Princ Christian Sund to ? - Day 7 - 30/8/25

I continue to sleep on and off but during the early hours of the morning I become much more aware of the noise of the wind. It must have increased further. I'm even more relieved we're not sailing and just hope the forecast is not wildly out and we're going to get significantly worse conditions which necessitate deployment of the drogue and so lie stern to the weather to minimise the risk of a knock down by a rogue wave.

We both continue to sleep on and off until about 0930 when I get up and make tea and toast for breakfast. We discuss the situation and agree that despite little if any improvement in the conditions, we'll get underway again and see how we fare. I decide it would be better to use the storm jib rather than the genoa because I'm anxious about the genoa's furling mechanism jamming once again in the strong winds. Being unable to furl that in these conditions would be pretty bloody awful.

So I go up to the foredeck and hoist the storm jib. I have to do that three times in order to find the best run for the sheets and avoid them chaffing on the standing rigging. We end up with both sheets on the leeward side on slightly different runs so that we have the option of using either subject to how hard we want to sheet the sail in. This time I do get a wave break over me and I get a good soaking. My oilskins are clearly too worn out to keep me dry and so too, disappointingly are my little used sea boats!

It takes us nearly an hour in all but eventually we are both satisfied with how the boat is behaving, her speed - around 6 knots and her course, almost due east, and we go below. The weather has brightened up a bit which cheers us up too.

I manage to cook a bacon and egg brunch at noon which goes down well.

The conditions remain broadly the same for the rest of the day, with relative brightness alternating with relative gloom and the batteries reach 70% capacity for the first time since leaving Greenland.

Bonny continues to average around 6.5 knots. Since heaving to for the first time on this passage the day before yesterday, we have sailed under a triple reefed mainsail and the storm jib and have left the genoa furled up completely. In these conditions it's a good combination. The deeply reefed mainsail doesn't blanket the storm jib as much as the genoa and so unlike the genoa we don't need to pole it out to the weather side when the wind is on the quarter. When it does back occasionally, the force of it resetting is nowhere near as violent as the genoa doing the same thing.

George cooks a most welcome chilli concarne for supper and then we heave-to for the night. We experiment once again with combinations of mainsail and storm jib before arriving at the same conclusion - the best set-up is just the triple reefed mainsail sheeted in tight with the ship's rudder hard over to the weather side and the wheel lashed accordingly. I feather the Hydrovane so that it helps hold the ship's head at the same angle to the wind - roughly 45°.

Once that's done we both go below and go to bed.

Our straight line run from our hove-to position at 2150 the previous night, to midnight was 98 miles. Our distance to Lands End is 731. Which means we are 93 miles closer than we were then, which, given we were hove-to for a total of 15 hours during the same period, is pretty good going.