Sunday August 1st
Noon position: 62′ 17″W 16′ 04″ W
Course 112’T Speed: 9.5 Knots Days Run: 250Miles (Noon – Noon)
Weather: Grey and overcast Wind: 155 30 Kts
News:
The first day out of Iceland has been pretty rough, Timoneer departed Saturday as the Icelandic weather service said the weather was improving although still near gale force. The swell prior to our departure was recorded as 6.1 meters, predicted to decrease to 4.0 by the time we would reach the SW corner of Iceland to turn East on our course past Scotland and on to Denmark. We were pleasantly surprised as the wind diminished throughout the afternoon. Fortunately the ocean swells were really far apart, we weren’t so much pounding as going up one side and down the other. The only problem was that the wind was almost right on the nose so we had to motor sail with the staysail and reefed main. About 18:00 in the afternoon Saturday we had unrolled the staysail fully in 20kts and heard a loud bang as the webbing parted from the head of the sail. Looks like the sun has just gotten to the stitching and this hadn’t happen earlier because a lot of the time we have a few raps around the foil which take a lot of load off the head. It is something we can easily fix aboard with a lot of hand stitching. By 08:00 Sunday the wind was up to 40kts coming out of 155T and we were motor sailing with an apparent wind angle of about 35 degrees. The ride isn’t particularly comfortable but we are still making 9-10 kts across the ground with a bit of current helping us out. Everyone is well.
John
