Ten months have passed since we slipped through the breakwater and tied up at Angra do Heroismo. Now, we finally slipped out through the same breakwater and made our way North. Our goal is to sail way North to go around the Azores High that is parked right between the Azores and Portugal.
We are heading from the little islands out in the middle of the ocean and heading towards the top of Portugal. While it looks like we could sail easily on a beam reach all the way across, the route is not that simple. If we were to risk this route, we run into a few problems.
The high can generate some very calm conditions. This is not normally an issue, but the current combined with becalmed conditions means that we would be carried South every day without any means of combating this. Along the coast of Portugal, the Portuguese Trade Winds blow strongly and straight out of the North. This means that if we drift South, we will have to sail upwind and up current to make it to our destination!
To be safe, our route is very North so that we can drift down onto our destination with the wind and current. This was explicitly done to avoid the common story we hear of people sailing to Lisbon. They have a great calm sail/motor all the way there and then spend the last few days (when they enter the trade winds and current) beating into 25 knots of wind with high waves! To counteract the current, they need to turn North a little. This means that beam wind becomes ‘forward’ of the beam wind, which means beating. Suddenly, a pleasant cruise ends with a horrible nightmare! We are preparing for these powerful winds and current, but it will be a run or broad reach for us!
With our obscenely long route planned, we were setting out to sail 1,200 nautical miles to travel 800 nautical miles East. As you can see from the screenshot of Navionics, we held close to the plan, but sailed to the wind and not to the course.
