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Salamander - A Tough Call



From my circumnavigation with wife Sue, daughter Hilary and son Jules, 4 previous ARC Atlantic crossings and 2 ARC Europe crossings, through to today, my 12th Atlantic crossing I have used the GFS weather model as a guide to what might like ahead.


Since the advent of Iridium I have gone on to look at other weather models as a basis for making daily, or sometimes twice daily, decisions as to where to point, either to reach a destination directly, or to find wind to assist in going in the general direction of the destination.


I am a lucky and proud dad to have both our son Jules and daughter Hilary sailing "alongside" us in the Atlantic this year. Both are now already experienced Atlantic sailors and indeed ARC Atlantic sailors.

On the same day, 29th October, unexpectedly, I received an email from each.

From son Jules, on a large Oyster yacht sailing from Palma, Majorca to Antigua, 

"Each forecast seems to paint a different picture, huge unusual hole appearing on last nights GFS, hopefully that picture will change"

From daughter Hilary, who with boyfriend Greg, are running Mustique also in the ARC Atlantic this year in the cruising division",

"Hola!  How's it going?  We've had another good days sailing, gybing up and down the rhumbline. Have you seen the wind hole on predict wind model from around Thursday night?  What's your plan?"

My plan was to continue to monitor the blue hole, the high pressure system to our north being influenced by a series of strong low pressure systems rolling across the Atlantic from East to West in a more southerly location than might usually be expected / preferred, believing there would always be a way through as we got nearer.

Every 12 hours throughout our passage I have looked for an agreement between the models as to the best approach to pass the high pressure system to our north to get some wind. As mentioned I have begun to trust the GFS forecast over the years as a sound basis to begin to make decisions, understanding that during every passage I should adjust the forecast slightly if the winds found are slightly higher or lower than predicted.

From the 29th onwards GFS has, on alternate 12 hourly forecasts, suggested a routing towards Venezuela before turning towards Grenada and then northwest to St. Lucia and passing Barbados to starboard. An unusual routing, but since there is no normal, we all agreed to carry on.

All the crew, Alan, Andrew, Clive, Fredrik, Ralph and Tim, without exception were working well together, loving the challenge and looking forward to handsteering the whole way to the finish, accepting there would be some frustrating light winds on the way.

To help try to achieve this I began to look at all 6 weather models, PWG, PWE, ECMWF, GFS, SPIRE, and UKMO to find any commonality in routing suggestions. The best we could find was some loose agreement as to which bearing to take for each next 12 hour period, understanding and hoping that as we reached the next 12 hour destination, we would / might find agreement between the models for the next 12 hours.

For the last 48 hours our expected arrival date in St. Lucia had already slipped 2 days and the prospect of any useful wind to reach the finish line before it closes had become doubtful.

I have always confirmed that planes and sailing boats do not go together well, but we remained hopeful we could get to the planes on time.

Last night I showed everyone the latest 1800 forecast for an open discussion. It was clear that their was no promise of any useful wind in any agreed location. All models were predicting low winds, which we had all been prepared to sail with provided we knew with a degree of certainty where and when we might find useful winds once again to progress to St. Lucia. No model was in agreement with any other model as to where we could head with any degree of certainty to give us to believe we could continue to cross the finish line before it was due to close.

With much regret and indeed some emotion, by unanimous decision we furled the sails yesterday evening at 2050 and turned on the engine.

It was a tough call for everyone.

Sue and I raise our floppy wide brimmed hats to this year's fantastic Salamander ARC Atlantic Crew, who had never sailed an ocean before and had never sailed together, who bonded like glue to give their all.


We look forward to the rum punch in St. Lucia!


Chris - Salamander Skipper




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