I’ve realized that good Arctic weather is a blow in your favor and bad weather is a blow not in your favor. It feels like ever since that we crossed over to Canada we’ve had what would be considered a small craft advisory. As long as it’s not on the nose Salty loves the stronger winds.
So what’s the news? There’s a…. wait for it…. a BLOW and we’re waiting it out in an anchorage.
The past couple of days we were down wind sailing in 30+ kt wind and a 12′ swell. The swell caused us to roll around a lot and our auto pilot when on strike. Every time we would surf down a wave the auto pilot would go hard over and auto correct itself. We were literally sailing in a zig zag. We saw speeds of 17.3kts when surfing down waves, on average we were making 8.5kts.
We are trying to meet our deadline of September 14th to get into Nome, we really need to make some miles FAST! I’ll be flying out of Nome with the kids to Anchorage to rendezvous with my mum who’s flying from Australia.
The local weather reports state the weather will shift tomorrow night be we don’t have the luxury to wait around for it. If the wind shows signs of decreasing then we may make a break for it this evening when the kids go to bed, this will put us through the worst of it at night and come out with lighter winds by the morning. Looks like there’s a few days of good sailing and we hope to make Barrow before it turns again.
Fun fun fun on the high seas!
The first phase of the Northwest Passage was the ice, now we’re in the second phase…. the angry September seas.
SV Salty
69 56N 131 13W
Jack dotzman says
Seeing and hearing about your experiances are fun to follow. WOW it is really barren in the north Atlantic. Stay warm. JD