One of the nice things about a passage to Bermuda from the east coast of the US is its length – at around 6 days long, we can be reasonably confident in the weather that we can expect. The forecast that we used for our final departure decision showed pretty nice sailing conditions for the first several days, and then some stronger weather for the next couple.
Even though the weather window wasn’t perfect, we decided to take it because of a strong very late-winter storm forecast to hit the eastern US. That storm would mean that if we didn’t take this window, we’d likely be waiting for at least another 10 days for better weather to settle back in.
In our case, the forecast has been pretty accurate – the wind picked up just a few hours after it was forecasted to, and the waves started to grow in tandem with the wind. We saw about 12 hours of 20-25 kts, with a few gusts into the mid 30s as squalls would blow through. Madrone can easily handle those conditions, but the challenge was that the wind was forward of the beam. So instead of sailing downwind with the 7-10’ (2-3m) waves pushing us, Madrone was plowing directly into those waves. Sometimes we’d gracefully glide over the top, and other times we’d punch directly through a wave face. It was a wet ride.
This morning, the wind has backed down to below 20 kts and swung a bit more from astern, and we’re happily drying out in the bright sunshine.
Day Four
152nm
31 50.6N 67 39.8W
