3rd May - Slow progress

Slow progress on a big (mostly) blue sea Making very slow progress Northward in now light airs. We had a pretty rough first 36 hours I'd have to say. 3 reefs in and up to 30 knots and heavy rain and big seas over the boat. Into long trousers warm tops, and even foul weather gear for the first time for 6 months. Boat inside very wet and David and I knackered. Stomachs now a bit more settled though. A lot of lovely books got very wet and these are now being dried on deck. We have to work our way up north until we start to find some winds in our favour. We are now (Thursday 3rd 2000 GMT) at 22 degrees North; 61 degrees,53 mins West. Not very far up really, only 280 miles NNE of Antigua. The wind is not quite on the nose though, its about 50 degrees off, the result of the trade winds on our right. This will hold for another 450 miles or so, so we can't really go any further east yet. Our aim is to keep going on our northish track of about 015 to 025 to a point about 250m east of Bermuda where there should be favourable winds and then doing a slow sweep to the right towards the most N part of the Azores. After our scary and windy start, we are now down to walking speed this afternoon, so we should be in the Azores in about 400 years.
　
Mike
(& Dave McAvinchey)
on RAPAREE