Location: Atlantic Ocean – Day 2
Position: 23 01.21 N 61 32.49 W
Total miles to date: 315.7
Today is Mark’s birthday – Happy Birthday!!
We finally did it, raised the anchor at 12:30pm on June 4th and set sail for the Azores. As the crow flies, it’s NE and about 2,200 miles from St Martin.
The weather forecasters were calling for 15 kt winds from the South East which is perfect for where we want to go. As soon as we left the anchorage we realized that this was not to be the case. The wind was more Easterly at 15-20 mph gusting to 25. Hmm. Time to switch to Plan B.
We motor-sailed and beat our way up the channel between St Martin and Anguilla. As soon as we got clear of the islands we fell off to almost due North to make the ride more comfortable and cut the engine. We were in pretty big seas all afternoon with waves of 8-12 ft and a few 15-18 footers thrown in. We made good progress and enjoyed a great, albeit bouncy sail. At the end of Day 1 we had covered 178.3 nautical miles – a pretty good run for a sailboat.
The first day we were all getting our sea legs Mark and I were learning the ship’s systems, the way this boat handles, what all the lines are for (and there are a lot of them), etc. Now that we are beginning to get a handle on the day-to-day running of the boat and our hosts are learning what we can and can’t be trusted with yet, we feel like we’re able to participate more actively and take some of the load off our friends.
Day 2
Because the winds are so consistent there’s not much work to do on a crossing like this. We set the sails and the autopilot and leave them, this enables all on board to just chill out! We read, chat and look out to sea, and take our turns on watch. We’ve been kidding around that if something didn’t happen soon we’ll have to start making exciting stuff up for the Khronicles.
We are running a watch schedule of 3 hours on and 9 off. We may switch them around later but for now Julie is on 12-3 (am + pm) and Mark is on 6-9 (am + pm).
We haven’t seen any fish and until last night hadn’t seen any other boats. Our night watch includes sitting in the cockpit do a 360 degree check around the horizon every 10 minutes and check the radar every 20-30 minutes. After not seeing anything all day this seemed almost a redundant task but that night we saw 4 boats. When you see the lights of another vessel the next job is to figure out which way it is going, and plot it’s course to make sure we aren’t going to collide. Good news – we didn’t collide!!! Now, that’s a successful night watch!
The wind has died down a bit today. We are getting closer to the Doldrums and may need to motor some later today or tomorrow if the wind gives out on us.
Mark & Julie
s/v Rachel
