{"id":513,"date":"2001-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-05-04T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=513"},"modified":"2012-03-07T21:06:38","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T02:06:38","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew103\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Approach to Bermuda, Testing New Gyro"},"content":{"rendered":"
0900 EDT – Deciding how best to approach Bermuda, and testing the new WH Gyro.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

0900 EDT – 24’49” N – 63’39” W. The big squall line was a big bust. After preparing for the worst we ended up with a shift to the NE and a max of 17 knots of wind – but mostly 7 to 10 knots. However, you never know with these and it is better to be shortened down in advance. <\/p>\n

The NE winds have come in early, and they are almost on the nose with a slight NE bias – really NNE, about 20 degrees off the lay line to Bermuda. <\/p>\n

If they remain light enough and the sea state calm enough, we can motorsail aiming for Bermuda at 10 to 10.5 knots – which we are doing right now. With 456 miles to go this gets us in early Sunday, theoretically ahead of the blow which may be coming. <\/p>\n

On the other hand if the wind picks up now, and does not clock to a more NE direction – so we have to fight wind and wave, it could be late Sunday evening or early Monday AM before we are at anchor. As we do not want to close with Bermuda in gale conditions this raises some interesting questions: one approach is to push on and take our chances with the weather’s schedule and what happens with our progress. Another approach is to slow down, heave to, and\/or sag off to the west with the NE wind to try and get behind the worst of the coming blow, and\/or stay below it. <\/p>\n

The tricky part if that the further N. we head, the more in the influence of the blow we’ll find ourselves, if we fail in making Bermuda beforehand. <\/p>\n

On a smaller, slower, or less seaworthy vessel we’d have already slowed down. Better to hang out in this latitude, where things are a bit warmer and more benign, than further north. We’ll look at the fax charts in the next couple of hours, and then see what Commander’s Weather thinks before we make a final decision. <\/p>\n

On the technical side – the new gyro heading reference from WH which we’re testing is working great. We are heading basically due north, and at this angle with just a fluxgate compass all boats – including Beowulf – wander back and forth +- 10\/15 degrees. With the WH Gyro plugged in we are spot on, and it steers better at other angles as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

0900 EDT – Deciding how best to approach Bermuda, and testing the new WH Gyro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beowulf-logs","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}