What a difference a day makes. Yesterday at 0800 we ended a 24 hour run of 217 nautical miles, which Chief Mate Paul Bracken thinks is a record for the entire voyage to date, since leaving Mystic.
Since then we have been paying the price for that bit of good luck. The weather system that was forecast to deteriorate has not done so, and we have been more or less parked out here for a day and a half, making slow headway into 25-30 knots of wind, dead on the nose.
An added nuisance is that the downdraft off the foot of the foresail creates a high pressure area right over the galley stove's smokestack, which causes it to run in reverse, smoking out the saloon, setting off smoke alarms, etc. So three hours ago we tacked in toward shore, so that the stove would work, and to see if there was a less wind a little further from the center of the low that's causing this wind.
One out of two aint bad. The stove worked fine for lunch, but the wind is blowing as hard as ever. This is essentially a waiting game, hoping that the jetstream will shift north and the low will fall apart, leaving us with light winds, or maybe even fair winds. We've got her slowed down so that the ride is quite comfortable, and we're only burning 4.5 gallons per hour of fuel. The sea has lengthened out so that Amistad takes them with a minimum of fuss. There's even a patch of dry deck back aft. We are truly on the open ocean. The water is sea blue, with only birds for company, and the occasional fishing trawler. The fishermen are going about their work, which suggests that the weather isn't going to get much worse soon. Or much better, either. So there you have it, this brief report on reality as seen from the Amistad. Some a little queezy, but everybody doing their job. The Golfers de Gascogne.
 

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