Monday 13th July- Day 18

Well… what a 24 hours it has been.

We hauled the parachute anchor back on board at 6am yesterday morning and got straight back on the oars. The forecast suggested the headwind would ease much earlier than it actually did, so we set off expecting things to improve fairly quickly.

They didn’t.

Instead, we spent most of the day rowing into a surprisingly strong headwind. The wind direction stubbornly stayed in the south-east for virtually the entire 24 hours, making every mile hard-earned.

Thankfully, during the night it eased a little, allowing us to bring our course further round towards an important waypoint. That waypoint marks the favourable current we really don’t want to get blown north of. If we drift too far, we’d lose one of the biggest advantages available to us for this crossing.

So, despite the tough conditions, we’re still where we want to be.

Looking ahead, though, we’re keeping a close eye on the weather. The forecast shows the southerly winds increasing again later today. If they become too strong, we may once again have to deploy the parachute anchor rather than allow ourselves to be pushed into what we jokingly call “no man’s land”—an area north of the favourable current where we’d make life much harder for ourselves over the coming weeks.

We’ll see what happens.

At the moment we’re still making progress, but the stronger winds haven’t arrived just yet.

The encouraging news is that we may finally have a spell of favourable conditions later tonight and into the early hours of Tuesday.

Everything is crossed.

Overall, it’s been another cold, wet and damp day with a hard pull on the oars from start to finish.

A pretty tough 24 hours.

To make matters worse, we couldn’t even open Gordon Ramsay’s Dangerous Kitchen last night!

Our spare Jetboil simply refuses to cooperate in the wind. The moment it lights… it blows straight back out again, no matter how many makeshift windbreaks we build around it.

It’s amazing how much you miss the little routines.

That half hour on deck with Paul, making coffee and soup before the night shift, has become one of the highlights of every day. It’s our chance to catch up, laugh about whatever the Atlantic has thrown at us, and mentally prepare for another three hours on the oars.

Without a hot coffee and a mug of soup, the night shift somehow feels that little bit longer.

I’ll have to get inventive.

I’m sure there’s a way of building a better windbreak from bits and pieces we’ve got on board.

After all, necessity is the mother of invention!

Hopefully tomorrow’s blog will be written with a mug of coffee back in my hand.

Dawn

“Together Paul and I are rowing home — the long way round.”

Hometown Row

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