That's what it looks like out of the back door most of the time and will probably continue to do so for much of the rest of the passage home.
When I get up at 0200 and change over with George things feel just the same as they did when I went to bed 4 hours earlier, but in fact we have just entered the transition period between the two weather systems and we are now on the eastern edge of the ridge of higher pressure following Erin. The wind is already further west than it was and over the next few hours it should moderate and back even further until it is blowing from the south west and then south. During that phase we'll have to change our sail plan and sheet the Genoa to leeward and sail closer to the wind in order to maintain a course south of east. Later still the next depression will pass over us to the north and we'll have strong north westerlies once again and have to change back.
George reported another vessel about 50 miles off on the AIS and it's still a long way off at 25 miles when I check and unlikely to cause us any issues.
My Watch continues with no particular changes until the last hour when I notice the wind backing further - confirmation that we are being overtaken by the ridge of high pressure and that Erin, even at her now leisurely pace, has become tired of us and is leaving us behind. We are now heading further east than ideal (our heading is now north of Lands End) but I wait for the change of Watch in an hour before making the necessary changes to the sail plan.
We make the changes at the change of Watch; set the Hydrovane to a beam reach and completely unfurl and sheet the genoa to leeward. That puts us back on a course just south of east.
I also pick up another vessel on the AIS at 84 miles and the former vessel is still there at 54 miles. They are bearing 355° and 230° so quite a long way apart. Both are underway at about 10 knots. I suspect they are the huge fishing factory ships that one comes across from time to time in mid-ocean.
1000 ish and the wind continues to back forcing us northwards and so I make a further adjustment to the Hydrovane to put us on a close reach and trim the sheets accordingly. This keeps us tracking just south of east at least for now.
1100 it's much quieter now and I take the opportunity to do the washing up from last night's supper, I even have the briefest of washes myself with a little warm water saved from the washing up kettle. Then I cook bacon and eggs for breakfast. Healthy granola and fruit are all very well and yes we still have 10 boxes of the stuff to get through, but sometimes a good fry up is just what's needed. Besides, this morning might be the last one for a while when wielding a frying pan in the galley isn't classified as an extreme sport!
We foolishly missed the Aapilattoq supermarket closing at midday and so have run out of fresh bread, but we do have two semi frozen loaves of a sort of Rye Bread and so start on that with our breakfast. Breakfast goes down well and is followed by proper coffee which is a treat too. Thankfully my bladder seems to be back to normal and is able to cope with the caffeine without giving me extra agro.
The wind backs further south during the day and then starts veering back to the west as the next low pressure system catches us up. We're keeping an eye on it but this time it doesn't look like we'll be able to avoid some pretty strong winds that are due to reach us on Saturday. We may have to heave-to when that happens and let the depression pass over us. Because its centre is just to the north of us and its tracking eastwards, the winds on its leading and trailing edges at our latitude are blowing from roughly the same direction - westwards. As the centre passes us we'll get brief periods of southerly and then northerly winds before they revert to the west. So don't be surprised if you see us slow right down on Saturday for 12 or even 24 hours before resuming once again.
By late afternoon today the wind has backed to the west requiring us to sail further away from it. That means we have to adjust the angle of the windvane - an easy job and set the genoa on the pole out to starboard. The pole is still rigged from before so it's a pretty straightforward job to reduce the genoa's size (to prevent it from snagging on the inner forestay now rigged in the event of needing to set the storm jib - see the photos from the St John's post) and to then haul it across to the end of the pole.
That done I stumble across a recipe for soda bread on my phone whilst searching for the manual for OpenCpn. That's the chart plotter programme I run on the Raspberry Pi computer. I can't get my charts of the UK to load and need to investigate why. Later I conclude that it's because my subscription has expired and will need to be renewed. I can do that next time we have Starlink online.
Anyway back to the soda bread recipe. I decide to have a go at making some despite not having quite the right ingredients - the main one missing being wholemeal flower. I did have loads of it but it had got very old and so was thrown away. We did however buy some plain white flower in St John's and so I use that instead and add some porridge oats - that reminds me we haven't tried making any porridge yet. I use maple syrup and molasses in place of honey because while we do have honey it's all crystallised. We've no lemons - that was careless, but we do have a smigen of lemon juice left in a bottle abd sonI use that. It's pretty old so I fortify it with lime juice from the Carribbean which is where the molasses came from too. I mix it all up with milk and baking soda (also pretty old and from the Carribbean) as directed and put it in the oven for the required 40 minutes and this was the result...
It looks alright but we decide to leave it for breakfast so you'll have to read the next post to find out whether it tasted OK.
I boil some potatoes and carrots to go with the leftovers from George's mincemeat dinner of yesterday and we laze around until i go off Watch at 2200 and try, unsuccessfully, to sleep. The boat is just moving around too much and the pilot berth being high up exaggerates the motion.
By midnight we have travelled another 132 miles in a straight line and there are 1061 miles to go to Lands End which means we are also 132 miles closer to it than we were 24 hours ago. That's a result!
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