A good sailing day on easing down seas and winds.
The worst of yesterday’s conditions start to ease down during the night.
By the early morning, with the wind dropping and the seas slightly calmer, it is time to set more canvas again. First Top Gallants and then Outer Jib join the sail configuration to gain again some speed eastwards, still under the southerlies
Winds that stretch for a wide band between our position and New Zealand.
Though we enjoy smoother sailing now, squall lines keep sweeping over our path. First its sunny, then from our starboard side it becomes grey, the waves break on the sea surface, first drizzle then a light rain is followed by stronger wind gusts. As sudden as they hit us, they soon dissipate too. Their frequency diminishes as the hours pass, leaving a steadier southerly in the afternoon and for the rest of the day. A good wind that blows from a Low Pressure System located south of our position, which sort of elongates northwards and squeezes between two large High Pressure centres.
Europa steers high under the southerly, wind that began to veer westwards during the evening, allowing to gain some terrain not just eastwards but a bit south too.
All in all not an unusual situation while we “run our easting down”, a route traditionally used by the trading fleet in the 18-hundreds sailing the Southern Oceans from the Far East, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, which later became well established and known as the “Clipper Way”. A path that mostly ran along the latitudes of the Roaring 40’s, but having to dip southwards to round the Horn, to about the 56º South before coming up northwards again. That's where we are heading too. Where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet in the six hundred nautical miles constriction named Drake Passage, the narrowest part between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula, where currents and low pressure systems squeeze through, where the swell builds up around the shallows close to the coast. Hence the infamous reputation of Cape Horn. A goal that today still lays 4158 nautical miles ahead of us, after we have sailed the day at an average speed of 5kn.
