Distance covered in the past 24 hours 156NM
We have had a pretty good day and night sailing in conditions that were blustery by day, became much calmer overnight but picked up again this morning. Peter took the opportunity to teach us the basics of Astro navigation using our sextant to take a noon sight. It has to be said that both Jon and myself were pretty amateurish in our attempts. Perhaps we can blame the very role sea conditions…or perhaps not! The forecast for tomorrow suggests cloudy skies so we may be spared the embarrassment of more sextant navigation.
To help us with our weather routing we have employed a professional meteorologist, Kai, who is sending us daily updates on the weather forecast and suggestions for the optimum route, avoiding very strong or adverse winds but aiming to pick up the favourable ones. We are concerned that the high pressure area we had been aiming for is now being squeezed out by a low pressure front descending from the north, bringing strong north easterlies that would be difficult to sail. The advice is to head towards Bermuda so you will see our track veering towards the north west, very frustrating but the best course at present. We will be making every use of Kai’s services to try to find the best way through the weather systems ahead.