I came on watch at 0030 (GMT) after managing to get some sllep but not a lot. It always takes me a few days to adjust to the routine at sea. I expect i will sleep in the morning.
Mick had nothing to report. No AIS contacts. "AIS" = Automatic Identification System. All commercial vessels are required to use it to transmit their position over VHF radio. We also have a transceiver which means we can do the same. It really helps with collision avoidance because we can see 'them' and 'they' can see us. The new VHF radio we fitted also has a receiver built in and in extrimis we can use the set to put a VHF call directly to the other vessel.
As a sailing vessel we are the stand on vessel in open water in most situations apart from if the other vessel is engaged in fishing or is restricted in its ability to manoeuvre (e.g. towing) or is another sailing vessel. If the latter, seperate rules apply to determine which is the stand on vessel.
On taking the watch, after checking the situation i made myself a coffee and wrote up the above.
As mentioned previously, our destination is Maderia because a Low over the Azores where there 'should' be a High is producing unfavourable winds for a passage there. But even on this passage we are faced with a fairly narrow corridor of decent Northerlies which means we have to heve to keep to the East of a direct course and hope that tomorrow we can head more directly for Madeira without running out of wind.
Now (0220 GMT 2/7/21) the wind is light from the Northish - just enough to push us along at 3.5 knots. on a course of around 240°. So it looks like we are on the Western edge of our wind corridor!
Now 0400 GMT and almost immediately after writing the above the wind dropped further and we are now creeping along at under 3 knots with the sails slatting backwards and forwards in the swell. The noise has kept Mick from sleeping and so an hour or so ago i rigged a preventing line on the main boom in an effort to reduce the slamming. Dawn is breaking and I'm thinking of rigging the cruising chute shortly.
By 0530 GMT it was light enough to rig the shute.
What a palava - good job it's a light weather sail. Just about every guess I made about what bit of string went where was wrong but finally after an hour and a half I had it up and drawing. In my defence, it was the first time I had ever used a cruising chute. Speed pick up and immediately the boat stopped rolling so much and so the slatting and chrashing stopped and hopefully sleep will come a little easier later.
During the late morning we realised we were edging further West and therefore into an area of even less wind. A course change was required but this put the light wind even further behind us and so slowed us down noticeably. Our solution was to goosewing the genoa with the cruising chute, giving us an extra 1/2 to 1 knot and heading hopefully towards stronger winds or at least, to avoid a complete absence of wind.
The two images below show the winds that were predicted for our passage before we left. Madeira is the blue dot on the left about half way down. The first one shows our position ( circle with a dot and cross hairs) and the predicted winds at the time of writing (1520 BST) and is pretty accurate.
The more bluey-grey the colour and the less 'feathers' the lighter the wind.
You can just make out a red line to the south of Madeira. That's high pressure and you can see the winds decrease the nearer one gets to it.
The image below shows the winds predicted for Sunday. So you can see that to keep moving we need to head Southish until around the same latitude as Mederia, when we can then head West with a chance of more wind.
Of course this is all based on computerised wind predictions and could be way out but it does seem to fit with the general pattern overvthe last week or so.
Mick knocked up a very generous and tasty omlett for lunch and ss a consequence dinner was passed over for a sandwich when i went off watch at 1800 BST. I did notice it was very much still daylight but was too sleepy to ponder further.
Around 1600 BST the wind freshened and by 1700 I decided we should douse the cruising chute which we did without too much difficulty but I'm glad we didn't leave it longer. Put the mainsail back up and resumed our course to the south of Madeira at 5-6 knots on a beam reach.
I slept reasonably well fo the first time but was woken up by slatting sails at some point. I got up to remonstrate with the driver only to be given the lame excuse that it was the lack of wind that was the cause. Honestly!
Mick did though go on to confess a sin. In coming up with his previous sggestion to switch to BST for boat time which would of course advance our clock by one hour, he had misunderstood the effects of changing longditude and worked on the basis that we were moving gradually Eastwards rather than Westwards and had so calculated that local midnight would be getting later rather than earlier! Whilst it is rather difficult to get one's head around the relationship between longditude, time and GMT/BST,
I was surprised, not to say a little shocked at this mathamatical error by the first officer. That's why I went to bed in broad daylight rather than dusk! I mean, what do I pay him for? Oh I forgot, I don't!
I never was quite sure why we didn't just start our watch keeping an hour later. Or should that be earlier? Anyway, the ship's clock is still set to BST for now at least!
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