Marco and Paul find things getting more challenging

We are now into our fifth week at sea, tomorrow it’ll be a month we’left
Palma, it’s a bloody long time! Longer than I have ever been, with 22 days
at the Route du Rhum my previous longest… Yet, here, with the current
complex forecast, we estimate another two whole weeks before we get into
Cape Town, two more weeks of blocking away images of steaks and chips,
beer, hot showers, a bed, clean clothes, a decent coffee with a nice
croissant, freshly squeezed orange juice, I even dare say salad (but
definitely not high on the list!)…. once in Cape Town we’ll have a good
few days to party and rest then more partying when Ella flies over and
we’ll spend ten days together before I sail into the harshness of the
Southern Ocean, which after the taster of last week seems suddenly a lot
less appealing then anticipated…

We are out of the tough weather we had last week and now will have to deal
with the even more frustrating light winds of the high that lies dead
ahead of us… we have been trying to avoid it day after day, first we
sailed fast and deep to go behind it, then computer said no, you have to
go in front, so we went higher but slower, then computer said “just
kidding”, so we frustratingly tried to interrogate the routeing software
again and again to find a way out of this maze, the answer came out to be
“Azerbaijan”, so you can imagine we are a little puzzled.

There seems to be no escape from another 3-4 days of unstable rubbish
before any discernible and useful flows of air towards Cape Town will
reveal itself. I guess looking at the tracker it must look like we are all
drunk, going all in different directions but believe me we are all still
reluctantly freaking stone sober and trying our best…

Posted by: First Class Sailing