Tuesday August 26th - Passage making
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Tue 26 Aug 2014 12:19
On leaving Iceland we encountered easterly winds and a short choppy sea at first. The wind force was 3 or below making sailing towards the south east almost impossible; we motored into the chop and hoped that once clear of the land that the promised south westerly Force 5 would appear. This happened around 9 pm. The waves began to space out and get slightly bigger while the wind picked up - to a Force 6/7 from the West south west. We were soon bowling along in a close reach at around 8 knots with 2 reefs in the main, the stay sail and a third of the yankee. The wind strengthened overnight to the top end of a force 7 requiring the yankee to be put away in total. Unlike our passage out towards Iceland we saw many more vessels; a steamer and several fishermen but none came close.
Dawn brought sunshine and the wind has dropped slightly to a force 5. We rolled out the yankee to two-thirds to keep our speed up and gradually increased this to the entire sail by midday. We also shook out the second reef. The GRIB file predicts that this wind will eventually drop and back to the south and then east by Wednesday evening. We hope very much we are in or at least close to Faeroe by then otherwise it will mean we have to tack. Currently the motion of the wind and waves means that the boat is continually shifting and turning as the wind has caused the waves to increase in size. Not a few of them have come to say “hello” to us in the cockpit. Fortunately it’s not that cold. At one point Fiona was working a sheet on the leeward side when a big wave came over and filled the gunwales (and her boots!) with sparkling phosphorescent speckled water. Fresh from the gulf stream.
We've about 140 nautical miles to go under (we hope) sunny skies to help dry us out. Since 6 pm last night we have made 115 miles mostly under sail with Fiona doing more than her share of watch-keeping as James is a bit queasy from the motion after three weeks of the sort of cruising that allows one to be in port or at anchor every night.