Day 3 ARC on Formidable 3
We had very light winds so far, everything on a beat or a shy reach, but at least we have wind. From what we can see on the gribfiles and the position reports, most of the boats went South where there is only 0 to 5 knots of wind, poor cruisers..
The ARC notice of race obliged us to leave Gran Canaria to starboard, meaning we had to pass the South of the island, pitty because there was a good breeze on the North. After Gran Canaria, MaxSea send us North, passing El Hierro. We lost some ground there tacking our way up.
Yesterday morning we saw "Renaissance", a Corel 45 with her windseeker up, so that made us having more confidence in the weather router again. And "Solune" went North with us too.
From what I can see on the gribs is that there is a nice big Low Pressure system forming a few degrees more to the North-West That's where we need to go. Not South. This thing is like sucking up all the air where most of the fleet is hehe.
All goes pretty well on board, except for the generator, which we use for charging our batteries. It's broken, with no success yet to fix it. No batteries means no lights at night, no instruments, no GPS, no navigation software, no communication, no weatherfiles and no watermaker. That last thing can become a rather nasty one..
What we do for now is switch everything off during day, at 1200 we take our position, send our report and download a new gribfile and at night, if it's very dark or in a squall, switch on the instruments.
Still a few days to go to the half trip party.
The ARC notice of race obliged us to leave Gran Canaria to starboard, meaning we had to pass the South of the island, pitty because there was a good breeze on the North. After Gran Canaria, MaxSea send us North, passing El Hierro. We lost some ground there tacking our way up.
Yesterday morning we saw "Renaissance", a Corel 45 with her windseeker up, so that made us having more confidence in the weather router again. And "Solune" went North with us too.
From what I can see on the gribs is that there is a nice big Low Pressure system forming a few degrees more to the North-West That's where we need to go. Not South. This thing is like sucking up all the air where most of the fleet is hehe.
All goes pretty well on board, except for the generator, which we use for charging our batteries. It's broken, with no success yet to fix it. No batteries means no lights at night, no instruments, no GPS, no navigation software, no communication, no weatherfiles and no watermaker. That last thing can become a rather nasty one..
What we do for now is switch everything off during day, at 1200 we take our position, send our report and download a new gribfile and at night, if it's very dark or in a squall, switch on the instruments.
Still a few days to go to the half trip party.
