Wednesday 23 February 2000 - Spanish Waters - Curacao

Our mail and computer hard drive arrived last night, the fax charts look favorable for a couple of days, so we are getting the boat ready to head towards the Grenadines.

An upper level trough is projected to soften the trades (they've been blowinng 25+ since we arrived here), with a distinct shift to the northeast ahead of the trough, which can be used to some advantage.

The conventional way to make this passage is in short hops through the offshore Venezualan islands and some of the coastal anchorages. Doing this you can wait out anything you don't like wind wise, and staying along the shore often mitigates the wind and adverse currents. However, we prefer to get it over with in one go so.

1200 - We poke our nose outside carrying single reefed main, and motorsail towards the southeast end of Curacao. The wind between here and Bonair, the island just to the east, will be influenced by the land mass. It shows a distinct SE bias, so we head off on starboard tack for the NW corner of Bonair. Bonair will give us some protection from the waves as well.

Beowulf settles down and we overdose on mail, photos of family (ouur grandaughter, Emma, has a new big-girl bed!) and listen to an early tape of Sarah's newest CD!

1840 12'38N 67'52W - Bonair is well behind us and the wind is backing to the east, so we tack over to port. We can almost lay the bottom end of Grenada, now about 380 miles distant (as the crow flies).

2100 - Wind has continued to back and is now from the NE (063T). Don't expect this to last, so we are close reaching with just main and working jib, keeping speed below 10 knots as the waves are right on the bow - Yuck! However, progress is good - we expect the wind to go back to the SE for a while, and this NE wind will pay big dividends when the wind shifts back.