Slow crossing

The least you can say is the trades were intermittent this December. We started with a Northerly in the Cape Verdes which became a North by North Easterly the next day. The next three days we had fair winds from the North East to East by North East. Then the wind died to a force three from the East and this stayed for three days.

The next 4 days gave us a force three to four from the East, which was only enough for about 115-120 NM per day. So a little slow, but manageable. After that, we had a disturbance taking the wind away for four days so we motored intermittently, the longest time we had the engine on was 30 hours.

The last three days, from December 25 to 27 we had plenty of wind from the East and North East. Our total average didn't drop beneath 5 knots, but our daily average often did, both with sails and engine.

From the Grib files I could make a few tactical routing decisions such as heading further South to avoid the worst of the disturbance ahead of us. W probably would have been better off leaving about two days later because there was generally more wind behind us. I will certainly get a 14 or 20 day grib forecast to get as clear of a picture of the weather situation further ahead.

But from a comparison of the different downloaded gribfiles, the change in the weather pattern wasn't really predicted when we set off. So it wouldn't have changed our projected departure date.

The only thing I can add to my defense is this: the day we left, about 12 yachts did the same. So we weren't the only ones making a slow crossing.