High pressure system

Current location: 25°57′42″ N  16°34′44″ V 100 nm off the coast of Western Sahara, 20.26 UTC

At this point very few boats remain in sight. The ocean is big and every boat has made their own navigational decisions. By coincidence two of the boats that are close to us are new friends we’ve met on the dock before heading out. But most probably those boats will also be out of line of sight very soon. We are sailing in a high pressure system which means that I would normally say that the weather is great! But it also means that the wind force is low and doesn’t really fill the sails. When sailing around in Sweden that isn’t so much of a problem as one can just bob around enjoying the sunny weather, but here, it is a bit of an issue. Why? Because of the swell. The large swell waves will make the boom of the boat rock to the sides, and the sails flop inside out inside our inside our inside out and so on and so forth. That creates tear that we don’t want when sailing some 3000 nautical miles. So we motored last night as well as a couple of hours today. All fine and good, with the minor detail that we only have enough fuel for about 3 days. In order to find more wind we have tried to analyze the (somewhat unreliable) weather data to make a good route plan. Easier said than done but now we think we have a solid plan. It involves heading south toward the trade winds and more reliable weather systems, staying away from the coast of Africa for safety, but going as close as the weather allows. And in a day or two we’ll head west toward the Caribbean and with the swells going our direction. You can follow our route on the ARC rally website.

Linda