Northeasterlies increasing a bit in the afternoon. Wearing ship and steering again on a course to South Georgia.
A few last hours of steering on variable courses in decreasing and shifting winds brought us to the morning hours with all EUROPA's canvas set on light airs, good sea conditions, and in a day that gradually became sunnier.
To try to steer again on a proper course to our destination, before 10:00 it was time for a bit of action on deck. Hands are distributed between Fore, Main, and Poop decks to wear ship, turning her around and making her stern go through the breeze that is becoming a northeasterly.
Braces are pulled around in the Fore Mast, backing its sails while keeping the Main Mast empty of wind, slowly bracing it as she turns. At the same time, taking pressure off the stern by dropping the Spanker. Lower Staysails are pulled down, and when they start to back, the headrig is passed to the new tack.
Now it is time for bracing the Main Mast to Port Tack, setting courses and the rest of the staysails.
A slow manoeuvre and slow ship reactions due to the lack of wind. It took about three hours to make the loop and turn the ship around, all under sail, before starting to sail on a more southeasterly course. From then on, the wind slowly picks up during the rest of the day, as the barometer shows the atmospheric pressure dropping.
A Low Pressure System had passed, a High is northeast of us, while the next Low approaches Cape Horn from the Pacific. We are in a bit of a no man’s land situation that probably in a day or so will end up again in windless conditions; afterward, it is still to be seen how the weather systems move and develop. A bit of a challenging sail and routing for the next days as we try to cover the remaining 535 nautical miles that lay between us and South Georgia.
As we can see, these Furious 50s are not always raging latitudes; you can also fall into windless areas depending on the movements and evolutions of the passing Low Pressure Systems and their relative positions with the Highs usually located further north.
Although the light winds were forecasted, it always feels a bit of a downer to come from good sailing times to deal with calms. And suddenly a few hours later, here we go again at a good speed on a right course. A sailing vessel at the whims of the winds and seas. An apparent unpredictability, though, as nowadays forecasts can be pretty reliable in a relatively short time and help to prepare the ship for what’s to come, acting accordingly ahead of time.
A support on routing that wasn’t always like that. The pioneer in forecasting the weather for seafarers was a well-known name also for other reasons. Robert Fitzroy, explorer, adventurer, and captain of the famous Beagle, which traveled around the world with Charles Darwin aboard as the trip naturalist, soon became aware of the importance of these predictions. In 1854, eighteen years after his famous voyage around the world, he was appointed as chief of a new department to deal with the collection of weather data at sea. His title was Meteorological Statist to the Board of Trade, which later on would become the Meteorological Office. His first forecasts started with loaning instruments to different captains at sea to gather and study the data provided. Then he equipped ports with barometers, some of them prototypes of his invention, to be consulted by ships' crews before setting sail.
In 1859 he started to develop charts to allow predictions, and he coined the term "weather forecast" and put into use new technologies like the telegraph to gather information and distribute it. Finally, the first-ever weather forecasts were published in The Times in 1861.
Based on the same principles, we still use and rely on those predictions nowadays, but of course, the evolution of technology now uses large amounts of data collected from countless meteorological stations on land, floating buoys, and ships. That is here on the lands and oceans, but up in space, in orbit around the planet, satellites also collect information for those modelling purposes. The more information available from different sources and locations, the more accurate predictions can be made. Moving into more and more remote areas, the less availability of data there is to compute weather models, and that could affect their accuracy. And now just have a look at where we sail and the lands that we visit, quite often off the beaten tracks, frequently far off data collection stations. That’s one of the most interesting things about sailing into remoteness and having the ability to collect data, for instance, about the wildlife around and also sending out meteorological observations as an input to weather forecast modelling systems.