We’ve been busy the last week marveling at Southern Greenland and watching the weather. Qaqortorq (lovely town), the Prince Christian Fjords, and wonderful Lindenow Fjord on the East Coast are in our wake. We’ll update with photos you won’t believe are real once we get to Ireland, which is where we are presently heading.

To get where we are going we need to traverse the North Atlantic. From Lindenow Fjord to the South of Ireland is just under 1300 nautical miles, depending on where we call in. That is a short passage by our standards. In addition, the trip is usually made over the top of the Azores high (the center of which resides well south). High south, lows to the north, mean following winds. The fact that we are traveling in the same direction as the weather, from west to east, means it takes more time for weather to catch us. In theory, you leave on the back side of one low, follow it across to Ireland, and have the boat secure before the next low meanders along.

But this year the North Atlantic has been contumacious. Just ask the poor folks in the British Isles ("Summer – what summer?"). There has been a succession of depressions since spring, and the Azores high has been weak and well south of its usual position. Rather than having the depression centers to the north of our track, they have been south. Lows to the south equal head winds and seas.

The culprit has been the location and shape of a long wave upper level trough, spinning out these depressions over the central and eastern parts of the pond, while it suppresses the Azores high.

What to do? One option was just to go for it. After all, Wind Horse is optimized for going uphill, and this is a short distance. Not at all like coming back from Hawaii to California under the Pacific High and therefore uphill the entire 2200 miles. But while Wind Horse is content with this, her crew have grown soft over the last three years of comfortable cruising. They do not like this concept.

Another idea is to short hop the trip via Iceland, the Faero Islands, and Scotland. Short hops – 60 hours being the longest – make it easier to find an acceptable patch of weather.

A third option is to return to the East Coast of the US. But this is actually quite a bit further, and while there are some advantages, we really want to see the British Isles and a bit of the Continent.

With such a strange weather year we’ve known that if we get the right weather alignment, we have to be ready to take advantage of it. That is one of the reasons we’ve been pushing to get south in Greenland from Disco Bay. A week ago we noticed the emergence of a huge double low storm system in the Eastern Atlantic. This piqued our interest because events like this are typically followed by a high.

We started watching the NOAA and British weather faxes and the GFS and NOGAPs grib models, and contacted Rick Shema for his thoughts.

Rick concurred that the situation might turn out favorably. So we went through our pre-passage check of systems, and secured the boat for heavy weather.

On August 8 the storm system had matured, and the models were calling for a high to fill in, theoretically giving us some isobars directly on our course. Things looked better on August 9, with the only caveat being a low possibly overtaking us as we approach Ireland on our last day at sea.

As we write this we are 3.5 days from Bantry Bay, Ireland. We are running at 10.7 knots on a course of ESE with the wind from WSW on a dead run. Breeze is 12 knots, and steady. There are SE and NE long period swells from the storm system, but these are dropping off. Forecast vary all over the place. One says nice all the way. Another indicates compression gale from behind. Still a third says strong gale from ahead.

At our present speed we’ll be off the entrance to Bantry Bay at first light Friday morning, a little under five days on passage. We are going to kick up the speed to see if we can beat the worst case scenario into port, and take some hours off the passage. If weather conditions allow, we will back off a few RPM to reduce fuel burn, but for now, we are keeping up the pace.

Meanwhile, we are enjoying being underway where the crew can maintain a relaxed watch. Ever since Newfoundland we have had to contend with fog, ice, unreliable charts, and fish boat traffic. This has meant someone looking forward and scanning radar and sonar 100% of the time on passage. Now that we are off soundings, we have eased up. It is possible to do chores, read, work on photos and design projects, while checking the horizon occasionally for traffic and watching engine instruments. We would not trade the last two months of challenge for anything, but it feels good to relax.

Now, just to make this interesting, here is Rick Shema’s latest take on the weather situation:

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You are looking good for continuation down track at about 10kts.

Troubling to look at four different forecast aids and they all say something different, gfs, ngps, opc, ecmwf. Gfs paints a rosy picture and is the most disparate. Ngps, ecmwf and ngps are closer aligned with opc showing a flavor for both ngps and gfs. Worst case, I’d be looking at ngps and ecmwf.

They both show the low I have been talking about near the end of your trip forming on the cold front to the south of track and displacing the high and following you over to Ireland. There is a rather strong U/L short wave to the east of Greenland propagating in the polar jet. Ngps/ecmwf apparently reflect the disturbance by developing the surface low. Gfs does not recognize. Ngps is believable.

Winds shift from W-NW back to W 5-15kts, the shift shift to SW by 14Aug0300Z. Winds back further to S-SSE 10-15kts later that day. By 14Aug1800Z winds increase to 15kt seas 6ft and build to 30-35kts with seas 10-12ft and building by 15Aug0600Z.

If you go with this worse case scenario, only a slight increase in speed should put you ahead of these higher conditions

Gfs doesn’t show the low developing. It does show the higher conditions currently to the south of you should and propagates that "mess" eastward with intensification heading towards Ireland. Then quickly dissipate by the time you approach the coast. Still, gfs does see anything over 20kts and predominantly less at W to NW 10-15kts.

The "mess" I’m referring to is the gale conditions with 40kts winds and 18ft seas in the "squash zone" south of you between the low you are following and the high that has moved off Canada.

So, I’d highly recommend another consideration be to adjust to a higher speed to beat the low and the Serly conditions.

Rick