Quote:
Originally Posted by horseshoecrab
So my bf left Madeira on or around the 10th of October on his Westsail 32 heading back to the Caribbean.
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The good news #1 is that there has not been any severe tropical storm activity across his track, and #2 he left early in the season and usually the winds are very light early and it can be a slow trip.
His track could be 3500nm. Normally a westsail 32 should be able to do 100nm/day, but given the early potentially light winds, lets say 80 nm/day = 44 days. There have been cases of 30' boats only averaging 50 miles/day along this route early in the season. I did a
delivery to the
BVI a couple weeks ago and a combination of Sean and a tropical wave meant there was almost no
wind for a week there. (so lets say + 5 days to the trip, which gets you to 49 days expected), and if he stopped at the
Cape Verde he could well have added another few days (lets say 5) which gets you to a round number of 55 days.
If he has an
epirb and it has not gone off, I would not worry yet. 50 days is slow, but sometimes these passages just take more time than anyone ashore can understand. 99% of the time in cases like this everything is ok and he will turn up. We will just all keep our fingers crossed for you and hope you hear from him soon.
Also, quite frankly, there's unfortunately not much you can usefully do in any case. You could check with Madeira to see when he actually got off and the Cape Verdi authorities to see if he stopped, which would give you a little better sense of the timing, but otherwise its a big ocean and without any sort of location, there's not much search and
rescue could do. If you contacted the USCG, they might put out a notice to
shipping to be on the look out for a small yacht but without any real idea where he might be that is not likely to be very productive.
Do please let us know when you hear from him, and we can all toast to the safe return of seamen.