Our third day out from the Azores was incredible. Winds picked up and we started moving rather quickly! We covered 115 nautical miles made good noon to noon.
While the winds picked up, the seas did as well, thankfully it was downwind as we sailed North.
The route we planned was devised by a combination of a few sources of information. Since the standard route is to sail straight to Lisbon and use the motor to compensate for poor navigational judgement, we decided to look elsewhere for inspiration. I consulted the Pilot Charts which show the average wind conditions in this area at this time of year. The plan was to sail North to around 47*N, then sail over to the edge of the Iberian Peninsula, then come down with the Portuguese Trade Winds.
The second source I used was historical trade routes voyaged by square riggers who could not sail upwind.
In the wind map, you can see the center of the high pressure settling in again, providing no wind between the Azores and Portugal, followed by the prevailing Northerly winds coming down the Portuguese Coast as well as the Southerly prevailing winds near the Azores.
While it is nice to retrospectively look back at the wind maps for this area on those dates, sadly, I did not have access to this information while we were actually making the voyage. My weather information came from the cloud formations above us in the sky. This is how we make our passages, we wait for the weather to be safe to leave where we are and sail as far away from shore as we can, then we deal with the weather that comes at us preparing for the coming wind based on what the clouds tell us.
