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Persistent Lady - We are Back on-line



Thursday, May 15 - on the way to the Azores, sort of.
Sorry no blogs recently, we had communication problems and could not send from sea, and was too busy in Bermuda to make it happen, but we are back on line now and should be able to keep everyone informed. Please feel free to respond to these blogs if you are so inclined.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Kristin! Wish we were all together to celebrate, but you know we are there in spirit!

We got underway from Bermuda yesterday (Wed) with an 11:20 start time - we were start number 3, each start was 10 mins apart. Altogether 35 boats left from inside the harbor and were required to sail through Town Cut; very narrow and rocks on both sides; My plan was to hang back and be the last boat through; evidently, several others had the same idea as about 15 of us went through together. Can only get three boats abreast at the max, and when you do that the boat that gets the wind first blocks the wind from the others and they flounder around. Then about halfway through, the land mass on the port side (wind was coming from that direction) rises up and blocks everybody's wind, so we all are panicked and watching the rocks loom closer and closer, then just at the last minute the land mass drops away and the wind picks up and we are sailing again!! Very thrilling.

Speaking of thrilling, are are currently trying to outrun a gale, also very thrilling! We started out sailing a straight line from Bermuda to Horta, knowing we would have to alter that at some point. What we did wrong, was to not download the weather files until late in the afternoon. When we looked at the GRIB files we saw the LOW that is sitting between us and Horta had dropped down and we were heading squarely for it. It is very large and has gale force winds over a long distance. We changed course to run south so we did not get clobbered by wind on the nose, and plan on keeping this course till sometime tomorrow, when we should start to get some beneficial winds from the storm. Looks like we will be OK. Will let you know more tomorrow. This will add 200 - 300 miles to our course, but avoid the storm (hopefully)

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