If You Don't Like the Weather...

One of the nice things about ocean voyaging these days is the vast amount of detailed weather information that is available by email and weather fax. We chose the word “detailed” carefully - we did not choose the word accurate. The ocean journey from the Canary Islands to Florida is often referred to by sailors as the ”milk run” because of its ease and predictability. Instead, what we got was a Milk Shake!

Not complaining here, but the day before yesterday we were sitting in our boat slowing spinning around in circles while becalmed, watching movies with popcorn and eating chick pea curry on rice for dinner while watching a beautiful sunset. In less than 24 hours we were watching waves sweep over the deck of our suddenly smaller boat while our stomachs churned in circles as we choked down a protein bar and the view was very much like a really bad movie in one of those motion theaters that were around 20 years ago.

It seems there was a low pressure system that was bigger than we thought, in a different place than we thought, moving faster than we thought with more wind than we thought, and containing more rain and thunder than we thought or wanted, really. At first we agreed it was kind of cool to have a good rain to clean all the salt off everything. Our grins faded quickly when the wind built to over 30 knots and coated the boat, and us, with salt spray and even insisted on sending waves down the deck at us just to remind us who the boss is out here.

We did shoot some nice video of Pat back at the wheel hand steering while sheets of rain obscured everything behind him. And in front of him for that matter. The worst of it lasted only (?) 12 hours. We spent a lot of that time weaving in and out of storm cells trying to dodge the biggest black spots on the radar.

It has been more than a week since we have seen a boat or ship out here. What do they know that we don't???

Posted by Peggy, on behalf of Tom and Pat, aboard Remedios, Atlantic Ocean