Misto - March 8-9 2019 On the way to Grenada

We departed Cabadelo at 17h00 on March 7 after receiving our clearances and waiting for slack water at high tide. This meant that by the time we exited the river that it was dark and the wind picked up far beyond its forecast level to over 20 knots. That has been the trend for the last two days - the wind has been much higher than forecast and the direction more southerly. We expected some squalls but last night we ended up in a really vicious one packing a punch of 42 knots. Luckily we had brought the gennaker down for an earlier squall, but were lulled into thinking that the wind would not be too strong and so left all our main sail up. So when the big one hit we ran off for a while, but with increasing wind decided to put in two reefs - just before the really high wind came through. Not all the boats were so fortunate with a couple sustaining some damage last night.

Today we seem to have made endless sailplan changes as the wind has gone up and down and changed direction. We will definitely be starting off tonight with a reef in case we have a repeat of last night. Our other activity today has been drying out as we both got thoroughly soaked last night before putting on rain jackets, which also ended up sopping wet! The good news is that after so many passages where the current has not been favorable we have current sending us in the right direction.

Unfortunately this afternoon ended with us having to bring our gennaker down as the tape along the foot split off from the sail. This was really disappointing as we had new tape put on in South Africa and they felt that the sailcloth was good and did not need replacing. So we only have white sails for now - perhaps it can be repaired in Grenada.
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At 3/9/2019 8:01 PM (utc) our position was 03°08.24'S 037°48.51'W
Our course and speed are 312T at 7.9kts
Wind is 18.1 kts at 115T.