state that makes life onboard not so comfortable.  Today, though, is much improved.  We’ve had wind from the same direction (SW) at roughly the same speed (20-30 knots) for 24 hours now and the waves finally look normal.  We’ve been flying just the genoa, but still reaching along around 7 knots.  I think we did 190nm ending yesterday at 7pm.  Our top speed so far is now 14.69 knots, set two nights ago in a wild surf in about 40 knots of breeze with just the main with a single reef.  I was hand steering just waiting for it to get a little lighter out before we took down the main completely.  That was pretty high on the excito-meter, but not something we need to repeat anytime soon.

The weather has been fairly strange so far (isn’t it everywhere nowadays).  There have been weak low pressure centers strong out between the east coast and east of Canada.  The lows themselves have been nothing special, but at that same time the Atlantic High has decided to move west and this is pushing up against the low centers, creating a strong pressure gradient right over us.  It’s a “crush zone”.  We’ve seen the barometer go from 1007 to 1022 in less than 2 days with very little change in wind speed.  Now our challenge is play the center of the Atlantic High to our south.  Too close and the winds will die away completely.  Too far away and we add distance as well as put ourselves in the potential path of lows passing to the north of the high.

Having the mainsail down really simplifies the sailing, but one drawback is that with it centered, it blocks the solar panel.  We’ll have to come up with a new arrangement today, either hoisting the main, or securing it off center so we can keep converting photons to electrons.

I had a happy ending event last night when I turned on the tri-color nav light at the top of the mast.  I noticed it was flickering on and off as the boat rolled side to side.  I went below to the mast to check the connections and while I was looking up through a hatch at the tri-color I could see that the flickering was coincident with the lights dimming slightly down below, and that was coincident was the autopilot kicking on to turn the boat.  Elementary, my dear Watson, the battery voltage had gotten lower than normal and things we starting to not work at that low voltage.  Flipped on the engine for an hour to charge the batteries and all was well.  I saw higher amps out of the alternator this time too, so maybe there isn’t any issue with the alternator after all.  Yes, this is the sort of thing we do to pass the days.

Current position – 39 41.26N 51 24.08W
Distance to go – 1060nm
24 hour run – 168nm

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