Another slow day. At times the wind dropped to 5 knots so we put in about 4 hours of motoring to keep moving. Overnight we saw a number of showers on the radar (much like the previous night). These we are keen to avoid. Apart from getting wet we experience changes in wind direction and speed near them. Only one appeared strong enough to be called a squall and with the Code Zero up in the dark this makes avoiding these systems all the more important. They appear as fuzzy edged patches on the radar and often in clumps. One has to not only anticipate the direction they’re moving (usually the same direction as the wind) but also the direction in which they’re forming as this adds a new motion. With the wind slightly off our stern we don’t have much room to maneuver in one direction so one needs to detect and react when they’re a few miles out.
For much of the day and night we looked as if we’d be lucky to make Palmerston before dusk. After a midnight pickup in the wind we now have an ETA of around 1pm.
As we still have some mahi mahi in the freezer we have not been fishing so no reports on that.
Back to my watch.
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