Moby: The Atlantic in 14 Days

"To begin with, the general situation was fairly typical for the winter, with the Azores High holding fairly solid in the first week, whipping up a strong north east wind to the south of the Canaries and we had to deal with rough seas for the first two days. Once we had made some headway west, we encountered a more moderate wind. Our choice to not head straight down to pick up the Trade Winds was made from a comfort perspective. The only downside was that the temperature stayed cool during the day, and very fresh at night! The wind then turned around to the east, and our route stayed pretty close to the quickest one suggested by our GPS. Toward the end of our crossing things got a little complicated thanks to the collapse of the south western zone of the anticyclone. This opened the door for a small depression with a trough which extended southwards and which we had to negotiate. So in 24 hours we went from dead calm to more than 25 knots of wind! But once we had handled that we were able to gybe and head directly south ...