Irene Crosses the North Atlantic
Our last post left us in St Peter’s, Nova Scotia, with us diving to scrub Irene’s bottom in preparation for crossing the North Atlantic to Ireland. We departed on a Friday – August 3rd, 2018 – in violation of the prohibition “Never Set Sail on a Friday.” We tend to take sailor’s superstitions with a grain of salt. After all, there are so many of them! So we whistle when we are cheerful, carry bananas aboard when we can, and don’t worry in the least that half our crew are women. The weather looked good for us with just the right wind, not too much or too little, and that’s much more important than any old superstition. The first few days we sailed closehauled in thick fog towards the south coast of Newfoundland. As we got closer to the island the wind backed until we were forced to tack to clear Cape Race. So, Irene zig zagged her way up the great circle route. This is a rare thing for us – sailing upwind on the open ocean – we usually don't to avoid boat damage and crew fa