This whole voyage we are dealing with just one big weather system, namely the Azores High pressure system.  

Sailing from the Azores that is something what you can expect I hear you thinking but that is not generally the case.  SailingNorth most of the time you are confronted with 1 or more low pressure systems but not this time, the High followed us on our way to the English Channel and kept the fronts with all their weather systems far from us. Not that we had only blue skies, certainly not, we had quite a few days with low hanging clouds.   

Nearly the whole voyage from Horta till where we are now, we are sailing close hauled on our port tack. Trying to wrestle our way North to the latitudes of the English Channel. In a way this is how the early sailors entered the Channel, sailing far from the coasts of Spain and France until you reached the proper latitude (the noon sun and the polar star as guides for that) and when that latitude was reached turning to the East with a very good lookout. 

In those days it was very difficult for a sailor to calculate their proper longitude. After the Harrison clock was invented (1740) they were able to have a proper time keeping and in that way a lot better calculation of the Longitude.  So we sail in this old fashion style  and shaping (also caused by the Notherly winds) our course into the English Channel. 

Bishop Rock (Scilly Islands) is now bearing  068°, 113 Miles away and this is also the place that lead to the invention of the Harrison clocks because a whole British Royal Navy  fleet  ended up on the rocks of the Scillies in 1707 and costed probably around 2.000 sailors their life, because of the lack of proper navigation methods to calculate the longitude.  

Position  

49°-03’N : 009°-04’W   

Partly cloudy,  Wind  North,  Moderate breeze 

Water temp = 16,4°C 

Course 070°, Speed 5,5 kts   

Close hauled on Port tack  

Done  24hrs128M in 073° =  5,3kt Average 

Done  total218 hrs 1080M = 5,0 Average  

Alles Wel  

Klaas