After the mad rush of building a new composite rudder, carbon fibre chainplate, and replacement bulkhead, along with repairing our fractional asymmetrical spinnaker and numerous other boat tasks we were ready to leave the Caribbean and head for the Azores. The Azores Archipelago are a group of islands off the Portuguese coastline and a popular halfway stop for ships making the journey from the Americas to Europe. Unfortunately, 2023 has seen unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and that meant that any yachts wanting to make the journey from the Caribbean to Europe were tackling uncertain weather conditions and varying routing predictions. Every day we looked for weather windows there was a different forecast. In the end, we decided that we just had to leave and we would deal with the conditions as they arose. Our greatest asset was the purchase of our Starlink Satellite service which has meant that we can check weather forecasts easily and quickly via PredictWind while we are offshore. It has been a game changer for many who live and work on the sea.
What was usually a well-known (mostly upwind) blue water ocean sail to the Azores, turned out for us to be a light airs downwind sail for most of the way. We were relieved that we had decided to get Frankie, our asymmetric spinnaker repaired just prior to leaving Saint Martin. We were able to use both Frankie and our full masthead kite (Big A) to get us through the light airs and continue to sail when most other yachts would have had to turn the engines on. This leg of our journey was a beautiful and comfortable ride where we sat on 10kts for most of the way.