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Crossing the Atlantic
The photo above is looking up at Bob from somewhere in the depths of the South Atlantic Ocean.
We’ve made it from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Woohoo! Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a reasonable chunk of Atlantic lying between us and Bermuda that we’ll be tackling over the coming months, but it still feels like a major achievement to cross such a huge swathe of ocean. We’re currently in the Caribbean and working our way north, from Martinique to Nevis, where Alex will be the best man for his best friend’s wedding. I can’t think of anything better after almost two months at sea than a week of celebrations with good friends.
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Heading for the Cape of Storms
We arrived in Richards Bay, South Africa, on Boxing Day. As we were still at sea on Christmas Day, we chose to celebrate the 25th by not cooking anything! In fact, we ended up celebrating Christmas on the 2nd of January instead, by cooking up a feast (roast ham complete with homemade stuffing and gravy) and listening to Christmas music. Our festive attire certainly got a few strange looks from the locals!
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Efate, Lelepa and Nguna – a small taste of Vanuatu
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in Vanuatu for almost a month already. We’ve crammed in so much that time has simply disappeared as though swallowed by a black hole. It’s entirely possible that we’ve done and seen more of this country in the last month than we did in Marquesas over 6 months.
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The Slog to Marquesas
Well, the Tuamotus aren’t happening at the moment. The trade winds have shut down and we spent three weeks waiting for a weather window to leave the Gambier Islands. We’re heading directly for the Marquesas Islands now, hoping to get there by November 6th in time for Charlene’s arrival.
There are 833 miles as the turtle swims between the Gambier Islands and the Marquesas Islands. In an average 24-hour period with half-decent winds Bob covers 120 miles. On a good day that figure might go up to 135, and on a bad one it might be as low as 90. Pessimistically I estimated that this passage would take us 8 days and secretly hoped that we might get there in 7. The weather forecast when we left was perfect – 12 to 15 knot winds on the beam all the way. Today is day 10, and we still have 200 miles to go. Our average daily run has been 78 miles, and never in the right direction.
The forecast upon departure was correct for one day. Then the wind died and we bobbed aboard Bob. For three days. Then the breeze shifted to the North and increased in strength. It built to 18 knots and came from exactly the direction that we wanted to go in. And it stayed that way for 4 days. We went West, we went North-East, we fought and clawed for each and every mile against the wind, tacking back and forth and have, under the circumstances, made reasonable progress. Today was supposed to be the big break. The forecast yesterday told us to expect reduced winds overnight followed by a rapid shift to the East and building to 8 to 10 knots – perfect. Unfortunately things haven’t panned out that way. The wind did indeed die last night and we spent yet another night Bobbing, but today has been the most frustrating day of them all. South West, 12 knots. Nothing. North, 8 knots. Nothing. East (yay!) 13 knots. Nothing. Rain, big wind shifts. Currently we have 6 knots of wind……….. from the NNW, exactly the direction of the Marquesas Islands. The forecast for tomorrow is for no wind. And the next day. And the day after that.
You can probably detect a hint of frustration in my writing. That would be a gross understatement. Sarah has been amazing at putting up with my grumpiness, exasperation and despair. This morning I very unfairly snapped a snarky comment at her, and yet inexplicably she continues to put up with me! Mind you, I suppose she doesn’t have many prospects at the moment when it comes to getting away………………… maybe the ‘tolerance’ is all a façade. Or maybe I actually control the weather and have thought up this plan as a cunning ploy to trap her here for eternity! Har har har har.
I think I’ve been at sea for too long. I’m exhausted from night after night of not being able to sleep for more than an hour at a time, at the most, before something needs to be done. I’m disheartened to think of all the wear that has been sustained by the sails from banging back and forth in the light airs as the boat rolls with the swells. Most of all, I’m just tired of putting in all this effort and being thwarted at every turn, as though Neptune himself has chosen to torment us for his mild amusement.
There’s a line of squalls ahead of us and it’s moving in the same direction we are –NNW toward the Marquesas Islands. It stretches from horizon to horizon, East to West, in one big dark band of menacing clouds, with intermittent towers of grey-black cumulo-nimbus expunging plumes of rain from beneath them. I thought that maybe if we could catch up to the squall line and punch our way through we might find our much-sought-after Easterlies on the other side, so we’re motoring with the mainsail up but it’s just getting further and further from us. Maybe it’s for the best – I’ve just seen two water spouts form and then dissipate again without quite reaching the surface. There’s a new clicking noise coming from the engine and the oil seems thinner than usual. The level in the sump isn’t going down as it usually does either. I think there’s diesel in the oil.
It’s going to be another long night.
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Good News Bad News
Precursory disclaimer: None of the bad news is overly tragic or terminal!
Bad news: The freezer has broken. It broke about four days ago and is quite an inconvenience because at the time it was absolutely crammed full of frozen food – mainly meat – along with some vegetables that we had chopped up with the intention of eating them once the fresh stuff had run out or gone bad. So much for that plan!
Good news: We’ve eaten like kings for the last 4 days. Chicken in a tomato sauce, deep-fried chicken wings and now a huge, tasty beef stew. Furthermore, Sarah has somehow managed to magic space in what was the fridge and we have turned the temperature right down. It’s successfully keeping frozen stuff frozen. We have not yet had to throw much out at all.
Bad news: The last three days have been pretty tough. The weather forecast predicted max. winds of 19 knots but we’ve been in a solid force 6 (about 25 knots), and last night a force 7 for a while (about 30 knots) with largish seas and a lot of general unpleasantness. Most of the waves were taken on the quarter and have been OK, but every now and then a large one would come in from the side and slam into the topsides. One such specimen crashed onto the deck and forced it’s way underneath the dodger (a piece of canvas which forms a protective cover over the forward part of the cockpit and ostensibly shelters us from wind and waves), tore the bottom edge off its mounts and then proceeded to pour down into the cabin through the main hatch. Everything on the navigation table got soaked. The fridge-come-freezer got soaked. All my tools got soaked. The charts got soaked. In fact, everything in the after starboard section of the boat got soaked. So, we cleaned/mopped up, hung various things up to dry and decided that from then on the hatch would remain closed. It did. All day in fact, and no more waves even came close to crashing up underneath the dodger and into the hatch again. Until I was sitting on deck rinsing off my tools and had the hatch open for no more than 10 seconds as I was about to go back down below. CRASH! It happened all over again. Now, we scurry in and out in a decidedly furtive manner.
Good news: By some stroke of extraordinary luck, none of the dwindling supply of expensive electronic stuff was on the chart table at the time of either of the wave incidents. This really is a stroke of extraordinary luck since one of the laptops is used primarily for navigation and spends 90% of it’s time in that very locale. Sarah’s iphone has already been the victim of some poor judgement on my part when I tried to take us in through the surf onto a beach in San Cristobal and ended up flipping the dinghy over. My ipod now has a smashed screen from when I dropped a jar of pickled cockles on it. We haven’t got a whole lot left, and what we do have we’d quite like to keep working!
Good news: The forecast is for the wind to drop. It is dropping.
Bad news: It has dropped out very quickly, leaving us with no wind and a large, confused, lumpy sea rolling us about all over the place, causing the genoa to bang horribly as it empties and fills repeatedly with wind with every roll. Ah well, the sea can’t be too far behind. It has already come down a lot since last night.
Bad news: We had a bit of a mini-drama last night. I awoke to the unpleasant sensation of being hurled over sideways, followed by a crash of water from the side and a jet of saltiness coming in through the hatch. The movement was not as it should be. A glance up through the hatch onto the deck revealed why – the wind vane was not standing upright as it should be, but rather hanging precariously at a below-horizontal angle while the moving parts at the top attempted to wrench it free and cast it off into the sea. I really do wish people would make expensive things well. We’re very, very happy with our new wind vane on the whole – it performs better than any other wind vane I have ever had experience with – but this is now the second incidence of a bit of it not being quite as strong as we think it should be. The first incident was when the bolt supporting the rudder sheared through. The only thing that prevented us from losing the rudder on that occasion was that, after my experience in the North Atlantic with the Fleming wind vane, I had attached a safety cord to this one tying it onto the boat. This time (last night) it was the mechanism for securing the wind vane itself into its bracket. A plastic hand-screw contains at its centre a bronze threaded section. It kept coming loose so I’d screwed it down as tight as I could. The bronze part had simply pulled itself out of the centre of the plastic part, making the whole thing ineffective.
Good news: The designers had at least thought to design a slight lip into the wind vane fitting so that it is still captive with this screw slacked off. Sarah took the helm for half an hour while I removed the fitting, hammered the bronze bit back into place, drilled and tapped through both the plastic and bronze bits and installed two bolts to keep them lined up. In my view, something like this should have been done at the factory by the manufacturers. It wouldn’t have taken much extra machining. Unfortunately I stripped the threads putting it all back together again, but it’s on strongly now. I’ll deal with how to get it off again when the time comes!
More good news: As of about 2200 last night we are half way there! 1380 miles from Santa Cruz and 1380 miles to Pitcairn. It feels like we should be further along, but it’s wonderful now to be getting closer to somewhere rather than consistently further and further away.
As of 1030 this morning (1730 UTC), June 24th, our position is 15 degrees 53 minutes South, 108 degrees 59 minutes West.
