Transatlantic: Azores to Portugal: Day 11 [Day 59]

Hope is in the air! And there is a lot of air to give us a good push towards our destination.

The reason we sailed so far North when we left the Azores was to ride across to the top of the Iberian Peninsula with a prevailing tail wind. Then we would sail downwind along the Portuguese coast until we found our harbor and could comfortably sail into it.

You can see that up here, we were able to ride the steady and strong wind straight to our destination without the need to beat into the weather. The course is long, but much easier on the boat and on the crew because it is downwind. As winds pick up speed, so do we which then lowers the apparent wind felt by the boat and us inside the boat.

30 knots of wind when sailing downwind at 7 knots feels like 23 knots of wind. If we were beating into that at the same speed, it would feel like 37 knots of wind! That is quite the spread and we much prefer to be on the calmer side of the spectrum.

Transatlantic: Azores to Portugal: Day 9 [Day 57]

54 nautical miles is not anything to brag about! The winds were not pleasant, and we honestly resembled a cork more so than a yacht.

The winds were variable but the seas were rather sloppy from all the wind that has been in the area. Light winds with large seas is not my favorite time to go forward on the deck to put up more sail. Instead, I much prefer to simply wait it out until one of two things will happen:

1. The winds will return and it’s a good thing that I didn’t put up more sail.

2. The seas will finally calm down and I can comfortably go forward to put up more sail.

Being how the sky was perpetually overcast, it was a safer bet to count on the prompt return of wind instead of the absolute lack thereof. While we didn’t move very much today, we thankfully did move in the right direction!

Transatlantic: Azores to Portugal: Day 8 [Day 56]

June 20, 2019 and we made 109 nautical miles made good!

The winds shifted to be blowing out of the South which let us finally return to our Northern course on a downwind sail. This meant fast and easy miles as we sliced through the waves.

Fast miles in stormy conditions does cut down on morale, but we made pizza! The gimballed oven we installed during the refit in the Azores worked wonderfully. We simply made the pizza dough out of flour, salt, sugar, and water, then added the toppings and put it in the oven. Shortly thereafter we had ourselves some oven-fresh pizza while hundreds of miles away from any pizzeria!

Instead of fighting for those Northern miles over the past few days, we simply sailed East for a while. Then the winds finally came around and we were once again able to head North in much more comfort and style (and with pizza)!

Transatlantic: Azores to Portugal: Day 4 [Day 52]

June 16, 2019, a storm started brewing over the Azores and started taking us a bit West in our Northern course. Yes, this is technically away from our destination, but it was a much more comfortable point of sail!

We reefed down heavily and sailed only 74 nautical miles made good that day from noon to noon. We aren’t too worried about the deviation from our course because we are still so far away that it doesn’t really affect our course overall. If we were racing, we would not be so lackadaisical about our heading, but we are not racing, we are cruising! We just sailed along on a beam reach and as the wind shifted we just deviated from our ideal course without concern or worry.

Transatlantic: Azores to Portugal: Day 3 [Day 51]

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.