Day 16 - Passage to the Caribbean
Misterx
Thu 17 Apr 2025 00:46
16/04/25
8:30 pm
Day 16
South Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 2,224 NM (87NM)
Sitting sunder a huge black cloud at the moment, with the wind indicator swinging madly. We have no wind!
We have been sitting under this bank of clouds for at least 3 hours and we can't see the end of it.
We first come across this humongous beast shortly after 3.30 pm, it had been looming on the hedge of our horizon for a while, slowly becoming taller, higher, wider, with 3 huge mushroom tops and most inconveniently in our way. When we first tracked it it was moving, at glacial pace, I admit, but moving from right to left. Then it just stopped, for no reason at all, it just stopped moving, right there, right in the middle of our way... As mentioned before, it is difficult to judge how far those things are, bug given the size of it, it looks like it is close enough to warranty some action, so we go through our Big Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy... first we slow the boat down, we were doing a fair 4.5 knots under sail, quite happily, we shorten the genoa, we go down to 3 knots. And we stay like this for an hour, measuring the cloud movement with the compass. Nothing, the blob has not moved, we, however, have moved closer and it doesn't look nice, all 50 shades of grey under there, rain, loads of rain and we don't know how bad it really is under there... there could be mad winds, coming from all directions and at all sort of speed, there could be drizzle or driving rain and anything in between, there could be thunder in the thick of it, there could be no wind... there could be anything and its contrary all at the same time! I don't think we want to go through it, so we now go to phase 2 of our Big Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy, I take the wheel and aim for the the right end edge of the Beast, we are now hard on the wind so the wind vane cannot cope, I have to drive. The edge is now on the left side of our mast, and we are hoping that we will reach the end of the cloud bank and go around it but the Beast is still not moving away. After another hour, it is still there, exactly at the same point, it is time for stage 3 of our Big Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy, put the engine on and try to go around this before dark sets in....Tension is high, will we make it? And we fail miserably! We give in finally, cut off the engine, set the sails and our course back to where we want to go, i.e North, out of the Doldrums, and we watch the sun disappear in a glorious cacophony of colours under the horizon, whilst we aim for the darkest of the bank of clouds. Admittedly, not fast because the wind has gone dramatically down. There is still the mad hope that the Beast will have either moved away or disintegrated by the time we reach it... not quite so lucky, the rain got us, but after all the anticipation, it is a bit of an anti-climax... all we found under this corner of the Beast was a bit of drizzle, and there isn't any wind under there! We managed to avoid the worst of it all. We thank our lucky star, once again, our Big Cloud with Lots of Rain Potential Strategy worked a treat!
This was the end of a perfect day sailing, wall to wall sunshine, enough wind for us to make progress and in the right direction. We encountered very few intimidating clouds today, and all of them, bar the last, were far enough from us not to be a threat. The few crossing our path only brought a little bit more wind and nothing else. The waves were gentle and we had a nice ride. We did see an awful lot of rubbish floating around, bit of polystyrene mainly, a jerry can, a few plastic bottles floating past us. And loads of seaweed, beautiful golden colour, huge rafts of them... We had to clear the rudder of the wind vane often during the day... seaweeds getting caught in it.
10pm - Middle of my watch
The rain has stopped finally and the wind indicator is not swinging madly anymore, the sails are not flapping, we have a little puff of air, not much it is only 6 knots, and I can see the moon and the stars! We have finally, after a good 5 hours, come out from under the Beast!
M