2am Position: 04 10.96N 83 34.17W
Are we having fun out here, or what???
We motored all day with a glassy sea. The forecast said we were supposed to have about 7 knots of wind out of the NE, but it was literally zero wind.
Finally around 4pm, a whisper of a wind came up. So we turned off the engine and pulled out the Code Zero.
For about the first hour, we were literally going backwards. Sailing SE through the water at about 1-2 knots, but tracking NW at about a knot, according to the GPS. That means we have a 2 knot current against us!!
The wind filled in a little until we were making about 2-3 knots through the water. There was enough wind that the autopilot could handle the steering. The current slacked off a little. We were finally moving in the right direction without running the engine.
We got 2 different forecasts this afternoon (the GFS and the WW3 models as GRIB files). Both told us that the forecast for wind in the area where we are is 0-5 knots for the next 2 days. Then the wind will pick up to about 10-15 on Friday.
We also spent a couple of hours this afternoon studying the pilot charts, trying to figure out if there's a route that we can take that will minimize the current. But I think it's all guesswork unless we have an accurate satellite picture of where the current ACTUALLY is, versus the average of where it has been historically. (I have seen an infrared analysis of the current here in the past, but couldn't find it on the web before we left).
After all that, we decided to just maintain the rhumb line, unless going in one direction or the other would give us more wind.
Tonight, we were having fun hand-steering by moonlight, trying to get the last wisp of speed out of what little wind we had. Between 4pm and 2am, we made 6 miles in the right direction, against the current and in spite of almost no wind!!
But the wind finally died on us a few minutes ago, so we're motoring again.
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At 2/11/2009 7:39 AM (utc) our position was 04°08.35'N 085°33.27'W
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