Routing, Para's short-cut and motorboating

[tcm]

Routing, Para\'s short-cut and motorboating

A bad day for the Bermuda Tourist Authority - para fancies going straight to the Azores. Or at least he wants that to be an option.

This is fine by me - sensibly, it means that the the "Everything's Going Well" option will be to miss bermuda (fnarr) and go direct to the azores. Gear breakage or -worse- finding a bad pie means we go into bermuda. Thus the first two days stay NE or even NNE to allow us to continue to Bermuda...

We may have to go reasonably northish to find some wind anyway, though. The books harp on about this ad nauseam, with the southern route being direct but the northerly route faster etc etc.

So, turning to page 108 in the Jimi Cornell hymn book shows route number AN79 lesser antilles to the azores. Which confim that this saves 500 miles ish, and is especially used by people in a hurry. Head NE from st martin, and winds likely increase...until they go a bit quiet... But it says April is a bit early with possible atlantic gales, whereas May likley best. Hm. Well, late april i suppose is nearly May, and (say) friday 27th is the next to last business day of April....

It also says you need a powerful engine, and we've got two. Albeit not that powerful.

Significant motorboating means we need plenty of fuel and i have already got ( ithink) about 80 litres of jerrycans. Need to check for or buy a big funnel.

Just as important,we need to make darn sure the watermaker can reliably make loads of water. The poker-playing begins with then deciding whethr to run water tanks nearly-full (so if it breaks we still have loads of water) ...or running with tanks nearly-empty to save fuel and/or increase speed. A full tank of water is over half a ton and will cost a bit of speed/range. I suppose best start with the fuller option and move to the emptier policy closer to azores - note there is approx 150litres bottles water on board...

 

[ChrisE]

Re: Routing, Para\'s short-cut and motorboating

Regarding yer water, my back of fag packet sums give me the following. St M to Azore direct abt 2200 miles, I'm assuming you'll do between 150-200miles/day, giving you a passage time of 10-15 days ish. With 1/2 ton of water you'll have 100 gall of water so between 7-10 galls a day twixt 4 gives you about 2 galls pp/day. So assuming watermaker workin whne you leave St M you might consider using 2 galls a max pp/day and keeping tanks topped up until say you've decided to go to Bermuda or not then, if wm still not tits up say after 2 days you'll then have about 3 galls pp/day assuming instant subsequent tits up if you carry on to the Azores otherwsie if Bermuda then showers all the way. That way you should have plenty of water if you more than wm goes tits up and the option to run the tanks down as you get closer to Azores. Sort of ish, eh?

 

[BlueSkyNick]

Re: Routing, Para\'s short-cut and motorboating

Para is clearly concerned about the high costs of stuff in BDA - $6 for a greenie when we were last there. Fags, sorry ciggies, are relatively cheap though.

Also, if you come in from the west you could hang around the primary fishing grounds (Argos and Challenger banks) for a few hours and get some cracking tuna or wahoo (my favourite)

Can get you the precise lat and long if you want.

 

[tcm]

Re: Routing, Para\'s short-cut and motorboating

ooh,all advice gratefully accepted. I am looking forward to recouping the costs if the trip by selling large qtys of fish at falmouth...

 

[claymore]

Re: Routing, Para\'s short-cut and motorboating

Thats an interesting response - based on a 10 -15 day crossing then could you extrapolate the consumption rate, and run the scenarios for tanks full, tanks half full at commencement of voyage and then do a calculation based on the possibility of the WM breaking down on Day 1, Day 2, Day3 etc through to 15 and finally give a prediction of what is the earliest day the WM can conk on without causing major dehydration problems - I realise this is flawed in that no rainwater quantities have been considered, but it would nevertheless make interesting reading.

 

[longjohnsadler]

Re: Routing, Para\'s short-cut and motorboating

Can the plan give the flexibility of seeing how the weather etc etc works in the first few days and then deciding on straight to Azores or Bermuda?

OK I've just read the post properly now and that's a yes. What about sailing about in the Caribbean for a few weeks and flying home?

 

[Stingo]

Re: Routing, Para\'s short-cut and motorboating

Makes sense to me and it will keep Air France happy about my ticket too.