Distance travelled in the past 24 hours 145 NM, distance to Horta, Azores 1524 NM.
We spent most of yesterday motor sailing south to reach an latitude of 31 degrees north to try to avoid the bad weather further north, and consequently had a relaxed and steady day. At 6pm it was time for Peter to enjoy his beer, the prize for accurately predicting our time to arrive at 1000NM since departing St Martin. He generously offered to allow us all to share in his victory with excellent Antiguan IPA all round.
Overnight the winds picked up a little allowing us to switch back to sail power. By about 6am we were sufficiently far south to allow us to turn to the east and in the direction of the Azores, finally!
Turning east also meant that we are now sailing downwind and that involved a considerable reconfiguration of the sails. It took all three of us on deck to turn to wind, furl the mainsail, ‘pole’ out the Genoa on the boom and the Staysail on the spinnaker pole – a complex set of manoeuvres taking almost two hours. The end result is that we have a very safe and stable downwind sailing set up and we hope that the conditions will allow us to continue with this arrangement for most, if not all the way towards Horta. In fact this is exactly the set up Cate and I had for the east to west Atlantic crossing in January 2025 and we didn’t have to make any changes, bar reefing, for the entire two week crossing.