Sailing routes make no sense to me!

[Daniel]

To sail from Europe to the West Indies and back, it was necessary to make an almost complete circuit of the North Atlantic Outward-bound, the ships had to find the trade winds in the vicinity of the Azores; returning, they hugged the American coast sometimes as far north as Newfoundland, in order to pick up the prevailing west winds toward Europe. A voyage to India first necessitated a detour to the coast of Brazil from where the trades helped the ships to double th Cape of Good Hope, after which the monsoon carried them northwards across the Indian Ocean.

- - E.W. Petrejus, The Great Age of Sail, Edita Lausanne 1967, p. 161.

I don't understand either of these two routes. I understand that you take the trade winds to the West Indies, but aren't the Azores way too far north for the trade winds? I thought the trade winds blew about between 10 and 30 degrees, with the horse latitudes about 30 to 35 degrees, and the prevailing westerlies between 35 degrees and the poles. The Azores are at about 38 degrees North. Shouldn't they be in the westerlies?

The detour to Brazil when en route to the Cape of Good Hope also matches with my memory. But the southern trade winds blow from the east and southeast, don't they? Wouldn't they be dead foul for a ship trying to reach the Cape of Good Hope from Brazil? It looks to me like you'd have to keep going south almost to the Roaring Forties before you had a fair wind for the Cape of Good Hope. Darned if I can see what help the trade winds would be for that part of the trip.

[PoD]

I'm not up on navigation but on the replica trade wind chart that I sell it seems the winds begin just below madeira rather than around the Azores. The chart does show a voyage line that goes from spain through the Azores to the colonies somewhere around Cape May but it doesnt seem to touch on the actual trade winds.

[MarkG]

To sail from Europe to the West Indies and back, it was necessary to make an almost complete circuit of the North Atlantic Outward-bound, the ships had to find the trade winds in the vicinity of the Azores; returning, they hugged the American coast sometimes as far north as Newfoundland, in order to pick up the prevailing west winds toward Europe. A voyage to India first necessitated a detour to the coast of Brazil from where the trades helped the ships to double th Cape of Good Hope, after which the monsoon carried them northwards across the Indian Ocean.

- - E.W. Petrejus, The Great Age of Sail, Edita Lausanne 1967, p. 161.

I don't understand either of these two routes. I understand that you take the trade winds to the West Indies, but aren't the Azores way too far north for the trade winds? I thought the trade winds blew about between 10 and 30 degrees, with the horse latitudes about 30 to 35 degrees, and the prevailing westerlies between 35 degrees and the poles. The Azores are at about 38 degrees North. Shouldn't they be in the westerlies?

The detour to Brazil when en route to the Cape of Good Hope also matches with my memory. But the southern trade winds blow from the east and southeast, don't they? Wouldn't they be dead foul for a ship trying to reach the Cape of Good Hope from Brazil? It looks to me like you'd have to keep going south almost to the Roaring Forties before you had a fair wind for the Cape of Good Hope. Darned if I can see what help the trade winds would be for that part of the trip.

That doesn't sound right to me, either. The Columbus Route involved sailing to the Canaries, not the Azores. To return, you could catch the Gulf Stream off of Florida. I thought that if you went as far north as Newfoundland you hit Westerlies.

Mark

[Daniel]

Well, it makes sense to seek westerlies if you're going back to Europe. A good point about using the Gulf Stream to get to Europe, though; you can catch the Gulf Stream as far south as Florida, can't you.

The bit about the trade winds starting below Madeira is also my understanding, which makes Madeira a sensible route toward the trade winds from Europe. To get to the Azores from Europe, you'd have to fight the westerlies. Although I remember reading somewhere that the westerlies aren't nearly as constant as the trade winds; they tend to veer (i.e. shift clockwise) constantly, and the west winds merely last a little longer than the others. But in The Packets they suggested that was enough to make the average Europe-North America trip 40 days, versus an average time of 24 days from North America to Europe.

[capn'rob]

The old rule for navagating Europe to the Wesr Indies was "Sail South until the butter melts then sail West." The Great Equatorial are Westerly, wind and current. on the outer boundries are counter currents. In the Atlantic, there is a great river. If you take all the rivers of the world and combine their flow, they would not equal the flow of the Gulf Stream! Hence the homeward bound route, hugging the America's East Coast. That current pulls a U-turn, actually drops off Coconuts and warmth on the South West corner of Ireland and continues South.

Check out "Le Route d'rhumme". My French spelling may be off but the Rum route was the Europe to W. Indies course to trade with the Caribbean. Becoming the "Rhum Line" which became a part of practical, global navigation.

It's similar with the California to Hawaii trip and why boats for sale are so many and so reasonable. From CA, it is a "sledride", off the wind, zip and you're there. Getting home, you must sail above the "Japan High" which is practically circumnavigating the Northern Pacific.

The best visual for this would be the Pilot Charts. They are broken down to the four seasons and the Oceans and give wind and current "roses" based on averages kept since those mentioned in the preceeding post. You will see the routes laid out in "Great Circles".

The Charts I mentioned are the Replicas by PoD. They look like the originals and were the birth of the Pilot Charts

Edited March 23, 2010 by capn'rob

[the Royaliste]

To really get a good understanding of the 'why's' to all of this, the 'bible' if you will, for those of us who sail the globe is 'World Cruising Routes' by Jimmy Cornell....here's a link to his bio.. the book is available in most sailing chandleries, and of course, Amazon etc

World Cruising

[Daniel]

To really get a good understanding of the 'why's' to all of this, the 'bible' if you will, for those of us who sail the globe is 'World Cruising Routes' by Jimmy Cornell....here's a link to his bio.. the book is available in most sailing chandleries, and of course, Amazon etc

World Cruising

I'm ordering the book. Thank you, Royaliste!

[Daniel]

I'm looking at World Cruising Routes, and it shows a fairly S-shaped cruising route from North America to the Cape of Good Hope, passing almost midway between Brazil and Africa. The route, however, appears to be very modern, based on George Findlay's 19th-century studies and based on the ability to fix longitude.

I just found a book on Amazon by Richard Rutherford-Moore called The Pirate Round: Early Eighteenth Century Navigation During the Golden Age of Piracy. Has anybody read this? Is it good?