Monday, January 3, 2011

End of zigzagging

Passage to Barbados, day 6. Today we took advantage of slightly less wind and perhaps reduced swell to pole out the jib and start sailing wing-on-wing. (I think our British friends call it goose-winging.) This means that our foresail, the jib, is held out by the pole on one side while the main sail is on the other. The configuration allows us to sail more nearly straight downwind, which is the direction we need to go to get to Barbados. If we had done this days ago, we could have saved more than 100 miles.

Our end of day 6 position at 1500 UTC was 13°46.157'N, 037°16.665'W. Straight-line distance covered was 127 nm while actual distance was 147 nm at an average speed of 6.125 knots. All of our distance should be in a relatively straight line now, at least until we get close to Barbados.

All is well aboard Solstice.

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