Fw: Day 16 - Passage to the Caribbean
Misterx
Fri 18 Apr 2025 22:44
-----Original Message----- From: Mister X
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 10:46 PM
To: web diary
Cc: Manuela Claite
Subject: Day 16 - Passage to the Caribbean
02 19.0S : 027 13.0W
16/04/25
8:30 pm
Day 16
South Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 2,224 NM (87NM)
Sitting sunder a huge black cloud at the moment, with the wind indicator
swinging madly. We have no wind!
We have been sitting under this bank of clouds for at least 3 hours and we
can't see the end of it.
We first come across this humongous beast shortly after 3.30 pm, it had been
looming on the hedge of our horizon for a while, slowly becoming taller,
higher, wider, with 3 huge mushroom tops and most inconveniently in our way.
When we first tracked it it was moving, at glacial pace, I admit, but moving
from right to left. Then it just stopped, for no reason at all, it just
stopped moving, right there, right in the middle of our way... As mentioned
before, it is difficult to judge how far those things are, bug given the
size of it, it looks like it is close enough to warranty some action, so we
go through our Big Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy... first we
slow the boat down, we were doing a fair 4.5 knots under sail, quite
happily, we shorten the genoa, we go down to 3 knots. And we stay like this
for an hour, measuring the cloud movement with the compass. Nothing, the
blob has not moved, we, however, have moved closer and it doesn't look nice,
all 50 shades of grey under there, rain, loads of rain and we don't know how
bad it really is under there... there could be mad winds, coming from all
directions and at all sort of speed, there could be drizzle or driving rain
and anything in between, there could be thunder in the thick of it, there
could be no wind... there could be anything and its contrary all at the same
time! I don't think we want to go through it, so we now go to phase 2 of our
Big Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy, I take the wheel and aim for
the the right end edge of the Beast, we are now hard on the wind so the wind
vane cannot cope, I have to drive. The edge is now on the left side of our
mast, and we are hoping that we will reach the end of the cloud bank and go
around it but the Beast is still not moving away. After another hour, it is
still there, exactly at the same point, it is time for stage 3 of our Big
Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy, put the engine on and try to go
around this before dark sets in....Tension is high, will we make it? And we
fail miserably! We give in finally, cut off the engine, set the sails and
our course back to where we want to go, i.e North, out of the Doldrums, and
we watch the sun disappear in a glorious cacophony of colours under the
horizon, whilst we aim for the darkest of the bank of clouds. Admittedly,
not fast because the wind has gone dramatically down. There is still the mad
hope that the Beast will have either moved away or disintegrated by the time
we reach it... not quite so lucky, the rain got us, but after all the
anticipation, it is a bit of an anti-climax... all we found under this
corner of the Beast was a bit of drizzle, and there isn't any wind under
there! We managed to avoid the worst of it all. We thank our lucky star,
once again, our Big Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy worked a
treat!
This was the end of a perfect day sailing, wall to wall sunshine, enough
wind for us to make progress and in the right direction. We encountered very
few intimidating clouds today, and all of them, bar the last, were far
enough from us not to be a threat. The few crossing our path only brought a
little bit more wind and nothing else. The waves were gentle and we had a
nice ride. We did see an awful lot of rubbish floating around, bit of
polystyrene mainly, a jerry can, a few plastic bottles floating past us. And
loads of seaweed, beautiful golden colour, huge rafts of them... We had to
clear the rudder of the wind vane often during the day... seaweeds getting
caught in it.
10pm - Middle of my watch
The rain has stopped finally and the wind indicator is not swinging madly
anymore, the sails are not flapping, we have a little puff of air, not much
it is only 6 knots, and I can see the moon and the stars! We have finally,
after a good 5 hours, come out from under the Beast!
M