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Nexus - Stormy night, fast day!



Last night we were bounding along in good wind and decided to leave the main up all night due to the good progress we were making. Well we sailed into a very large and spread out group of squalls from about 1am to 5am that kept me up pretty much all night. One set of squalls on my watch from 2-4am covered the entire 16nm radius of our radar screen and although they had very little power in them(25kts), the wind swung right around the compass at one point. I was alone and had a preventer rigged, so I couldn't tack. I ended up sailing around 180 with the wind and dousing the main altogether, and ended up motoring in very little wind for a couple of hours of heavy rain, before getting underway again. This morning we had very nice wind but severe choppy seas, which are giving us some fast sailing, but we take a pounding which we would rather avoid. We have confused seas coming from two directions this afternoon with 23-25kts true wind. We're sailing well but reefed down to keep the boat speed and pounding to a comfortable compromise of about 8.5kts. We have 1,132nm to go and at this speed should be in Port Louis, Grenada by the 11th or 12th. We'll keep bounding along and hope for a smoother ride later in the week!

Russ and Laurie on NEXUS 16:00 3/5/15 at 3 51.8'N:44 49.6'W


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