Miles per day for passage planning (raggy question)?

140-150'sNm across and back in a 39'....taking it easy, being gentle on the boat and crew. Pushing it hard in a 38' we were getting 180-190's on the downwind leg, average for 15 days was 180.

I'd guess you'd get an extra knot or so, which would mean about 170nm a day fairly easily.

My trade wind routes have always been when the trades are blowing after mid January.
 
Nigel, what your softa indicates is little bit what I'm assuming too.
Statistics show average winds force 4 from aside or behind approximately 70-80 % and The boat is quite fast ! What I've read from other Outremer 40 sailors is that during long passages they average 180 to 250 per day.
Still I'm a little bit more conservative than your prognosis and assume an other week to be on the fair side.
I understand that when leaving Azores we propably have to motor one day straight towards north to reach the westerly winds again.
Raelly nice that you could run this with your softa. I'm getting so excited of the sailing that I don't know how to pass the time. Luckily I have to renovate our kitchen so it keeps me a little /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif bit busy.
 
Helina - I did almost the same crossing last summer and expect no wind a couple of days either side of the Azores. Turned out that those days had the best winds of the whole trip. But 2005 wasn't a typical year cos of all all the hurricance.

Make sure you speak to Herb - he's a great asset to have 'on board'.
 
Nigel,
Herb is high on my priority list. In addition I'm planning a commercial weather routing by sat phone just to back up. Sailing a fast catamaran I think we can take the best of the weather forecasts and go along the best winds.
At what time of the year did you do your crossing ?
 
Can I tell you about the time I was filling our 25L jerry can with red ... I'd taken it round on foot (the jerry can) so no boat - there was a couple filling up their ~30' mobo ... thought my 25L can was for a tender !! I arrived, filled, paid and went before they'd finished filling their boat ... apparently 25L would've only taken them the 20Nm or so to Cowes ...
 
I regularly sail on two different boats as skipper/navigator and though experience I reckon on the following.
1. A Gibsea Master 96 and always plan on average 5 knts so that = 120 /day.
2. A Grand Soleil 45 and plan on 9 knts which = 216 (200) / day.

The above assumes that you can sail the boat freely.

If I have to motor then it's ave 4 knts and ave 7 knts.

On one trip with the GS I left Hamble Point Marina at midnight and arrived Ramsgate at 15.30 hours. GPS said I'd ave 9.2 knts overall.

On another trip in the Master 96 I did Ramsgate to Nieuwport in 12 hours (60 nm) ave 5 knts.

Peter.
 
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Is that dogleg to avoid the big grey island in the middle of the Atlantic. I have never noticed it before, you would think they might have dug a canal by now.
 
We averaged 155/day all downwind from the Canaries to Australia (had to tack just twice). Used the spinnaker when required and motored when boatspeed got below 2 knots which was only for a few days out of the 82 days in total we took on the trip (Canaries - Rio - Cape Town - Fremantle).

45 LOA, 33 LWL
 
Don't be fooled by speeds obtained in inshore waters and for brief periods of good conditions. We can do 12 knots with 15 knots of wind on the beam - lightly laden with flat water. We still stick to 7 knots as a passage average.

During ARC 2001 we crossed in 15 days for an average of 8 knots. An Outremer 40 got in a day ahead of us so around 8.5 knots. It was a year of very reliable and unusually strong trades. My advice is don't plan on better than 8 knots for a middle-latitude passage.
 
We do 5 knots - uphill and down dale. We sail for no more than 12 hrs a day and mostly its a bit less than that.
Our last 24 hr session was sailing back from Scotland to Fleetwood in 1999 and I think we did 130 miles - so average of 5.4 knots
 
So average 200 +/- makes sailing 17 days when visiting Azores and if not 15 - 16 days. And to be on the safe side 20 days.
Ohhoijjaa, still some 5 and 1/2 weeks before flying over.
 
To count on averaging 200 mpd in non-tradewind areas is pretty optimistic. Francis Chichester attempted it over 4000 miles in the trades in Gypsy Moth 5 in 1971. He managed just 179 mpd.

I've done the W-E crossing via the Azores twice. Both times we had around 30% headwinds and considered ourselves lucky not to be becalmed in the Azores high.
 
Thinking about Helina's problem, strikes me good weather routing is the answer. With the right wind angles, that cat should really move, so steering a course to keep true wind aft of the beam would be a real bonus and would probably cut the number of days at sea, even if the distance throuh the water is greater.

Herb?
 
TK- that's how I figure it too. I planning to ask Herb's weather and routing services and as back up I am planning to have a commercial serviceprovider through satellite phone. And so we can hopefully move according to the lows not too little wind and not too much either. And if we can keep the average above 8 kn I'm very happy.
 
Helina - one other thing to mention is you may want to allow a decent amount of time in the Azores. Nice place. And you may not have the opportunity again. Staying there for just a couple of days means you probably won't even have time to look around Faial as you'll be busy getting ready for the next leg.
 
Nigel- the stop at Azores is only for tax bureaucracy purposes and for a cold beer. My crew is spending the annual holidays for this and I think even when they fly to Finland from UK they still have to use some days of future holidays as well. So the stop is asap. And the more important is that my gorgeous wife is waiting for me in Ijmuiden /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
 
I'd stick with what Herb says. Just make sure that your SSB instalation is good and for God's sake turn off all unnecessary electrical equipment (fridge, inverter, autopilot, genset etc) when broadcasting on the SSB. Often it helps to disconnect the Pactor modem too.

Do what he says and have a good radio signal.
 
Helina

Outremer's have taken part ( and done very well ) in the ARC over the past few years. I can't actually find the results table for anything other than ARC2005 at the moment but I know a realistic time for a fast cat like an Outremer 40 will be around 14 - 15 days Canaries - Caribbean. So that gives an average speed of around 8 knots.

I took 17 days in my Privilege 435 with just plain sail and reduced sail every night.
 
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