Thinking about the North Atlantic

The first part of this passage has been more like a re-run of the Bermuda leg. Catching the bottom edge of the same storms that are pounding Europe,the crew has hit 15kts of boat speed, seen 50kts of wind, and had its first real lightning storm. Dale was on watch after midnight when what seems to have been a classic frontal line came through. Like a ribbon of swirling ink, these dark fronts roll across the sky with major vertical turbulence. Rising air accelerates to spool up powerful, sudden winds. Dale describes a fantastic light show with one bolt clearly hitting the water. These are times you appreciate being in a steel boat- they do much better at defusing and harmlessly transmitting any electrical energy.

However, now things are changing dramatically. The weather is good, we are motoring across flat seas with only 4-8kts of wind. Out of the foulies and into the shorts. We've done two trawls, each producing plastic and strange blue jellies. The trawling we do south of the Azores - and all the way in to Brazil - will be an important addition. We have a much better idea about conditions inside the Gyre as an expected accumulation zone. However, the team's finding of an almost uniform soup of smaller plastic bits suggest conditions may be different in the Atlantic. What may be occuring here is an equally large, serious infusion of plastic debris, but one that is much more dispersed. The specific currents in the Atlantic, or perhaps the higher frequency of heavy weather may be behind this. Could it be that the Atlantic has a broad, swirling mass of plastic that is more "stirred up" than the North Pacific? This also makes sense with what we saw earlier in the Canaries. There not only did we see the piles of beach plastic, but the water flowing past the islands was full of passing debris. Trawling all the way, 5000nm, to Brazil will give us some insight.

For now the team sails, trawls and looks for warmer, calmer weather south. Less than 3 days to CV!