Hi all,

A writer's block at sea. Yes, it sounds weird, but on certain days the flow is just not there. Maybe it was comparable with the weather we had till now in the voyage. The last period the lows coming over were blocked by the high that was stationed more south than we would have liked. This caused the lows to pass north of us and giving us easterly of small amounts of wind. One might expect the prevailing westerlies in this sailing area when reading the books and studying the pilot charts. But that was not our experience till so far. As is clearly visible on our track shown on the website sent out by the Yellow Brick every couple of hours. It looks like we're hopping our way east.

Till now we sailed 22 days with: 12 days mainly westerly component, 3 with northerly, 1 with a southern and 7 with a mainly easterly component. But...with the upcoming band of low pressure systems the high pressure system is losing its position and retrieving northwest. With that it's freeing the way for the lows to pass easier and not being forced to come very northern anymore (this is also what we hope, it's not written in stone).

On board I got inspired by the books of Dune that I read during my last holiday. The worm riding the Fremen do in the desert could be compared with us looking for appropriate winds. It feels like we're waiting for a nice worm (read northern side of a low pressure system) to put our hooks in and then ride along with it to the east. Of course not too big of a worm (low pressure system), but a nice one with sufficient wind, but not too much.

First still a couple of days with not much wind, but at the moment at least the east wind is slowly backing to the northeast. A relief.

In the meantime everybody is still doing well on board and even with the surroundings that make us think of the English Channel in October the atmosphere is good.

More tomorrow.

Groetjes, Janke