Sunday Update from the Sailors

Here's the latest from our sailors (Posted by Peggy on behalf of Pat, Rob and Tom, aboard Remedios, Atlantic Ocean):

We expect to arrive in Horta in the Azores around July 28. We had been blessed with about four straight days of moderate winds and mostly sunny skies. But, Mother Nature had one last blast for us, to remind us who is really the boss out here. We got nailed, on Saturday, of all days!

The storm started with building winds and waves during the night and dawn found us all in the cockpit, huddled in our rain gear watching the mountainous waves go under us and waiting for the next rain squall to hit. Pat relieved "Wendy the Windvane" of her steering duties first and assigned them to "Otto the Autopilot." After some time he fired Otto and resorted to hand steering through the seas for most of the morning. Rob and I tried to keep the admittedly banal conversation going as best we could to keep morale up and keep our attention on moe amusing topics.

Why the storm?

Weather systems out here operate kind of like a pitching machine. A high is surrounded by clockwise winds and a low is surrounded by counterclockwise winds. Where the two pressure systems meet is a band of wind that is quite predictable and if your navigation is good, you can get squirted through the gap just like a baseball. You can pick what part of the gap to aim for (this is what Rob does) and that helps you pick your wind strength.

Well, our nearby low system popped a pimple (Pat's phrase, not Tom's) and busted out of its nice predictable shape. Remedios was right there when it happened and we got slammed for a day. Winds were 35 mph+ and the waves were harder to measure. Let's just say real big. We managed to miss most of the waves, yet a few got through and gave us the old salt water bath.

Pat said if we just kept heading east we would eventually suffer enough and make our way through our personal storm and you know what, he was right! The winds moderated down to the mid 20s and we even cooked a hot dinner that night.

We are glad that is over with. Next up is the Azores High, a nice stable weather system that almost always hovers over the Azores and we expect good sailing on to Horta (knock on wood).

And, here's an "educational item" left earlier for all our blog readers:

Here are a couple knives we hope we never have to use. We have two awfully sharp knives at the ready. One is up front on the mast, and knife number two is fastened to the radar post at the stern of the boat. Sometimes, especially when the wind is really blowing, lines can get tangled up and it's not unheard of for a sailor to get tangled up in them at just the wrong time. Even though we all carry knives in our pockets (Tom's is a gift from Peggy and is an illegal switchblade Spyderco), there may come a time when grabbing one of these and hacking through a line is just what's needed. We could even use them to clean fish!