Thursday 14th February 2008
"The calm before the storm”
Aboard Temenos II, the atmosphere has certainly quietened down. Caught in a zone
of light airs but being knocked about by a very big swell indicative of the
strong wind blowing over Gibraltar, Michèle and Dominique are striving to make
headway. Taking it in turns to be riveted to the helm to try to get the most out
of the slightest puff of air, the two co-skippers haven't been able to get more
than 4 knots out of their steed over the past four hours.
Since last night things have begun to worsen for Michèle and Dominique, who
spent a laborious night in a zone of squalls. From increases in wind force, to
frank reductions in pace, the monohull has made ardous progress over the past
few hours… Considerably slowed, the danger for the duo now lies in the movement
of this windless zone. The latter has stretched out and is climbing northwards,
where it is threatening to swallow up the monohull. The upshot of this reduced
pace is that Temenos II is now not expected in Barcelona before the morning of
Sunday 17th February.
Deprived of wind since this morning, there’s a risk that the transition will be
more brutal for Michèle and Dominique, who could well be scooped up by a gale
tomorrow. Strong winds of force 7 to 8, momentarily force 9, are forecast in the
Straits of Gibraltar during Temenos II’s passage.
Contacted midway through the afternoon Michèle recounted: “we're making headway
at 4 knots. It's horrific. There's a swell of over 2 metres so the seas are very
short and are completely braking the boat's heading and preventing it from
powering away. It’s the swell that is sending us the E’ly gale, which is blowing
to the North of us. From time to time there are trains of waves hitting us one
after the other. You see this wall of water rising above you and just behind
them the boat slams back down noisily. These are laborious hours and the coming
hours are unlikely to be any easier. The swell is already providing us with an
idea of the strength of the gale over Gibraltar. The files are forecasting
thirty knots, but we’re expecting more than that. It’s a veritable channel where
some very large acceleration may occur without being forecast in the weather
models. We’ve tidied the interior of the boat and we got out the storm sail this
morning. It's strange to prepare for rough weather when you're making less than
5 knots! For the time being we're a long way from the gale. The skies are
overcast, the clouds aren’t moving and nor are we. The situation is pretty
motionless and it feels like we’ll just have to endure it.
We weren’t fast enough last night and we’ve ended up being a bit behind on our
routing time. We had some big storms with lightning all around us as well as
some calm spells, which weren’t forecast on the files. We haven’t made headway
as we should. We hoped we’d be further North than that, which would have enabled
us to get through this buffer zone more easily. It’s hard to say when we're
going to escape it as the files don't correspond with what we've got on the
water at the moment.”
Kate Jennings
Expression.
P.O. Box 26,
Dartmouth,
DEVON.
TQ6 0YG
United Kingdom
+44 (0)7795 116699
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