Thursday morning, 25th of November,the front is well behind us, seas are calm and the breeze almost fair. The Wind Horse executive committee has convened and after due consideration declared:(a)a bath and shower are the first order of business; (b) Thanksgiving holiday shall take place on it official date; (c) Pumpkin pie will be the first off the oven production line; (d) Steve shall engage the services of a barber (note that item (d) shall take place prior to (a). The maintenance staff aboard are directed to do a wash and dry cycle with the laundry facilities, and (should a rain squall not appear by 1600)rinse the salt of the windows.
Progress is back to eleven knots towards St Lucia (last night in conjuntion with adverse weather we lost 3/4 of a knot to current which was more depressing than the sea state). As this is being written at 0900Z the GPS log shows 1000 nautical miles even from the start Sunday afternoon, with which we shall not quarrel given the conditions.
Speaking of weather, we'd like to briefly give a pitch for the functionality of the lowly weather fax in some parts of the world. While use of raw grib files has become endemic, it needs to be remembered that the models from whence these derive have no human intervention, as quaint as that may seem. When the tropics are approached the raw model data gets less reliable and faxes more valuable. If there is disagreement between fax and grib, we always go with the former. Should you have a ham radio or ssb, fax reception is easy (or you could buy a simple all band receiver). A computer and inexpressive demodulator complete the package.
It should be noted that the excitement last night coincided with the frontal passage forecast on the weather fax, with conditions substantially beyond what the gribs indicated. It made no difference on Wind Horse as her rig is impervious to operator (or weather) error. But if you had been caught out with light sails the expense would have paid for many weather faxes.
Our breeze is west southwest at present, clocking slowly. Now that we have given the fax pitch we'll put the Tropical Prediction Center (USA) forecasters to the acid test as they are showing light but fair conditions for the next two days, then a large depression heading our way with contrary winds, which we hope to just skirt. To be followed by NE trades.
The crew of Wind Horse wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.
Position: 21 52'06.74 N, 031 41'58.81 W
ARC-2010-Passage-4-434-2196