St Georges, Bermuda 32°22.8N, 64°40.5W

[This is paragraph one. Knowing this will be useful later.] One of the things I find most difficult about cruising is not having access to high-speed internet. I guess I’m just so used to being able to access information fast and efficiently that I find it maddeningly frustrating when I can’t. I think I’m a bit of a spectacle in St Georges harbor zooming around in the dinghy trying to ‘borrow’ people’s unprotected wireless internet, laptop in hand. Now that, dear readers (both of you), is a real mobile office.

(as an aside, if I ever live by the sea, I will leave my internet unprotected with a welcome note).

Greg has recently invested in a Cantena (the name is a pretty good description). On Friday when the essential but missing superspecialbutcostsmuchmore cable arrives, I trust we can filtch internet with greater success, and with perhaps a little more dignity than the dinghy. Greg also has a cool Skype like phone service set up – he’s a real expert in this area - and if that works, we may even be able to talk to you!

Sailing wise, Friday looks like a weather window. Right now we have a nasty low pressure system (980MB) to our northeast. It’s causing gale force winds through our anchorage. There’s superb holding here in hard packed sand (and I should add, beautiful clear water so you can see the bottom in 15’) so I’m not too concerned about dragging anchor. We also have our big Fortress FX-37 who’s-your-daddy-danforth plugged into the planet as a secondary – so we’re really not moving unless Bermuda does. But the problem is the boat is so damn efficient it insists on sailing around the anchor at some considerable pace, side to side, reaching the end of its tether with an uncomfortable jerk. It’s gusting to 30 knts and it’s starting to annoy me: you try gripping your bed with your toes!

We hope to use this passing system to catapult us out of Bermuda. Next stop is a little under 1000nm away, almost due south, a little island I know nothing about called St Maarten. To get there, we’ll use the tail end of this system to head southeast, or really to clock up as much easting as we can get. When we’re perhaps 100-150nm east of the longitude of St Maarten (St Maarten is 63 degrees west of the prime meridian - that magical line that runs through the National Observatory at Greenwich, England, and that represents 0 degrees longitude); only then will we focus on heading pure south. So why head east when your destination almost totally south? The reason for this is twofold. Most importantly, we will hit the northeasterly tradewinds for the first time when we get to around 24 degrees north of the equator, and you should know, sailing INTO the trades is quite ungentlemanly. Secondly, there is around a 1 knt east to west current for much of this trip that we need to reckon for.

Now, I trust this discussion has left you with the impression that I know precisely what I am talking about (I know very well that those of you who know me are working hard to stifle your laughter, so don’t bother to email). Well, whatever, when we end up in the British Virgins or perhaps even Puerto Rico, or maybe even Miami, just know I PLANNED IT THAT WAY.

We thought the fishing was better over there.

If weather and catapults and prime meridians interest you, or at least if you want to see what we are sailing in, than you will find the weather data at GRIB.US of interest. You will need to download some software – and register first – but it is free. The interface brings up a map of the world. You select the area of interest, and it will download five days of gridded binary files, or GRIBS, that provide a model of the region’s forecast weather. Once you are rolling, you should click the ‘animate’ button in the top right so it will present the progression of forecast weather every three hours over the next five days.

If you do this, you will see a bunch of weather arrows. These show the speed and direction of wind. IMPORTANT: although wind is described from the direction from which it blows, ie, a northerly wind is blowing from north to south, with weather arrows, the head of the arrow shows in which direction the wind is blowing. I learnt this during our summer in Maine when I had hoped to be in the Caribbean. In addition to the direction, the weather arrow also shows you the strength of the wind. Each full barb represents 10 knts, each half-barb 5 knots, and I hope it's not in our sector, a pennant (triangle) represents 50 knts. The grey stuff is cloud or rain.

Have a look at Bermuda – that’s a pretty big system!

Ultimately our navigation relies on the settle of tea leaves, and stuff we overhear in bars, but this stuff makes you sound knowledgeable to your friends and I strongly recommend it.

If you’re wondering why there are no photos of Bermuda, please revisit paragraph one.