Antigua to the Azores

Homeward Bound

It was another warm, sunny morning and we had decided to turn to port outside Falmouth Harbour and motor-sail straight into the trade winds to begin with in order to clear Antigua and then Barbuda on their windward sides. We killed the engine in the middle of the afternoon and beat into the easterly trades for the next few days. With plain sail and the first reef in the main, we kept the apparent wind 50° off the starboard bow. The wind varied from 15 up to 24 knots and we lived at 20° of heel until the 7th, when, quite suddenly we found ourselves becalmed

Daily we checked into two amateur radio nets that were both new to us. We were the guests of Doug VE3NBL, Ernie VE3EGM and the rest of the 'good old boys' on the Mississauga Maritime Net. This meets on 14.1212 MHz every day at 1145 UTC (although they're all there and having a good time by 1130 UTC at least). After that we had an hour's break before catching up with Neville G3LMO, Richard KT4UW and usually Don 6Y5DA on the World-Wide Weather net on 21.303 MHz at 1300 UTC.