The one thing that everyone agreed on was that the weather wasn’t normal this year. The normal advice for the trip from the Azores to the UK is to head north for four days to reach the south westerlies. The forecast was for light northerly wind when we set off so I decided to ignore convention and sail north east as straight as possible towards the south coast of Ireland. This decision paid off because after 4 days of sailing close hauled we had following south westerly winds all the way to Ireland.
During our stay in the Azores we didn’t see any whales. We did see lots of dolphins and two turtles. We also saw two pilot wales on the way over and a minke whale and two Rizzo’s dolphins on the return journey.
After our very wet cold and rough crossing to the Azores I was delighted that we had good warm weather and a pleasant crossing as this gave Kath a much more balanced picture of sailing. Despite this Kath still had a T shirt with the words “Honest, it’s not always like this” printed for me when we got home.
I took advantage of the good weather to learn how to use the sextant properly. In fact we did the whole of the return journey using sextant and dead reckoning. I was quite pleased to be only eight miles out on making a landfall in Ireland after just over ten days at sea.
The amazing thing is that, despite the fact that you have to refer to the clock constantly for change of watch and sun sights, time doesn’t seem to flow in the same way. It is as if you have been transported to a different watery world where time has no real meaning.
We decide to stop over in Baltimore because the wind died and as it looked like we might have to wait some time. So motoring for a few hours and having a run ashore was a better option than drifting around for a few days.
On our way in we were boarded by Irish customs. I thought it was a neat touch sending two very pretty girls on board but keeping the customs gunboat menacingly in the background.
After a day and a night in Baltimore we had a slow but pleasant return to Holyhead. It took us three days because we were becalmed for the best part of a day floating backwards and forwards in the Irish Sea.
All in all a great adventure. Over 3,000 miles sailed there and back again. A great deal of valuable sailing experience packed into a relatively short time. Would we both do it again? Definitely.
0 Responses to “Ocean Crossing - The Return”