The thing that makes today’s Easterly wind so beastly is it’s persistence. This is our 6th consecutive day of headwinds and probably the 5th time we’ve had 5-8 days of Easterlies. All the locals here tell us the weather this year is better than usual and it’s true that we haven’t encountered the wild storms that I was expecting, but the downside of that for the 3mph paddler seems to be frequent Easterlies. The headwinds are mostly possible to paddle against but they grind us down physically and mentally. We fight against every wind wave for progress, and watch our hard won progress slip backwards whenever we stop for food or a pee. Our speed drops to 2 or 2.5 miles an hour and the 20 miles I like to paddle a day can take 10 hours. Today we have a 16 mile crossing and we woke at 7am to find the NOAA forecast had increased to a 25 knot headwind. The sea didn’t look too bad but our other forecast had also upped the ante, increasing to 17knots this afternoon. I was tempted to give it
a go as we could always turn back. I don’t doubt that we could limp to the peninsula even if we “only” got 17 knots for a time but we decided discretion was the better part of valor and went back to sleep. The forecast (finally) promises us 4 days of westerlies starting tomorrow so we’re probably better off saving our energy for an early start tomorrow and as Sarah puts it “crack out a fat one”. Still, I always feel a bit uneasy if I take the easy option and don’t give things a go so I was pleased to discover more white caps on the sea when I got up for a pee a couple of hours later. It would have been at best “unpleasant” out there today.

So as all good expeditioners do, we slept until midday, then immediately started eating when we got up ( peanut butter and salmon Berry jam on muffins for breakfast, thanks for asking)! I’m looking forward to reading and taking a short walk this afternoon and I will go to sleep dreaming of West winds (South West ideally please)!