Why So Quiet?

For those of you eagerly awaiting Eric’s next chapter of the adventures of Severance, you are going to have to settle for a poor substitute (me). As I mentioned earlier they are having problems with getting and sending their emails. Eric is continuing to write the blogs, but they are stuck in his outbasket for the time being.

They spent a lot of time trying to work through the email issue, not so much because of their commitment to our entertainment, but because without the internet they are unable to get current weather information.

They have now resorted to plan B …. which again, would be me. I have been sending their daily positions to the ARC committee, getting the data from our ever friendly iBoat transponder. I am also reading them the daily weather reports from the ARC Commander, which often runs to 2 pages, so it is a lot for them to scribble down.

Scott told me how to get weather maps from NOOA in a “grib” format which is the file format that supports weather maps. It allows me to download a forecast for 7 days out and see wind patterns and frontal boundaries and walk through them in a time sequence to show where they are going and how they are going to affect the winds. I have been studying them diligently and comparing them to the ARC weather reports and to Severance’s coordinates.

So, for those of you who wonder why Severance is heading north of the fleet, there is a very big front that runs NE to SW that is going to hit the fleet later today, in fact some of them are probably in it now. This will be a whopper, on the order of what they came through going to Bermuda. They are predicting sustained winds in the 35-45 kts at the worst, with gusts over 50.

Working on a weather report from last Friday, the crew believed that if they stayed behind the front by heading more north than east they could avoid it until it dissipates by sometime Monday afternoon. They also hoped to come into the Azores above the ‘Azores High’, a high pressure system similar to the Bermuda High where the winds die down to nothing and the boat stops moving and they sit hot and tired and bored while Robyn and I wait for them in our posh resort in the Azores drinking rum punches and flirting with the cabana boys.

On the trip so far, weather has been good. They started out in high winds and were making an unbelievable 7kts on a reefed main and the storm jib. The winds have slowed now, but the boat does well on light air and they are still able to maintain 4-5 kts boat speed.

Kelly caught a 20 lb tuna and they had sashimi last night with ginger soy sauce and wasabi. Life is good!