May 12, 1400. We’ve been keeping Beowulf light on fuel all winter, as we’ve used hardly any for passaging since Grenada – just a little for the genset. So when the time came to put on some diesel for the trip to Bermuda a few days ago, we had the usual family debate.

Steve: “We only need a few gallons for the genset. The weather looks so good we’ll sail off the hook here and onto the hook there.”

Linda: “What if the weatherfaxes are wrong and we get stuck? We should carry enough to power all the way – we don’t want to end up waiting for a depression and end up beating the entire trip!”.

Guess who won this dialog (and a good thing too)?

So we put on 225 US Gallons in Spanish Town, BVI, and it looks like we’ll be using every drop.

Fuel consumption depends on speed. Here’s how our smooth water scenarios work out: We’ve got 573 miles to go as of 1400 today. We have roughly 190 gallons left, plus a 20 gallon reserve in our day tank. At 9.5 knots we burn 2.5 gallons/hour – so we have 76 hours of fuel or 722 miles to go. At the other end of the spectrum at 11 knots we use 3.75 gallons per hour which gives us 50.66 hours and 557 miles of range.

Here’s where things get interesting. The 96 hour 500mb and surface progs issued this afternoon – which are valid for three and a half days from now – show a low passing Bermuda about the time we’d get there at the nine knot speed – Monday AM. The passage of the front means northerly quadrant winds, and the surface forecast is indicating NE winds.

It appears that if we power faster, burning fuel less efficiently, we might get in before the NE shift. On the other hand, this leaves us with no reserves.

Somewhere up the track – between eight and 24 hours ahead – we’ll probably get into a SW wind flow under the front. This should increase our speed, and save fuel. So, our decision for now is to push the speed up, to see if we can get into the SW flow sooner rather than later, and if it looks hopeless tomorrow, back off and save fuel.

Left unsaid in all of this is that Beowulf carries 840 gallons of fuel, and if we’d added another 50 gallons, we would have been able to power at 11.5 to 12 knots for the entire trip – in which case we would have been anchored in Bermuda by Sunday AM! Without the frontal weather issues, a day’s time doesn’t mean much – and we hope it doesn’t in this case. But it might turn out that we get hammered because of the weather shift in that timeframe.

1600 – Had our afternoon chat with the Neris who are now five degrees – 300 miles ahead of us. They’ve got 22 knots of wind from the west, which ties to the surface forecast we’re seeing. Key is if we can get to it before it goes NW/NE!

1722 – The 48 hour surface forecast we just received shows we’ll be getting into a westerly flow, between two cold fronts, if the weather pans out as forecast – a big if.

1819 – The wind is teasing us, gradually coming around to the west at five to seven knots. Is this the Neris’ wind arriving early? To be safe, we decided to remove the mizzen genoa and reacher and stow them in the forepeak. This way if the wind builds suddenly, we’ll be ready for it. On the other hand, it is probably a guarantee the wind will come in light and from the SW – and we’ll need to drag them back on deck.

We unroll the working jib and are motorsailing at 11.5 to 12 knots for two gallons per hour.

1910 – Breeze backing down to one or two knots and boxing the compass. Jib is backed, so we put it away. If breeze stays light we’ll drop the mizzen as it is quite a bit of air drag.

(View the weatherfaxes at http://www.mpc.ncep.noaa.gov .)