Today was by far one of the most defeating days I’ve had sailing. It started out good enough as we were able to sail through the night and made lots of ground up from our course correction yesterday. Things were going great and we were making good progress to Minerva until about 8AM, when within an hour the wind shifted to the Northeast and started blowing 20-25 knots. Minerva is directly Northeast of us so this is the worst possible wind direction.
Within a matter of hours we had been blown back West losing all our hard earned miles from the day before and we were no longer able to point at our destination. Our ETA went from 24 hours to 1.5 days to 2.5 days in an afternoon. The GRIB file and forecast still called for East winds which would have been perfect so we waited and waited but they never materialized. We started tacking upwind to try and make some of our progress back but the winds and seas are conspiring against us. The swells are huge, 12 feet or so, and knocking Delos around like a little toy. It makes something simple like cooking nearly impossible so it will be microwave lasagne and meat pies for us tonight. If we don’t get a favorable wind shift by early morning tomorrow we may be forced to scrap our plans and continue on directly to Fiji.
In happy news things have heated up in the fishing department. We lost a fish when it jumped and threw it’s hook but on our second strike we pulled in a good sized Mahi-Mahi! So it’s not all bad, at least we have some Mahi filet’s to look forward to when we can cook again.