Thursday afternoon 06July

The wind forecast we use offshore is a program called GRIBS, never mind what the letters stand for. The shortwave radio is connected by a modem to the computer, and messages can be send and receive. This is the same system we use for email. I just about stretched the GRIB system to its limit, and tried to figure out what the winds were going to do for the next week. The bad news is that this south-west wind is going to persist. So we have t deal with it. The best I can tell is that we have two choices. One is too go south for two days, get down to where the wind is more from the south, then ride the south and south-west wind for probably six days back up to North Carolina, for a total of eight days. The other choice is to put the south-west wind on the port side and let it take us north of Cape Hatteras to make land somewhere up there. That should take about six days. I decided that it would be better if we headed north because it was two days shorter, even though I would not end up where I wanted to go (to Normandie). From where we were this morning Wilmington was on a bearing of 285 degrees from us. The best we have been able to sail has been about 300 degrees, so based on what we have been able to do we could not make Wilmington. A course of 300 degrees would put us north of Cape Hatteras, but the Gulf Stream would sweep us even farther to the north. But that is the plan, to not sail south, and to make land where ever the wind takes us. So I put the wind on the port side and tried sailing 300 degrees. Not only could I not sail 300 degrees, the boat was actually sailing 360, or straight to Nova Scotia! The wind had veered, and sailing straight north was not a good thing to do. So we tacked , and are now going south southwest, with the best sailing we have had since we left Bermuda.
The west wind that suddenly messed up my plans is forecasted to back around to south-west, and then we will head for Norfolk.
Other than that, it is not really uncomfortable on nboard, and we are catching up on our reading.
Bill Doar
s/v Advent II