Position:  50:11.46N 32:02.86W

 

Breakfast was lovely today.  It was misty first thing.  By the time I was eating it in the cockpit a hole had appeared overhead with blue sky and whispy high white cloud visible through it.  As breakfast progressed the hole grew and shrank in size as the mist oscillated between being fairly close in and thinning. Rather Frenchman's creek-ish.  Thankfully no vessel was revealed whenever the mist drew away. 

 

The only downside to this idyllic situation was groups of birds sitting on the water - as those who have followed the blog now know, this is not a good prognosticator.

 

We were becalmed once more (from yesterday early evening until noon GMT today) in an area of high pressure.  This is situated in an unusual position for this time of year.  I gather from Sheila that the weather in the UK has been unusual too. 

 

One of the several pieces of advice that Neil gave me just before leaving was not to put up the cruising chute.  This is a very large sail, useful in light airs, which has to be rigged with a pole and many bits of string. It takes a long time to put it up if there are two of you, and would take longer still for one person. If you are caught with it up when the wind strength increases, getting it down alone would contain an element of risk due to the large forces that it can generate, and the time it would take to get down. Neil will, I hope, be happy to hear that in the spells of being becalmed there has been so little wind that I have not even been tempted.

 

There have been more spells without wind than during the sailing trip last year: A niggling concern is the impact of this on ETA.

 

To set against all of this, we're sailing gently and enjoyably downwind at 4.5 knots currently.