Where are we trying to go? The Azores.
What cardinal direction are they? East
Let’s go East!
Very slowly, we continue our voyage easterly. We avoid heading North because those gales are still up there.
At this pace, we hope to make it to the Azores before the year ends, even though it’s only June 23.
For a change of pace, we managed to catch our first fish of the trip! This gave us some welcome variety into our diet as we now had fish for dinner!
No more Weather Fax! It keeps predicting wind and then not delivering. Friends on shore also keep telling us that tomorrow, there will be plenty of wind, but it never comes!
This is my first night of the crossing that when 8pm EST comes around, I don’t download the Weather Fax. It has become a joke on the boat: Whatever the Weather Fax calls for will be the only scenario that will not occur! If it calls for wind, prepare to be becalmed. If it calls for becalmed, prepare the storm sails!
Maddie and I decide to stop chasing the wind that is supposed to be somewhere out there and instead begin our VERY slow journey East.
We spent a week sailing across an ocean, but all we did was circle the northern part of the Bahamas. This is like turning on a Roomba in a room and shutting the door; when you return 5 hours later, expecting the room to be fully vacuumed, you find that everything is still dirty and the Roomba got trapped in a corner!
In this full week, we sailed 398 miles, or an average of 56 miles per day. That is a far cry from our anticipated 80 or hopeful 100 miles per day! Worst of all, this was sailing 24 hours a day. With a crew of 3, we were able to do “4 on - 8 off” watch schedule. Everyone got plenty of sleep while the unlucky person had to sit in the cockpit and stare at the stars reflection in the glassy water!
This is not what we expected when we thought about crossing the ocean. All we have been doing is biding our time as we wait for the right weather to launch our trip, but instead of leaving from a port where we have access to food, water, and entertainment; we are leaving from the middle of the water, where there is no access to any of these things and all our provisions need to be conserved as we appear to be in for a VERY slow crossing.
We could not catch a break! The winds that were supposed to occur down south ended up happening up north, back where we were! We quickly turned around and began making our way back to where we were yesterday.
What about the winds that we were told would happen? Nope, nothing, nada. We were bobbing around with no wind in sight.
To make that day even better, I couldn’t get a single weather fax to come in! Everything was gray and static!
When we planned our transatlantic voyage, we were planning on covering 100 miles per day since this is average. Being how we are a bit slow, we were expecting to cover 80 miles per day. We are now a week out from shore and still hanging around the Bahamas! That is where people go because they don’t want to sail far away from land go!
How are we supposed to cross an ocean if we can’t even break away from land?
Despair, hopeless, lost? Yes, this is how we felt. We have been sailing for almost a week and we are bobbing around about a hundred miles from the Eluthra Island chain of the Bahamas. We are not moving, we are not sailing, we are just floating around aimlessly!
The winds that were supposed to come, didn’t come. We are so far away from the Gulf Stream that it feels like it would take another week just to float our way back to it. When puffs of wind come, we get a little speed, and our angry crew member seems mildly apathetic as our speed could be better if the winds would improve. When the winds die away, he becomes belligerent as the lack of wind must be someones fault. Morale is waning as time slips away.
Maddie and I used to play card games in the cockpit in weather like this. The lack of wind means that our cards won’t blow overboard! Instead, we tiptoe around our crew member, trying to avoid setting him off. This eventually leads to Maddie also becoming frustrated, and that makes me frustrated.
Now we have three frustrated people bobbing around in the ocean with no land in sight. Being close to the Bahamas, we encounter a fair number of fishing vessels that motor past us. The larger ones are courteous and gave us weather reports. The information they had was much more detailed than the ones we received with our weather fax, and it would all promise wind tomorrow.
When we tomorrow become today?
