Up the coast
12/06/13 23:20
Today finds us still in Cascais but it looks like our weather window is opening. We prepped the boat once again and dressed Astor in her work outfit(storm covers), tucked in all the loose bits, filled up the tanks and if we had tires we would have kicked them (I suppose I could go kick the fenders). The rack is ready for the tender but that will be loaded on the fly once we are out tomorrow at first light.
It should be actually be a nice ride up the coast with little winds. That means we obviously will be motoring, but we will take anything we can get as long as it's not a punch in the nose like we have been getting lately. Once we get up to the top of Spain we will look again and decide to make the jump or not.
If the weather holds out it means I will be without Wifi/Internet for a while. I will bounce occasional updates through Paula using the Ham radio Sailmail account. If you would like to check up on us there are a couple of places to do it. Both involve our AIS beacon installed on the boat. As long as we are within range of a land based station it should feed our position to the following sites. If we drop off the network or our position does not update for a long while this does not mean there is a problem, just that we are probably out of range. No worries.
This first one should be an easy clickable link. It contains our beacon number.
http://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=366973240
If for some reason that does not work, try the second site.
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?zoom=10&mmsi=366973240
If for some reason I did not copy/paste those in correctly, just explore around a bit till you find us.
The second one is neat because you can switch on the wind data flags(left hand side checkbox). If you zoom out a few clicks they will show up as little "L"s all over the page. That is wind direction, and speed. A long line is 10 kts and a short line is 5. They all add up on the stick so three long and a short is 35kts and you will probably find us back in a harbor hiding again. This is some of the info we are looking at when we decide when to go.
Cascais is a neat little city that we have only just touched on while we were here(there is so much more). We are sorry to leave, but the boat will be back.
B
It should be actually be a nice ride up the coast with little winds. That means we obviously will be motoring, but we will take anything we can get as long as it's not a punch in the nose like we have been getting lately. Once we get up to the top of Spain we will look again and decide to make the jump or not.
If the weather holds out it means I will be without Wifi/Internet for a while. I will bounce occasional updates through Paula using the Ham radio Sailmail account. If you would like to check up on us there are a couple of places to do it. Both involve our AIS beacon installed on the boat. As long as we are within range of a land based station it should feed our position to the following sites. If we drop off the network or our position does not update for a long while this does not mean there is a problem, just that we are probably out of range. No worries.
This first one should be an easy clickable link. It contains our beacon number.
http://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=366973240
If for some reason that does not work, try the second site.
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?zoom=10&mmsi=366973240
If for some reason I did not copy/paste those in correctly, just explore around a bit till you find us.
The second one is neat because you can switch on the wind data flags(left hand side checkbox). If you zoom out a few clicks they will show up as little "L"s all over the page. That is wind direction, and speed. A long line is 10 kts and a short line is 5. They all add up on the stick so three long and a short is 35kts and you will probably find us back in a harbor hiding again. This is some of the info we are looking at when we decide when to go.
Cascais is a neat little city that we have only just touched on while we were here(there is so much more). We are sorry to leave, but the boat will be back.
B