Waiting for the Right Wind

Through the night we had a diversity of conditions, culminating with the 90 degree wind shift when we reached the center ridge of the high pressure system, identified by the barograph. Oddly, it was almost 90 miles earlier than the weather forecasts indicated. I was able to turn off the autopilot before it reached its ‘low boat speed alarm’, as the wind had dropped to 2 knots, and the boat didn’t know what to do. If I don’t get to the pilot before that alarm, sometimes it forces you to re-boot the whole system.

Anyway, we got through that in the dark, and with a new forecast, optimistically hoisted the masthead gennaker this morning, as we were supposed to have breeze going to NNW. Instead, after the big job of getting that gennaker up, we unfurled it, and the wind promptly went to NNE, so we were heading for Antarctica, about 30 degrees off our intended course. So we have rolled that sail up, in the hopes that the wind will rotate back to where we can use it.

I was reluctant to hoist that sail because we were looking at a quadrant of the horizon that clearly had rain squalls in it, and was dark and ominous. Nothing showed on the radar however. But we went ahead and set it, and the boat took off at a good speed, up into the 14/15 knots range, but not in the right direction! So that is rolled up and awaits, and we are back to our genoa.

In these conditions, with boats spread out anyway, some will get a good roll of the dice, others not. We shall see how ours turns out.

Position
31° 57’S x 14° 25’W
Course
115° True
Speed
6.0 knots
True Wind Speed
6.1 knots
True Wind Direction
356° True
Sails
Mainsail plus Genoa
Air temperature
73° F / 22.7°C
Sea Temperature
81° F / 27.2° C