At 2:30am this morning, still in the first half of Mike’s portion of the overnight watch schedule, we arrived at the waypoint towards which we’d been sailing for the past several days. Madrone smoothly rotated about 40 degrees to port, and we’re once again heading directly towards the Azores.
We decided to make this big detour to the southeast about three days ago, and between then and this morning’s turn back to the northeast we covered more than 500 miles. As of noon, Madrone is about 250 miles south of our original course for the Azores.
We have a forecast of 20-25 knot wind directly on the beam for the next several days, so it will surely be a bit uncomfortable for that time. But judging from the forecast, if we would have stuck to our original course we’d currently be bashing into 30+ knots, trying to make progress nearly directly upwind.
So, this seems better than that alternative at the moment, but we’ll report back in a couple of days after the wind and waves build. In any case, the crew is very, very happy to be pointed in the right direction again.
All’s well aboard Madrone.
Day Eight
155nm
34 02.4N 42 27.8W
