The halfway point always seems further than halfway. By that I mean the first half always seems harder. Perhaps a few weeks near land weakens your sea legs or maybe it’s just there is more blue water in front of you than behind, but the first half seems to drag on. This passage was about 1500 nm as the seabird flies, two weeks, and I have about 750 to go. Based upon weather forecasts, the second week was supposed to be worse than the first week, but the storms of the past couple of days makes me question that. I don’t consider high winds “bad weather”. In fact, Aegir-Ran loves it when the wind is howling. For me, “bad weather” is what I’ve had the last few days … inconsistency. When the wind speed and direction are continuously changing, it makes it very difficult to sail with the wind vane. It’s like loosing a crew member when the wind vane isn’t doing her job, and I cannot afford to loose many of the crew The wind vane works particularly well when the wind is blow hard and in a consistent direction, which brings me back to the second half of the passage. The wind is supposed to blow hard this week, at least until Saturday … 20-25 kt. And while the wind will change direction, it should generally change on the day timeframe, rather than the minute timeframe I have experienced the past few days. So, I am looking forward to the second half of the passage. It should be exhilarating.
Alajuela 38