Logbooks:
Cape Town to the Azores
A quick stroll around Angra do Heroismo, Terceira
| Date: | June 16, 2016, 4:26 a.m. |
| Position: | 38 39.06 N, 27 13.16 W |
We arrived to hear music although it was getting late in the evening, so we quickly put ashore to go check it out. The Unesco Heritage listed old town is absolutely stunning and the place was alive with preparations for the Sao Joao festival which starts on Friday and included a slightly more humane version of running with the bulls. It was really worth the stop to see the place, in spite of the brevity. All the buildings, which are beautiful and ornate enough in their own right, were further decked out in flowers, ribbons and bunting in preparation for the 10 day festival. Workers scurried around adding temporary infrastructure and locals were chaining their lawn chair to lampposts to reserve seats for the big parade. It was like coming across a great classical beauty, who had almost finished putting on her best dress for a big party. I am so pleased we got the opportunity for the quick stop and one last Queijada da Graciosa, (Azorean Custard Tart.)
Sao Jorge - The green dragon that breathes Cheese.
| Date: | June 15, 2016, 1:15 a.m. |
With just the two of us we thought it would be more fun to rent a scooter for the day. We Headed West from Velas and very quickly, straight up into the clouds. It was eerily beautiful winding through tiny agricultural villages and cloud forests, I got the feeling not many tourist take the scooter option as we got many strange looks from the locals. They were however very friendly as we enjoyed getting lost in the clouds on the top of the mountain ridge. We finally found one of the Cheese factories of the Island (Faial is fish, Pico is wine & Sao Jorge is cheese!) Naturally Mark is in love with the place for this reason alone. The quality of the local offerings is excellent and the price amazing.
Sao Jorge Island is a sheer volcanic ridge rising almost straight out of the sea, some say it is so named as it looks like a sleeping dragon. We were impressed at the steep sides of the South coast until we saw the jaw dropping North coast. Lush green waterfalls of vegetation plunging into the sea with the occasional puddle of land at the base, upon which a tiny ‘Faja’ (village) is located. Several of these are only accessible via quad bike or foot and we decided to walk the 8km return trip between Faja dos Cubres and Faja da Calderia de Santo Christo. The latter of which features a salt water lagoon and the only clams in the Azores. It really is different to the Pico and Faial, which are also totally different to each other. It would be wonderful to be able to see all of the Azores Islands but so far Sao Jorge is shaping up to be one of our favourite places period. It rivals parts of New Zealand for stunning natural beauty, with a sprinkling of picture perfect European villages, and great local produce to cap it off.
As soon as we descended to the Faja we had to strip off all the layers of clothing that biking through the clouds required. It was suddenly very steamy and tropical. Add to that a hike of gentle hills and you really earn your beer at the little pub/restaurant in Santo Christo. We splashed out on a plate of clams as we’ve heard so much about them from so many people. Indeed they were lovely but expensive, Mark’s Prato do Dia (Plate of the Day) was however, excellent value and quality. He believes they taste even better just because he dose not have to think or make any further decisions.
At the base of the switchback ascent, we were questioning our wisdom at hiring a scooter. Luckily we had taken the biggest in the fleet and this thing did not miss a beat as it powered us up the hill. It was really nice to be in the open air, smelling all the vegetation and back up along the mountain ridge the agricultural aroma. We toured down to the Eastern point and could see all except the Western most islands of the group. It was a great view enjoyed in between visits to cheese factories and patisseries, whilst waving to friendly locals. All told it was big day but thankfully we have the long hours of sunlight this time of year to enjoy.
Bookended by Festivals... Departing Horta for Velas
| Date: | June 12, 2016, 12:23 p.m. |
| Position: | 38 40.80 N, 28 12.20 W |
Last night we enjoyed another local festival, this time we had a big table of cruising friends, so we bought many of the street food dishes and were able to share them. I think we must have sampled nearly everything on offer whilst enjoying the music and dancing.
We have been so fortunate to bookend our Horta experience with these lovely local events. This afternoon we are going to hop the 21nm to Velas in the neighboring island of Soa Jorge. Luckily we behaved last night so are not too seedy. It is challenging to tear ourselves away from so many dear cruising friends in Horta but we have heard so many good things about Sao Jorge so we are looking forward it.
....
It took us under 4 hours to hop to Sao Jorge under head sail, though we did have to throw in a jibe. The flat seas and good breeze made for a lovely run between the tall picturesque islands. Pico pierced the clouds but Faial remained shrouded in the mist that we left it in. The clear blue sky at Sao Jorge had us rushing to peel off layers.
The marina at Velas is a tiny, but excellent facility, tucked between a quaint village and a dramatic cliff with lush greenery clinging to it. Jose has to be the most friendly marina operator we've come across. Once you have got your (very simple) check in completed, he turns into a helpful tour guide who seems to genuinely want to make sure you get the best from your stay.
We enjoyed a nice stroll around the village and came across the most lovely natural swimming lagoon umungst the rocks. On this balmy Sunday evening it was being enjoyed by many locals. Such a big change from Horta, which is still lost in the misty rain.
Exploring Horta and Pico in between chores and rain
| Date: | June 10, 2016, 11:31 a.m. |
After several days recovering from the exhaustion of such a long passage we finally began to rip the boat apart to fix, clean and maintain it. As anticipated the weather was fairly lousy so it suited many of these tasks. We also did a fair amount of socialising, often at Peter Sports, with old and new boat friends. Several other boats we know have arrived which is giving us a great excuse to sample many different regional wines. Being out at anchor we have had to stay onboard a couple of times to mind the boat and even do an anchor watch one night, not the most fun. The holding is fine but there is plenty of debris as one would expect in a historic old port. Though we have never dragged many other boats have, we have learnt that many European sailors are more used to marinas and those who have not spent much time abroad can often have little experience setting an anchor.
In the harbour of Horta the fisherman would paint their name on a wall before putting out to sea. The traditional belief is that you have until your name wore off the wall to make it back safely to land. Nowadays yachts who stop at these beautiful volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic have taken up the tradition also and every smooth surface down near the harbour is covered in these paintings. In between bouts of rain we have painted our own square. Many boats paint their logo but as we do not have one, I came up with an image that incorporates all the traditional sailor tattoos we have 'earned' so far.
A gold dragon for crossing the international date line.
(Painted as a stylized Australian leafy sea dragon)
A turtle for crossing the equator
A fouled anchor for the Atlantic
A compass rose for the Indian Ocean and Cape Agulus in South Africa
(I could not find a tradition for that but this seemed appropriate as Agulus refers to compass needle)
Three blue swallows and two blue stars each signifying 5000nm sailed, 25,000 in total!
And I finished the constellation of the southern cross in black stars as we are Australian.
With the marina rafted 3-4 boats deep much of the paint in the town was sold out. On top of this we had to paint quickly on the few sunnny moments we've had. This turned the experience into a suprisingly social event and a lot more fun than expected. We ran around swapping, lending and borrowing different colours off all the boats who were out also painting. In the mean time all the land tourists were photographing us which felt a little strange but obviously it is one of the things to see in Horta, even for dirt people.
My other notable achievement this week was the recreation of the amazing Fava bean dish we had on night one, courtesy of our friendly customs official. It took me three attempts but on the third I totally nailed it and spent the evening in a foodies state of pure bliss. Paired with a chewy wood fired local flat bread of wheat and maize flour to soak up the caramelised onion, Chourico, smoky Pimente and wine reduction, it was the best meal we've had in a long long time. One of my favourite things about travelling by boat is exploring the local produce and picking up a regional dish or two. We have our own kitchen, can stock up with supplies to take away and we have the time to experiment, perfect and gather advice from the locals. Over the past few years I have really enjoyed adding slowly to my personal cook book in this way.
On the first really sunny, blue sky day we set off to cross the ismuth to Port Pim and see the Whaling Museum, Daubney residence and the little Aquarium. All are modest affairs but for loose change we enjoyed the visit. The Auqarium is actually a stockist for other aquariums and it was interesting to learn about that process. The ‘highlight' of the whaling station is undoubtedly the colour videos which graphically show the station in action back in the 1970’s.
We have lingered in Horta due to a number of factors, as always there are some boat repairs to make; catching up with friends and hanging on to greet others due to arrive; the lousy weather, both locally and for the passage; and the congestion of ARC boats at other islands. The latter are due to move on soon and so will we. In leu of sailing to the neighbouring Island of Pico we took a 15 minute ferry ride and rented a car for the day with our friends from a Dutch boat. In June the ferry extends its hours well into the evening so with an early start we could enjoy a very full day.
For the first time we had a completely cloud free view of the largest mountain in Portugal, Ponto de Pico (also a volcano.) So on the advice of the super-friendly and helpful lady at the tourist information office at the ferry terminal in Madelana, we bee-lined up to Cabeco des Cabras (the start of the walking trail.) The summit is a difficult 6 hour return trip and we were only hoping to do a small section but we were turned away as we were not wearing serious hiking footware, sneakers don’t cut it. Apparently the volcanic rocks on this, the youngest of the Islands, are shoe eaters. Instead we walked down a dirt road out the back of the car park to a stunning view down the island and out to Sao Jorge and Graciosa Islands (35nm away- what terrific clarity!) We then looped through the Lagoas (a string of crater lakes) and nature reserves. By then the clouds had settled back into their usual encampment over the island and we had to wind slowly along, not only due to the extreme roads but also due to the fully horned and incredibly stocky, bovine traffic. We steered well clear of the big bulls sporting rubber balls on their horn points, in case they had earned these through acts of aggression.
Heading to Baia das Canas there is a lovely picnic spot that our 4 year old companion really appreciated. We had the place to ourselves and in spite of the many picnic tables we ended up sitting on the floor of a cubby house with a million dollar view for lunch. Sadly we had not year made it to the wineries so we had to put up with tea and coffee with our local produce picnic. We were on the way to Lajido to one of the official wine museums and UNESCO protected vineyards, when we accidented upon a private museum, A Buraca (of the wine of the same name - in Santa Antonio.) This turned out to be a brilliant stop, we got a little tour of all the historic family tools of the trade, some of which still get pinched to be used today, as well as a wine tasting. We struck up a fascinating conversation about contemporary and historical life on the island which was far more informative and interesting than the official stuff we’d come across before.
Further on at Laijdo, where the farmers crack rocks to make crevices in the lava flow to plant their vines, we found the official museum and enjoyed a wander around the picturesque settlement. Dominated by the handsome grey lava stone, all buildings seemed to constructed of it and there were little dry stone walled segments protecting vineyards that stretched from the rocky shoreline to the base of Ponte de Pico. There is a walking trail through the vineyards and it really is an otherworldly place to wander about. It also goes to prove that vines are like artists, with the best results born from suffering.
We were a little too late in the day to visit the lava tunnels, it is a guided tour where they recommend a prior booking, so after a quick tour of the stretch between Porto do Calhau and Areia Larga just South of Madelana, (there is another 8km wine tour/walk through this section,) we consoled ourselves with some magnificent local Azorean fare. In our opinion we are finding much better value and quality of food at local pubs and modest little family restaurants, than we have experienced at the posher tourist oriented establishments. Several of our yachting friends have echoed this opinion so if you ever make it here, I recommend getting lost in the back streets to find dinner. With the generosity of Portuguese portions, do not dismiss a snack bar or snack menu - these can turn out to be quite hearty meals. Mark enjoyed some blood sausage and taro, whilst I had the most unexpectedly good codfish croquettes. (I usually find it hard to get excited about what is basically a humble fish cake but this local dish was seriously good.) As we wandered back to the dinghy from the last night ferry we passed the first events of a festival spanning this weekend and to our great amusement a Portuguese rendition of AC/DC! (That’s classic Aussie hard rock music for the uninitiated.)
Horta, Faial Is, Azores, Portugal.
| Date: | May 31, 2016, 3:05 a.m. |
| Position: | 38 31.86 N, 28 37.37 W |
Wow. Perhaps it is because we have just spent a month at sea, but the Azores Is are particularly beautiful with the added attraction of amazing food and good inexpensive wine. Our first 48 hours here have been rather hectic but terrific.
We arrived with a fleet of around 20 other yachts the rest of whom have come from the Bermuda and the Caribbean. The little harbour of Horta was packed as yachts shuffled around on the customs dock but being back in the first world has it’s perks. All the 4 required officials for clearance into the country have adjacent offices in the same dockside building, making clear in a cinch. The Harbour master does not speak english and has a series of French and English signs that he points to in order to get through the formalities, Mark nervously broke out his rusty Brazilian Portuguese and the rotund, stern looking man suddenly appeared as if his smile was going to split him in two. Furthermore the friendly customs official invited us to a local community party, as tired as we were it seemed only prudent to attend given that this is the man in charge of confiscating excess alcohol brought into the Azores.
Horta is an unspeakably beautiful Portuguese town settled among a dramatic volcanic landscapes of brilliant green foliage and black rock. The black volcanic rock has been extensively and with elegant effect in the construction of the town. The oldest buildings use it in it most natural state, rough hewn, while each generation of building thereafter uses it in a more sophisticated and refined way. Even the most modern buildings embrace it for decorative elegance. It is used however to the most dramatic effect in the grand church facades that dominate the townscape, in beautifully wrought architraves and edging set against brilliant white render. It was next to one such church that we found our party that evening.
Our friendly customs official was at the gate as we arrived and he quickly handed over doorman duty to become our barman and host before taking up the MC role and later his own instrument in one of the ensembles! He educated us on local wine and cuisine and we enjoyed the amazing local flavours of some street style dishes, dominated by sweet smokey paprika, washed down with local Pico wine (from the next island over.) Rain kept the crowds small and we moved to a nearby shed for a bit of traditional dancing. We were all dragged in for a whirl but as the dance master shouted instructions in portuguese we made rather a mess of it. Mark even managed to win a glass jug in the raffle which will be very useful on the boat. A month of 3 hours sleeps and the Pico wine did catch up to us however and we had to leave the locals to dance into the early hours of the morning.
Knowing that we had one day of good weather before a low was due to sit over the Azores with rain for a while, we dragged ourselves out of bed to hire a car and see the island. We piled into a little european model with three delivery crew we had chatted to on the radio sched and who had arrived with us. The low cloud prevented the view across to Pico and down into the caldeira but otherwise we had good fun zipping around the pretty little island. With a big cycling event on we had to be careful as we rounded sharp corners but it was nice to see the corners of village streets lined with people enjoying the sunny sunday afternoon and cheering on the cyclists. The volcanic museum and half buried lighthouse at Capelinhos is not to be missed, for the buried contemporary Architecture and a really well done interactive display.
In a small village on the South West coast Mark broke out his portuguese to charm the locals and we got the most amazing home-style food in a tiny little family restaurant in spite of arriving after siesta-o-clock. Washed down with a Pico white (which is superior to the reds IMHO.) Mark was thrilled to bits with his huge serve of real portuguese chicken, exactly what he had been dreaming of for the last couple of weeks on passage. Mark’s portuguese is going down a treat, everyone is dismayed to find an Aussie speaking the local lingua and the older ladies are completely charmed, he is in danger of having his cheeks pinched right off his face. Though you can easily get by with English in the Azores it certainly has been greasing the wheels for us and he is enjoying getting back into it after so many years.
At the end of the day we finally got the the famous Peter Sport cafe, yachtie central. The Gin and tonic is the must-do drink here and it did not disappoint. Every patron was sporting wet-weather gear and a saltwater hair-do. We have had a lot of fun catching up again with boats that we crossed the Pacific with and indeed one English boat who was the first yacht we met when we first left Australia and got to Fiordland New Zealand. Incrivel!
We are anchored in the bay as there is no room in the Marina, everyone is buried in a 3 deep raft up. After having expended much energy avoiding the ARC rally in the Indian Ocean we now find ourselves right in the thick of them. The holding has been good, though we can hear the chain rumbling across the rocky bottom and we will can only assume we will have to dive on the anchor to retrieve it, but we are surviving the buffering of the low that has now settled on top of us. We are reluctant to leave the boat however as others have been dragging around us and as planned we’ll focus on some boat chores.
Julie Annette Ballinger: Fantastic! Well done Cat & Mark on another successful passage & more than 25,000 ocean miles! Julie & Roger :-) xox May 31, 2016, 7:44 p.m.
Add a commentAscension to the Azores: Day 28
| Date: | May 27, 2016, 12:30 p.m. |
| Position: | 37 34.45 N, 29 58.63 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.5 |
| Heading (True): | 45.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 10.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 60.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
We are motor-sailing now with about 10-knots of breeze and calm conditions. Last night we had a moderate 15-20 knot breeze with patches of cloud and rain which allowed us to sail. Today after midday lighter winds and clear skies, motor-sailing most of the afternoon. We have 85nm to go to Horta and we're motoring or motor-sailing to keep up our pace aiming for arrival 1200utc tomorrow (Saturday).
This will likely be my last post from sea as I won't be able to get a radio signal out from the marina in Horta (too much interference). We'll post again once we have set ourselves up with wifi or a mobile sim card in the Azores.
If we arrive tomorrow midday as planned it will have been 29-days and 5-hours at sea. A few hours short of 1-month. Here's a summary of our water/fuel situation:
I have been surprised at how frugal we have been on the water. We have only consumed about 110 liters out of the 260 which we had in jerry-cans and the bladder. That's in the 3 weeks since we had the massive tropical deluge at the equator which we topped-up everything with - a bit under 40 liters per week. We still have enough fresh water left over to turn around and sail back again without having to run the Reverse Osmosis water-maker. Its not like we were roughing it too badly either. We had plenty to drink obviously (we didn't ration water) and did our dish-washing in 1-liter of fresh water each day. We did have salt-water showers with 1-liter of fresh water to rinse off the salt in the end but this was more than sufficient to feel refreshed. Now that we are in colder climates we're finding the deck-shower a bit too hard-core for us - so we're bringing a bucket of salt-water inside to our shower and adding 2-3 liters of boiling fresh water from the kettle. We can then scoop out the warm water with a cup Japanese-style (which is quite a nice way to have a shower actually). It uses a bit more fresh water doing this but we have been able to afford the luxury with our excess of water!
The 72-hours of motoring we did just a few days ago really ruined our fuel-consumption. I was hoping to get there having only used less than 200 liters of fuel all the way from Cape Town. However the storm put an end to that dream. Still, in the nearly 3 months since we left Cape Town and 5700nm sailed we have used so far 125-gallons (457 liters) of diesel. That's not too bad really. We still have 185 gallons (703 liters) remaining in the tanks and the jerry cans on deck. All things being equal we could do this passage back to Cape Town again, plus half again before running out of fuel.
Due to the windward-sailing and the sunny conditions our wind-turbine and solar panels worked well so we haven't used much petrol fuel at all. We barely consumed half a jerry-can (10 liters) of petrol-fuel on the generator. We still have 70-liters of petrol remaining.
As a comparison to the Endeavour voyage, Cook passed by the region of the Azores around June the 22nd. If you recall we departed Ascension about 2 week ahead of Cook, and we will be arriving Azores about 3.5 weeks ahead. We have thus gained on the Endeavour around 1.5-weeks over the course of the passage. This was mostly due to us being able to motor through the doldrums and again motoring recently to avoid this storm. If we had have purely sailed around the storm then we would have had similar timing as the Endeavour. Our track would have also been almost identical because, although we were able to point about 10-degrees higher into the wind, we would have had to sail west and north to get around the storm to a similar longitude-west that the Endeavour sailed anyway. Fortunately, using our engine we were able to plough straight into light headwinds and save ourselves that extra distance and time.
The use of our motor has allowed us to gain some extra time on the Endeavour's schedule which we can now use to enjoy the Azores for the next 3-4 weeks. That's the advantage of modern technology I suppose: the extra cost of the fuel essentially "bought" us a week or two extra time in the Azores. When we look to resume our passage to the English Channel it will be around the same date that the Endeavour was passing by the Azores (June 22nd) - thus the final leg will be almost identical timing.
As a final note: the town of Horta is almost exactly on the other side of the world to Eden, Australia. Its interesting that we now complete our longest ocean-passage at the exact opposite side of the world from where we started our first passage across the Bass Straight 2.5 years ago.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 27
| Date: | May 26, 2016, 11:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 36 36.68 N, 32 15.33 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.5 |
| Heading (True): | 70.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 15.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 0.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
We were able to start sailing shortly after posting the log entry yesterday. The breeze continues from the North with moderate cloud cover and patches of rain and light squalls every few hours. We are within VHF range of several other sailing boats now as we approach closer. We have Voyager (German) a couple of miles south of us at the moment and "Island Swift" to the north. Unfortunately this makes it very clear how poorly we sail to windward. We are only able to manage about 70-degrees to the True wind while the others point easily over 20-degrees higher than us and with greater speed to boot. While the majority of this is due to our hull as I have mentioned before I also believe a large part is due to our sails which are possibly not as efficient as they could be when hauled-on tight.
In any case, the wind is forecast to start swinging more to the West tomorrow which will hopefully allow us to make the final Northing required to arrive at Horta. The wind is forecast to ease off so we may have to do another final bit of motoring. We have 207nm to go so we are trying to keep our speed above 4-knots to arrive there by Saturday before sunset.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 26
| Date: | May 25, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 35 56.72 N, 34 39.04 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.5 |
| Heading (True): | 45.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 8.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 40.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
Another 24-hours of motoring. Very light winds today with 5-10 knots of wind most of the day, but it is still directly on the nose. Its like it is tormenting us: as we have turned to head east it also swung to the east. Hopefully it will swing a bit north tonight (as the forecast indicates) so we can do some sailing.
320nm to Horta. We are aiming to be there hopefully on Saturday.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 26
| Date: | May 24, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 34 0.49 N, 35 49.67 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 10.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 12.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 340.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 2.0 |
A day of just motoring into the wind. We are still motoring and look set to continue until tomorrow when the northerlies should increase in strength and we'll try to lay Horta close on the wind. Clear skies with some fluffy clouds.
The freezer, which has been working flawlessly since Australia (it was the fridge that was on the blink) decided that it would stop working. The contents of our freezer are now defrosting. Fortunately as we are near the end with only a few days left to go there are very few things left in there. What is left in there should be able to last in the fridge until we can consume it all.
The boat is in need of some love and attention with things like that. The water tank, and fridge/freezer, and interior/exterior wood maintenance are amongst a range of other things which are suffering from us simply having worked the boat hard over the past 3 years. We've done nearly 9,000nm each year since we left the Whitsundays in Australia. That's quite a lot of miles. Things just break/deteriorate on a boat because: a) of the constant working due to the motion cracks things (like water and fuel tanks); and b) the exposure to salt water and air is always just eating away at everything (like fridge and freezer units). Its a never-ending battle against mother nature trying to decompose your vessel. Entropy at work all around you.
We just need the old girl to hang in there for another 2000nm to Denmark. I think the boat (and us) will appreciate having some time-out to allow us to get on top of things again.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 25
| Date: | May 23, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 32 8.00 N, 35 18.45 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 340.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 12.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 340.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 3.0 |
The front passed over us last night bringing the wind shift to the north and some light rain (that is to say: we think it was light rain - but everything might seem like light drizzle now after the deluge we went through in the ITCZ). We persisted with sailing around back and forth until the wind and sea settled down. At around 2am the skies cleared up and we started motoring pretty much straight into a NNW breeze of 10-12 knots that has persisted until now. An enormous swell came through but they were spaced very far apart and didn't cause any issues, even though we were motoring straight into them. Conditions are pretty comfortable, but its always annoying motoring into the wind as we can only manage about 5-knots as opposed to the 6.5-knots we can do in flat-calm conditions.
The wind looks forecast to stay like this for another 48-hours so we're going to continue trying to push into the wind to make some northing and set ourselves up in a better position for our final reach across the Northerly winds into Horta. The wind looks to be pretty strong on Wednesday/Thursday but then should start to drop off. I am hoping to make it to Horta this weekend sometime.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 24
| Date: | May 22, 2016, 10 a.m. |
| Position: | 30 43.73 N, 34 20.39 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.5 |
| Heading (True): | 10.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 20.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 235.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
Unbelievably glassy conditions persisted last night. The full moon reflected in the water was quite incredible. We motored for a large part of last night to set ourselves up in a position for taking the front this evening. We now have the first wind aft of our beam for over 2 weeks. We're on a slightly broad reach with SW winds of 20-knots. We should get the front around midnight and then it will be back to sailing hard-on the wind - urghh. We now have 540nm to Horta, but this might still take another week - painfully slow progress.
Three other boats are out here and we reunited with them on the radio yesterday. Superted, Ethereal and Pelagia. We know Superted from the Indian Ocean crossing, don't know the other two. They are further north closer to the storm and reporting heavy-but-tolerable conditions.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 23
| Date: | May 21, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 28 58.29 N, 34 36.95 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 0.0 |
| Heading (True): | 0.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 0.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 50.0 |
| Sea state: | Glassy |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
Only 47nm further north from yesterday as we're still hanging south in the center of a high-pressure system until we figure out what's going to happen with this storm. At this stage it looks like it will pass safely to the north of us and we'll just have a big swell (4-5 meters) to deal with on Monday. The forecast period between the waves is quite long though (12-14 seconds) so hopefully they will just be big "gentle giants" as we call them - huge rollers.
Although we only covered 47nm it has been an absolutely glorious 47 miles. Last night we cruised along at 4-knots in a flat-calm sea and 6-8 knots of light breeze, not a cloud in the sky and a nearly-full moon. You could have read a book outside and the boat was perfectly stable. This morning the wind died away to nothing and the sea turned to glass. Since 8am this morning (over 10 hours) we have drifted 3 miles! We are only 120nm from our waypoint where I would like to be on Sunday night, and even that waypoint is not critical - we could be pretty much anywhere south of it and it will be ok - so we're in not rush to head further north unless we have to. It has been nice to just spend the day drifting and not worrying about covering miles for a change. The skies have been clear-blue and the water is like an undulating sheet of silk. Cat even did some washing, and I filled two of those black camping-shower bags with salt-water in the morning - to make 40 liters of hot water. This afternoon we had our first scalding-hot showers for over 3 weeks.
We contemplated taking turns to go for a swim over the side. But we are both (ok mostly me) a bit freaked-out by the idea of swimming in water that is over 5 kilometers deep, and we're both even more freaked out by the idea of ever leaving the boat in open-water. Rule Number 1 of sailing is: stay on/with the boat. After nearly 25,000 miles in the open sea I don't feel I need to break that rule anytime soon - even if it is just a meter or two. However there were also lots and lots of Portuguese Man-O-War jellyfish around. They look a bit like blue-bottle jellyfish but they use their body-shape to "sail" around on the surface of the water quite beautifully. But it would have been almost impossible to avoid them and we're not sure if they sting, nor keen to find out at this stage either.
The whole day I've been imagining the amazing epic voyages that have taken place through this stretch of water. Cook had similar calms when he came through these latitudes. Back in those days they didn't have radios or other ways to communicate so they would actually drop their long-boats and row over to other ships when they saw them and have a little conversation on board. Cook encountered a few whaling and merchant ships and noted in his log that he paid them a visit - mostly to find out about the situation with potential wars and conflicts with France and/or New England - as they had no news for nearly 3 years. What impresses me is that they would drop their long-boats not always when it was completely calm like this. Sometimes he reports a pretty fair wind (probably 20 knots or so) where I am certain it would be quite rough, but yet they still managed to drop the boats and get them across the open sea between the ships. They even dropped a long-boat so that Banks could shoot some birds (mostly for sport it seems) when they were sailing off the southern tip of New Zealand (knowing the fast-changing and unpredictable weather there its just something you wouldn't consider doing). All this must have been an arduous and very uncomfortable task, but yet they did it - what a life to be a crew member on board - it must have been miserable.
When we were in South Africa we saw a kind of educational-movie about Christopher Columbus and his first voyage across the Altantic. The movie indicated that he was following the 28-degree parallel using pioneering navigational methods of the time (using a primitive sextant to sight the North Star to maintain his latitude). His men nearly turned against him because the voyage took an absurdly long amount of time and they started to think that there was no end. I think we worked out that their average speed was 1-2 knots or so until they arrived in the Carrib. Seeing the calms that you can get in these latitudes its now not surprising at all that it might have taken so long. Obviously back then they had no knowledge of the general weather patterns and the concept of trade-winds - they weren't even sure how far it would be to sail west to what they thought would be Asia - it wasn't until later that they learned if they sailed a bit further south they got steady favorable winds from behind (the NE trade winds).
The forecast as of yesterday afternoon looks like we'll have light SW winds starting tomorrow morning and building to around 20-knots when a cold-front passes over us tomorrow (Sunday) midnight at the same time that we get a massive swell from the NW. The front will bring a typical sudden-change in wind direction and then we should be back onto our starboard-tack for Monday, Tuesday and possibly Wednesday. Hopefully late Wednesday or Thursday we can start making progress towards the Azores - probably with the motor.
I have been getting weather information from the grib-files as per usual. However I have been really surprised at how good the weather information is that you can get through the Radiofax. I suppose it is the advantage of being in the North Atlantic close to the major civilisations of Europe, the UK and the USA. In the morning I am able to get up to 5-day forecast synoptic AND 5-day wind and wave forecast charts from Hamburg, Germany. In the afternoon I am able to get 3-day synoptic, wind, wave and wave-period information for the entire North Atlantic from Boston, USA. The UK also transmits good information but the schedule conflicts with the German broadcast and I prefer the German format.
Pene Quin: The Portugese Man O War DOES sting. Vinegar takes away the nasty bite if you ever get stung. As far as I am aware the blue bottle is the same species. I got stung a few times in Mombasa and Somalia. I've found them on the beach in NZ and they look identical. May 21, 2016, 11:50 p.m.
Mark: Have you tried (comfortably) hot water with blue bottles and other stingers? I found it much better than vinegar. Good luck with the storm. Mark & Caz. May 23, 2016, 11:07 a.m.
Add a commentAscension to the Azores: Day 22
| Date: | May 20, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 28 19.50 N, 34 7.26 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 9.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 50.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
We've only covered about 90nm since yesterday as we reduced sail and pretty much drifted all of last night. The reason for this was because the latest weather forecast does not look good. There is a major storm forming West of the Azores which is currently forecast to give the Azores a good lashing for most of next week with 40-50 knot winds and 7-meter seas. That is something we definitely never want to see.
After a lot of analysis we came to the conclusion that if we stay south of about 31-degrees North then we should avoid the worst of it. We'll still get clipped by a frontal system but the forecast winds don't look to be too bad at this stage. While the winds will be much lower we'll still probably get a large swell of 3-4 meters. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't get much better after that. The storm is forecast to hang around off the coast of Portugal for most of next week and create NE and Northerly winds which will be pretty much impossible to even motor against.
Our objective at this stage is to position ourselves near to but south of (31N, 35W) by Sunday night when the front comes through. Forecasts indicate that we'll then have NE winds 15-25 knots which we'll use to sail AWAY from the Azores in a NW direction. This should hopefully put us close to the center of a following high-pressure system where we can (hopefully) start to motor into the wind towards the Azores once it gets down around 10-15 knots. We'll then try to follow the center of that high-pressure system into the Azores. It will be a lot of motoring - maybe about 5-6 days. Good thing we saved the fuel. The forecast past Wednesday next week is anyone's guess. Currently it indicates that there are more low-pressure systems coming up the following week. They may not be as strong/bad as this one, and anyway I hope that we can make it into Horta before the following lows reach us.
Its a bit heartbreaking now, with just 660nm to go, we normally could cover that in 5-days and be arriving there by Tuesday. Due to this system and us now sailing away from our destination for a few days, it will probably set us behind nearly 1-week. Thus hopefully we can make it in early the week after next. This has been developing on the forecast for a while now but it was still a bit of a shock to see the forecast last night. Its not the nicest feeling bobbing around here in the middle of the North Atlantic - one tends to feel a bit exposed to the elements. Especially at these latitudes, where the weather is not as stable as the trade-winds, I'm not very happy with the idea of having to sail around for an extra 7-10 days.
The current weather patterns are very un-seasonable and these systems still look like winter-time lows coming from the NE United States coastline. I do wonder if its related to the el-Nino weather pattern we have had this year.
That said, the weather today has been brochure-like sailing with 8-10 knots and clear skies. Overcast and some squalls last night and this morning. At sunset now the weather looks clear and hopefully we'll have a nice clear night as we amble along at 3-4 knots. Enjoying the conditions while they last.
G'day: We've been following daily and wish we could send you some of the lovely southerlies we have had up the coast of WA. Good luck with the coming storm, hope you avoid it. Lesley, Keith n BJ May 20, 2016, 11:37 p.m.
Add a commentAscension to the Azores: Day 21
| Date: | May 19, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 27 0.84 N, 33 27.40 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 14.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 50.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
Overcast and squally with ~20-knots of wind last night and this morning. Late-morning the clouds cleared and the wind started to drop. We now have the full mainsail up, staysail and double-reefed genoa and we are quite hard on the wind to keep our heading of 330-340 true. Light winds, clear skies and pleasant conditions. Forecasts indicate that we may be in the middle of the high pressure system by tomorrow and have to start motoring.
We turned on the motor today for the first time in 2 weeks when we were reefing the sails. The motor had a hard time starting and only fired properly on the third time - not good. The way it was not-quite firing properly and then dying after a few revolutions sounded like fuel starvation again. Once we got it going it ran fine for an hour or so. We'll have to keep our eye on that.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 19
| Date: | May 18, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 25 11.40 N, 32 47.52 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 16.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 60.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.5 |
After we cracked off yesterday we managed a good days run making 130nm at 330 True. Clear skies and a stiff breeze most of last night and today with only a few squalls around sunrise this morning. The wind has started to ease in the past hour or two so we're plodding along at a slower pace until we're confident we can let a bit more of the headsail out. The sea is easing also and we should have a good nights sleep tonight on our off-watch I hope.
Due to the more easterly route that we took across the ITCZ and also by managing to stay a few degrees closer to the wind for the past week, we are now significantly East of the longitude that the Endeavour reported at the same latitude. We are now almost 12-degrees of longitude or 580nm East of the Endeavour. Interestingly, we expect to be approaching calms around Friday and start to get Westerly winds by Sunday perhaps. Although they were much further West, the Endeavour logged very similar conditions around this longitude. Such is the strength and persistency of the Azores High.
820nm to go to Horta, Azores. Feeling like we're on the home stretch now. This distance would normally take us 7-days to complete, however we might be delayed for a few days with headwinds and/or other adverse weather. I hope we'll have a clearer picture of the weather for next week and our strategy for our final approach by the time we are in the calms on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 19
| Date: | May 17, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 23 9.65 N, 31 38.95 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.8 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 24.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 60.0 |
| Sea state: | Rough |
| Swell (m): | 2.0 |
Wind mostly around the 25-knot range for the past 24-hours although overcast conditions last night and this morning brought prolonged squalls up to 30-knots or so. The sea has picked up accordingly and conditions are quite boisterous. Fortunately the skies have just cleared in the past few hours and we have blue-skies which I hope persist throughout the night. With the moon growing at the moment we have pretty good visibility most of the night.
We persisted, as we have the past few days, to stay close-hauled on the wind and we were making progress nearly directly north at times. However in the last few hours we cracked off 10-20 degress to maintain our heading at around 330 True. We are now on a close-reach sailing at about 80-degrees to the true wind. It makes a massive difference to our speed and comfort so we'll probably stick with this until tomorrow when we should (hopefully) start to get out of this windy patch as we move closer to the centre of the high-pressure system.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 18
| Date: | May 16, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 21 28.31 N, 30 51.83 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 25.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 50.0 |
| Sea state: | Rough |
| Swell (m): | 1.5 |
Overcast and squally weather in the early hours this morning. Clear skies and pleasant conditions with a moderate strong breeze all day today. This afternoon in the past hour or so conditions have become overcast and the wind has increased to around 25-knots with squalls to 30. We are making slow progress with just the staysail, triple reefed main and mizzen sail.
We are now 1000nm from our destination in Horta, Azores. Unfortunately the long-range weather forecast has taken a turn for the worse and it might be challenging to actually close in on it. There are some nasty low-pressure systems forecast to sweep across the North Atlantic next week. Its still quite a long way off and the forecast can change from day to day. At this stage we are just trying to get north of these intense trade-winds and then we'll figure out a plan of attack. It might involve waiting a day or two for the weather to pass north of us before proceeding.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 17
| Date: | May 15, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 19 47.55 N, 30 5.65 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 3.5 |
| Heading (True): | 320.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 18.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 45.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
Pleasant conditions with a steady 14 knot breeze and clear skies all last night and today. This afternoon the wind has started to increase as per forecast. We've taken in the headsail and continuing with the staysail, mizzen and triple-reefed main. Its very slow but comfortable and we both get better sleep when we can rest knowing that we don't have to get up at short notice to reef down in the middle of the night. The forecasts have this breeze peaking at around 25+ knots on Tuesday night.
I can hear the words from Patricia on Gulf Harbor Radio in New Zealand who used to say (in her fantastic New Zealander accent), "With a high of 1030 (ten-thirty), the going gets dirty". She would say this on the radio when a high pressure system of that strength was moving across the Tasman to affect the boats sailing from NZ up to the Pacific Islands. It seems that the same rule seems to apply all over the world. The high moving into position north of us is 1033hPa which is a pretty strong system. While this is great once we are the center of it because it will protect us somewhat from storms and have probably pleasant weather in the centre and (hopefully) give us a good home-run to the Azores... it also creates quite strong winds around it.
Fortunately its just forecast for 48-hours or so and we're quite happy to continue to plod-along making 3-4 knots in the meantime. There's no point stressing our gear and possibly breaking stuff at this point in the game for the sake of achieving maybe 50 extra miles over 48-hours.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 16
| Date: | May 14, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 18 3.66 N, 29 1.73 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 15.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 40.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
Winds remained steady last night but started to decrease in strength today. Clear skies with fluffy trade-wind clouds and quite pleasant conditions. We could have rolled out more headsail to keep up a faster pace but instead we ambled along with the smaller sails at about 4-knots most of the day enjoying the (relative) flatness for a change. We still managed to make 115nm in the past 24 hours which we are happy with. The current forecast indicates that these conditions should continue through to tomorrow and then our next obstacle is stronger winds for Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully once we get past Tuesday the winds will start to ease and we might start catching calms or westerly winds by late next week (fingers crossed).
We spent today resting up from the more intense conditions of the past 48-hours. We had some salt-water deck showers with a rinse-off in 1-liter of fresh water. This seems to be sufficient but we probably won't be able to do this when the sea-temperature gets much colder further north. We have been pretty good with our water consumption and used about 45 liters in the past 1.5-weeks since our big rain in the ITCZ. At this rate of consumption we should easy have enough water in the jerry cans (let alone the bladder) to last until we get to the Azores.
Twyla: Following closely guys. Sail safe. Can't wait to hear you are on dry, level ground! Xo May 14, 2016, 10:13 p.m.
Malcolm: I continue to be fully engaged in following your brilliant blog each day. I pass on the link to other interested parties. Keep up the good work and keeping us informed. Very much hope to see you both in the UK this summer. May 15, 2016, 1:59 p.m.
Add a commentAscension to the Azores: Day 15
| Date: | May 13, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 16 27.67 N, 28 12.08 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 21.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 40.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate-Rough |
| Swell (m): | 1.5 |
The wind came in last night as forecast at a solid 20-25 knots and the sea has picked up a bit accordingly. We reefed down the mainsail to the third reef in the early evening yesterday. We've been making reasonable progress (5 knot average) heading 330 True with our staysail, mizzen, tripple reefed main and a tiny bit of headsail out. Its pretty comfortable if you remain prone tucked into a nook on the low-side of the boat, but getting up to do anything is a chore involving a constant battle against gravity and inertia.
We are keeping a slightly better angle to the wind than the Endeavour did. Although Cook never reported the wind direction with a great deal of accuracy, from reading the logs and looking at the average wind direction it appears that the Endeavour was able to maintain about 80-degrees to the true wind direction - that is barely more than a reach. I did all of our calculations on the basis that we can comfortably maintain 75-degrees to the true wind, but we have been managing between 60-70 in reality. We are making around the same speed as the Endeavour did for this part of the passage. On the days with less wind they were making about 100nm per day or less, while on the windier days they were making up to 130nm.
If we try to head the boat higher than this out boat speed really reduces and then we make so much leeway (sideways motion) that we end up making 60-70 degress to the wind anyway, only slower. This is the issue with our boat being a full-length keel: the keel of the boat is not as efficient as the modern sailing boats that have an actual foil-like keel which allows them to head higher into the wind while still "gripping" the water. Also the more modern designs of boat allow them to "punch through" the oncoming waves much better whereas if we try to head too high we start slamming into the waves and lose a lot of our speed. The Endeavour suffered from the same issue in its design as us: it had almost no keel to speak of and its blunt bow would have slammed heavily into coming waves. The fact that they were even able to maintain the speed and heading that they did was quite an achievement. I can't imagine what life on board would have been like though: many crew members were sick or dying from diseases they had picked up in Jakarta and a large ship like that on a heavy heeling-angle like this would have been quite uncomfortable.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 14
| Date: | May 12, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 14 42.33 N, 27 7.34 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.5 |
| Heading (True): | 340.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 20.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 40.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate-Rough |
| Swell (m): | 1.5 |
This is pretty much the half-way point. We have covered 1550nm from Ascension and the routing calculations for the remainder of the passage indicate that we may have to sail around 1600nm further. I am starting to be able to get forecast information for the remainder of the passage (2 weeks). Without wanting to jinx us, the forecast coming into view for the remainder looks pretty good. There are a lot of high pressure systems moving into the North Atlantic which look set to form an extensive ridge of high pressure all the way across the North Atlantic. Hopefully (touch wood) we'll get a textbook "Azores high" situation with calmer winds starting around 25-degrees north and westerly winds above that.
In the nearly 4000nm since leaving Cape Town we have managed to use only 40 gallons (150 liters) of diesel fuel. We used less than I expected going through the ITCZ as we managed to get through there with only about 32 hours of motoring. So we still have over 1000 liters of diesel. Once (if) we reach calmer conditions around 25-North we should, in theory, have enough fuel to motor the rest of the way if we have to. When we motored until now I have been burning the fuel from the port tank in anticipation of this week of sailing through the NE trades. The 130 liters of diesel in jerry cans as well as all the petrol jerry cans I have now strapped to the starboard side in order to put as much weight on the high side as possible.
We are not even using much Petrol fuel on the generator now because we are in the Northern Hemisphere and our solar panels are now south-facing (because we are sailing north and they are mounted at the back of the boat) and don't have the shadow of the rigging falling on them. Also, because we are going to windward our wind turbine working overtime and actually producing some noticeable power (for a change). If this continues we might not have to run the generator for the rest of the passage.
Light wind and clear skies last night. Strangely the wind calmed right down to 6-8 knots and swung to the SE. I can only imagine this was due to some effect from the Cape Verde islands which were 120nm to windward of us.
Late morning this morning a squall-line of cloud brought stronger wind and that stronger wind has continued to persist as per forecast. The sea is picking up and we are hard on the wind slamming into the oncoming waves while the boat sits at a pretty severe angle. It all makes even the most simple tasks a challenge. Cat and I got the giggles today when we realized that our life at the moment is like that silly comedy show they have in Australia where they put the comedians in a room which is gradually tilted to a steeper and steeper angle. Imagine that, along with some bouncing and shaking and the odd spray of salt water - sans comedy - then you are getting an idea of what its like.
Not going to lie - its not very much fun. We were expecting this though and are prepared for it. There's not many other options out here other than to "man-up" and get the job done. The forecasts indicate that we have another 6 days of this and things should start to ease around Tuesday/Wednesday next week. If the forecast holds and we manage to get through the trades with only 6 days of stronger wind then we will be pretty lucky. Sometimes the NE trades can extend as far north as the Azores themselves and be 25-30 knots. Slogging to windward like this for 2-3 weeks in stronger conditions would be a heart-breaking ordeal.
We are starting to pass shipping lanes now with ships going to and from Brazil to Europe. Its nice to see some sign of human life after we haven't seen anything since leaving Ascension nearly 2 weeks ago. Today I even saw another sailing boat. They had their MPS up and were running downwind in the opposite direction to us, 4-5 miles away, the AIS told us it was a Belgium flagged and from their course it looked like they were heading for Brazil.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 13
| Date: | May 11, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 12 49.72 N, 26 8.31 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 320.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 16.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 40.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
We managed 125nm in the past 24 hours at a heading of 330 True. Sailing conditions last night and this morning were glorious with mostly clear skies, slight sea, and a very steady wind. The wind started increasing in the past few hours and we've started reefing down our sails to a double-reefed main and double-reefed genoa. We still are running the staysail and mizzen sail which probably won't be adjusted for the next 7 days. All well on board.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 12
| Date: | May 10, 2016, 11 a.m. |
| Position: | 11 8.80 N, 24 58.58 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.5 |
| Heading (True): | 320.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 11.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 40.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
Clear skies, smooth seas and pleasant conditions again for the past 24 hours. The wind appears to have a pattern of picking up overnight and shifting more easterly in the evenings and mornings, and then going lighter and turning more northerly during the afternoons. I can only suppose that we are still getting some of the land-effect from the Western Sahara even this far out to sea nearly 500nm offshore. I was surprised that we still managed to scratch out 107 miles in the past 24-hours at a heading of 327 True, considering that the wind has been so light and we were barely managing 3 knots at times.
We spent the day just resting and reading and preparing ourselves for the next week. The wind is forecast to start increasing again tomorrow afternoon which may not be fun considering we are so hard on the wind. The upside however is that we should be able to start making a better angle and a slightly higher average speed.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 11
| Date: | May 9, 2016, 11 a.m. |
| Position: | 9 39.11 N, 23 59.17 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.0 |
| Heading (True): | 320.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 11.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 30.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
Overcast and gusty conditions last night with an increase in wind speed so we reefed down the mainsail and genoa and made about 4-knots with a much better heading of around 330-340 True. Today the wind gradually calmed but we managed still to make a 4-knot average over the past 24-hours. Conditions are quite calm now and we almost considered motor-sailing but we might hold off and sail through to the night to get better rest. Also, motor-sailing seems like a frivolous and wasteful task when we still have so many miles left to go. We might achieve 30 or 40 miles in the right direction but we have 1700 more to go. There's no point wasting fuel and money though impatience.
Progress is painfully slow with the wind on the nose and also quite light. We can't complain too much though because the seas are incredibly calm, almost "brochure-like". If we were going downwind we would have the spinnaker up and be saying that these conditions are perfect.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 10
| Date: | May 8, 2016, noon |
| Position: | 8 15.90 N, 23 13.05 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 13.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 30.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
The wind lightened off today to a bit less than 10 knots and we spent all of the day sailing hard on the wind in idyllic conditions. Flat and smooth seas and clear skies. Unfortunately the wind persisted from the north so we were struggling to make a heading of even 300 True. This afternoon in the past hour the wind has increased a little and swung more easterly allowing us to head about 330 True. We are still as hard on the wind as we can possibly sail.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 9
| Date: | May 7, 2016, noon |
| Position: | 7 13.80 N, 21 49.71 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 300.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 12.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 10.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
We managed to sail on a respectable heading last night close-hauled with our full rig up including the inner staysail. Today around mid-morning the wind picked up and also turned more northerly. We put a reef in the mainsail and the genoa and have been sailing as hard on the wind as we can. Our apparent wind is around 40-50 degrees but our true angle to the wind is more like 70-80. If we try to head up any more then we end up slamming into the oncoming chop and losing all our speed. As such we've just set the angle which allows us to maintain a relatively steady 5 knots. In the past few hours the wind has become very northerly and we are heading almost due West. Unfortunately we'll lose a lot of our Easting that we've made through the doldrums. Tomorrow the forecast is for the wind to swing back more to the NE which should hopefully allow us to resume a more northerly heading.
Cat has been very enamoured the past 24-hours by a school of bonito tuna which seem to have made our boat home. There are hundreds of them around us and they are swimming along on our bow-waves like dolphins. Unbelievable. We thought of using our fish landing net to just try to scoop one out of the water but we kind of got attached to the little guys. At night there is very strong bio-luminescence and the dolphins were creating some amazing patters under the boat as they chased the tuna around throughout the night.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 8
| Date: | May 6, 2016, 12:30 p.m. |
| Position: | 5 56.16 N, 20 39.98 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.0 |
| Heading (True): | 340.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 11.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 70.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
The wind died around 0200 last night so we started motoring again. By the morning conditions were completely glassy. Around midday we emerged once again from the grey and had relatively blue skies in front with a light ENE to NE breeze. We started sailing on a close-reach starboard tack making around 4 knots. I'm hoping that this is the start of the NE trade-winds and thus the beginning of a 2+ week long starboard tack.
At this point we are about 2 weeks ahead of the Endeavours schedule as they departed St Helena yesterday (May 5th 1771). They took a more westerly course than us which we probably also would have done if we were purely sailing. However with the benefit of a diesel engine, and relatively accurate forecasts, we have taken this more easterly route because: a) we needed to avoid some heavy counter-current which was at the equator and; b) this course, although requiring a bit more motoring, sets us up to go closer to the Cape Verde islands so we have the option of making a stop there in case anything goes wrong.
Around this time in the passage (5-degrees North) Cook reckoned he was further east than he really was until he did an observation for his longitude. At this point he realized that he was a whole 2-degrees West of where he thought he should be from reckoning (estimates based on heading and speed). This is likely due to the nearly 2-knot Equatorial current which we also passed over a few days ago. We fortunately have forecast models that show us the strength and position of these currents so we were able to consider this in our planning. Unfortunately for us the Equatorial current formed a large eddie right in the middle of our optimal route - so we had to choose to go either far to the East or West to avoid a forecast 2-knot adverse current. That is why we chose the more eastern option.
Cook also encountered the start of the NE trade winds at around this latitude. He was sailing in company with a fleet (which he came across in St Helena) and he knew that the Endeavour would struggle to windward again the NE trade winds. So when they passed Ascension he actually transferred a copy of his (invaluable) charts and logs to the HMS Portland which was one of the ships in company. He noted that "I did this because it seemed probably that the Portland would get home before us, as we sail much heavier than any of the Fleet". Actually (perhaps in testament to Cook's seamanship) the Portland and the India fleet arrived home only 3 days before the Endeavour.
This concern for the ships sailing-ability to windward reveals itself in several log entries around these weeks of the passage. Cook appears a little bit concerned it would be a tough and slow slog to get home. His log entry from 8-degrees North when they started to get fresh NE trade winds states "when [the haze] clear'd up a little, we saw 3 sail abreast of us, bearing about 2 or 3 miles Distance; by this we saw that they not only kept a better wind, but out sail'd us upon a wind. It became again hazey, and we lost sight of them, and notwithstanding we keept close upon a wind all night, with as much Sail out as we could bear, there was not one Sail in sight in the Morning.".
I can relate somewhat to this passage particularly as our boat does not sail as well to windward as the modern sloops. We have been on passages before where the wind comes on the nose and its somewhat disheartening to see other boats not only sailing a closer angle to the wind but also sailing much faster against it. This passage from Cook sums it up perfectly... all you can do is get the boat close upon the wind with as much sail as you can carry and hold on.
Interestingly, I have kept a little mental record when this has happened and found that the faster modern boats also rarely get into port far in advance of us. This seems to be because those (cruising) boats rarely end up sailing so hard on the wind for extended periods in the open sea as the stress and slamming it places on the boat is almost intolerable. It seems that the often crack off onto a similar heading to us anyway to improve comfort.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 7
| Date: | May 5, 2016, 12:30 p.m. |
| Position: | 4 9.50 N, 19 50.72 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 4.5 |
| Heading (True): | 340.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 14.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 225.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
More heavy rain and squalls last night so we continued motoring through it. At some stages the wind came from the south and, in theory, we could have sailed for a few hours. However we were never sure how long it would have lasted for nor whether a heavy squall was nearby as it was so pitch dark without the moon. We probably could have used the radar to help identify in-coming squalls, but in any case, we were both pretty exhausted from the night before and we needed a good rest so we motored through to the morning.
This morning we briefly seemed to pop out of the ITCZ and we had light wind from the NW and blue skies interspersed with light fluffy-looking "trade wind" clouds. The air was drier, cooler and crisper. It was glorious. We could look behind and see what we had just emerged from. Complete grey with patches of black and lightening extending as far as you could see east and west behind us - blue skies and clear conditions in front - the ITCZ formed a very distinct line at this point. Unfortunately we were only making about 2-3 knots going hard into a 8-10 knot NW breeze - so the greyness and rain caught up with us again and engulfed us around sunset. Fortunately its just light rain this time and it brought a wind-shift to the SW once it caught us so we've been sailing quite nicely albeit in the rain, heat and stifling humidity.
I've heard that there are tours you can do in Peru where they take you on the Amazon river up a tributary to where it is pretty much just a little trickle. They say that that is the source of the Amazon river. What a gimmick I say. The real source of the Amazon river is out here. It's pretty incredible sailing along and thinking that all of the water that later forms the Amazon - and more - is floating in the towering clouds and thunderstorms above your head. We've essentially crossed the Amazon river - but we haven't sailed over it - we sailed UNDER it.
To give an idea of the intensity of the rain the past 2 nights - when our decks dried briefly today the teak wood had been scoured completely clean of its natural grey aged-look. Our decks were a golden finish as if the boat had just come out of a showroom!
Ascension to the Azores: Day 6
| Date: | May 4, 2016, 1:30 p.m. |
| Position: | 2 23.86 N, 19 29.54 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 3.0 |
| Heading (True): | 25.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 7.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 170.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
With regards to wishing for rain: be careful what you wish for. Around 6am this morning we got hit by heavy squalls and a tropical deluge. From an average wind speed of around 8 knots most of the night, the wind squalls reached up to 25 knots, but worse still were the shifts in the wind. At first it came from the East, then West and then settled on the North. Our track was going around rather randomly. An hour or so into it we decided that following the wind around in the crazy-heavy rain and lightening striking all around us was all a bit too hard. We took down the headsail and started motoring. This was good timing because after a short while the wind died completely and conditions started to glass off with only the heavy rain and lightening remaining. The intensity of the rain can not be understated. Glassy calm water with heavy rain and overcast skies remained for most of the day.
We had a brief scare with the engine when it started to play up and then almost cut out. Fortunately, we have a pulse-flow meter on the fuel lines so we can see the fuel flow rate and it seemed to indicate that the fuel supply was reduced/choked. This could have been something major like fuel pumps but we started with the simplest thing which is just changing the fuel filters. What caused our filters to block remains a mystery as the fuel (and filters) look very clean. It may have actually also been an o-ring with disintegrated so the engine was drawing in air instead of fuel. So I replaced all the o-rings and seals also. Whatever it was, that seems to have sorted it out and we've been motoring nicely for the rest of the day.
The rain cleared around 1400 but very overcast conditions remain. Now around 2100 the stars have just turned up above us, but with lightening ahead of us on the horizon. We decided to take advantage of a light southerly breeze and amble along hoping to sail slowly and remain in the clear skies for as long as possible throughout the night.
The nights are pitch-black due to the overcast conditions and almost zero-moon at this time of month. Negotiating squalls, lightening and biblical rain in the night is not my favorite thing and I would advise one to avoid it whenever possible. no-footer
Ascension to the Azores: Day 5
| Date: | May 3, 2016, 12:30 p.m. |
| Position: | 0 37.98 N, 18 48.11 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 3.5 |
| Heading (True): | 300.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 9.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 170.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
We crossed the Equator today at about 1030utc. This was the first time for both of us sail across the Equator - which is usually a big deal for sailors. Unfortunately, at the time, it was a bit hard to get excited about anything on account of the heat. Its a very stifling humid heat. In the very light breeze with the sails flapping all you can do to stop going insane is to lie down somewhere. There's a whole ceremony you're meant to do with offering sacrifices to Neptune and cleansing yourself or whatever... we threw an offering overboard, shrugged our shoulders and went back to laying down in the coolest place we could find.
Later in the day around sunset it started to cool down so we prepared our real celebration. We were saving this one up for a special occasion and we decided in Cape Town that crossing the Equator would be the moment. We opened a large can of French Confit Duck legs which we had picked up at the Super-U in Grand Baie Mauritius*. We cooked down some potatoes in the duck fat. And cracked open a bottle of Bollinger Champagne (left over from our wedding in Darwin last year). It was a perfect sunset dinner to celebrate crossing the Equator, sailing at 3-4 knots, in flat calm conditions, surrounded by towering clouds which amplified the colors of the setting sun.
We were surrounded by patches of cloud and rain all day, begging for some to come our way to cool us off (and give us a shower considering our water situation). But they skirted us all day without giving us a drop. I never thought I'd see the day where I was actually hoping for rain to come our way.
Very light wind all day from the SSE. Overcast conditions with patches of rain. Nothing torrential nor with thunder and lightening - yet.
* Grand Baie Super-U: best supermarket in the world - see previous log entries from Mauritius.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 4
| Date: | May 2, 2016, 9 a.m. |
| Position: | 1 12.56 S, 17 43.62 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.5 |
| Heading (True): | 345.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 13.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 160.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
After a very pleasant night with clear skies the wind faded away this morning until we were limping along at just 3 knots. The wind speed was still a respectable 12-14 knots however it was from a very awkward angle directly behind us so our apparent wind speed was only around 7-8 knots. After a few hours of persisting with the genoa and main we ended up giving up and getting the spinnaker out. We are running the spinnaker "cruiser-style" from the bowsprit without using a pole. This makes it much easier to raise, lower and control but it does make it difficult for running dead downwind like this. We are heading slightly more north than our routing calculations suggest but at least we have full sails and are making a comfortable pace at 5.5-6.0 knots.
Interestingly it was around this same latitude that Cook and the Endeavour started to get light winds also. He had very similar conditions reporting "light winds" from the SSE and "hott and Sultry" weather with mostly clear skies. In these conditions the Endeavour managed around 80nm per day. The calms lasted for about 1 week. We're keeping a slightly better pace with our spinnaker and trying to stay above 120nm per day.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 3
| Date: | May 1, 2016, noon |
| Position: | 2 56.44 S, 17 14.65 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 345.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 14.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight-Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
Clear skies and a steady breeze for most of last night but overcast conditions and moderate squalls in the early morning this morning. The breeze eased slightly but still enough for us to keep up a respectable average with the full genoa and mainsail goosewinged. The sky was mostly clear today but very humid with a lot of haze which reduced visibility. Early evening now we have clear skies and a steady breeze.
The hole in our water tank seemed to have worsened since Ascension. From St Helena to Ascension the leaking seemed to have stopped with 200-300 liters of water left in the tank. However as of this afternoon we have lost all of the water from the tank so we're now onto the jerry cans and bladder (260 liters in total).
Ascension to the Azores: Day 2
| Date: | April 30, 2016, 10 a.m. |
| Position: | 4 55.46 S, 15 52.31 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 315.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 15.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight-Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
The wind eased gradually last night and throughout today. It also swung slightly south and had us heading too far east on our previous broad-reach so we poled out the genoa and we're now running goosewinged in very pleasant conditions. Very little cloud around and mostly blue skies. Hot and humid conditions but fortunately it is now calm enough that we can open all of the hatches in the boat without fear of a wave splashing in. So its not too stuffy inside at all.
So that was our one sail-change for the day. The rest of the time was spent trying to keep cool. We have the deck hose running a salt-water shower which is nice to just sit under. We would have done some fishing but our freezer is still full with the Bonito tuna fillets and other passage meals.
Conditions look set to further ease tonight and tomorrow as we approach the Equator. At this rate we may have to bring out the spinnaker tomorrow.
Ascension to the Azores: Day 1
| Date: | April 29, 2016, 10 a.m. |
| Position: | 7 3.13 S, 14 50.04 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.5 |
| Heading (True): | 345.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 20.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.5 |
We departed Ascension this morning around 0830 into quite pleasant but slightly boisterous conditions with the wind up around 25-knots. Conditions were a bit rough for the first few hours as we moved away from the island and through the diffraction of the waves. We're now nearly 60nm away (having averaged close to 7 knots) and the wind and sea have settled. We've had a clear sky most of the day but we now have patches of high cloud and light rain about.
Yesterday was spent mostly packing the boat for passage. I dived on the hull to change the sacrificial anodes for the fridge and freezer coolers. It was perfect timing as there was only a tiny amount of each left. Unbelievably, the hull was cleaner than after I cleaned it in Cape Town! This was courtesy of the many (many) triggerfish which are around Ascension. They are like little Piranhas going into a frenzy and devouring anything that goes in the water - including nibbling on the odd human toe or finger. I must admit I was a bit nervous to go swimming with them but fortunately they seemed to not bother me. The hull is completely blue and clean and it looks like it did the day we put it in the water in New Zealand a little over a year ago. Even the metal parts like the prop and anodes were clean and bare. I couldn't believe my eyes!
We are now heading north with our heading based more on what is the most comfortable point of sail rather than any specific waypoint. We are heading in a direction that will put us crossing the equator at around 18-degrees West. This is much further east than the 22-degrees west that is recommended in the various guides however based on the current forecast there seems to be no major advantage to crossing at 22-degrees. The wind should swing more Easterly as we head north so if the forecast changes we can always run off and easily head West if it proves advantageous - for now I'm not so keen to give up any Easting without good reason though.
Surf breaks, Volcanos and River Monsters...
| Date: | April 27, 2016, 9:37 a.m. |
For two days we were stuck on the boat watching a huge (3.7m) swell pound Ascension, washing over the tall concrete jetty. Mark has been drooling over the huge waves which we later learn (from one of the two surfers on the island) are not a common sight, perhaps five times a year, when a swell this size comes in. The break is a clean A-frame with a left and right hander on a reef directly behind the mooring field and the 15 foot plus waves would likely require a tow in. Alas with no jet-skis on the island they two surfers must satisfy themselves with a left hander just a bit further South of the anchorage. It is just beyond our view and he reports a fast but surf-able break which he calls Dead Man. A good ride on a falling swell of around 2m which apparently breaks over the wreck of a dutch ship full of china. (This is contrary to all the reports you read on the internet which speak of a surf break North of Georgetown.)
On Monday we walk up the red and black mound of volcanic rock that is Cross Hill to enjoy the view over Georgetown and stretch our legs as we poke around the remains of a fort. The swell is still treacherous and it is not without some patience that we get ourselves ashore to do this but it is nice to wander around the quiet town. Just after midday we get back to the centre of town to discover that the only place serving food has already sold out so we duck back to the boat for lunch and a snorkel at Comfortless Bay.
While Ascention lacks the coral reefs and variety of fish, you cannot complain about the quantity of them. The blackfish, a species of trigger fish which is actually rather colourful close up, crowd you out but soon you can pick out others amongst their numbers. The volcanic rock formations make for some fun and we find little caves and arches all sheltering loads more fish. I spy 3 of the endemic natives species of fish which I found out about at the conservation office. We planned to go back into town in the evening to see the museum and most preserved of the forts, as this is two of the four hours it is scheduled to be open in the week, but contrary to forecast the swell kicks up. As we approach the jetty we concede it is far too dangerous for us and the dinghy to risk just to see the little museum. It’s the definite downside to an otherwise nice little place.
Thankfully on Tuesday morning, when we had booked a hire car, the now gentle swell permits us a shore day. Overnight a South African boat we met in Saint Helena turns up and so we all pile into our little hire car together for a lap around the island. To the North we drive through a red and black moonscape dotted with South African looking thorn bushes. Among the black rocky shore we find little beaches, which are completely dug up and covered in recent tracks of large and tiny turtles and the leathery remains of their egg shells. In one place we come across the largest gathering of pirate-y Frigate birds I have ever seen gliding on a thermal. As we wind through the landscape, floating over us are huge communications towers with wires artfully arranged in geometric puzzles. The entire island is dotted with huge satellite dishes and the like.
We whizz past little ‘One Boat’ settlement on the way to slightly larger ‘Two Boats’ to preorder our lunch at one of two lunch time eating options on the island, before we head to check out the West Coast. Here we drive through Casurinas and an increasing variety of vegetation. Lunch is a simple affair (burgers) with a nice view. (Two boats is nestled higher up the hillside.) Then we head up to see Green Mountain and walk to the Dew Pond. This turns out to be the unexpected highlight of the day. Not for the view, as usual the peak is engulfed in cloud, but for the beauty of the walk. It is misty, wet, muddy but packed with different plants (all imported.) At times it recalls New Zealand, with mossy, fern laden trees but it is steaming hot. Then suddenly we are walking through a majestic bamboo grove, all the more beautiful for the cloud winding through it.
Exploring the greener and totally different landscape of the South East we stop to foraging for some little guavas growing wild. We unsuccessfully drive around the Airfield and Military base trying to find the access point for the tern colony or some fresh vegetables. It was worth a try, and the group enjoyed checking out all the cool military toys the Americans have anyway. It has taken just a few hours to pretty much see Ascension and we head back to Georgetown for a drink with the local post-work crowd at the Saint’s Club. After our brush with fame on St Helena (the Antiques Roadshow hosts) We walk past a crowd with some very fancy fishing and camera equipment. It turns out to be none other than Jeremy Wade and his team - of River Monsters fame (a fishing show.) No doubt the world famous Tuna and Marlin fishing has brought him out here, though knowing the nature of his show he could be chasing something more obscure.
The swell is forecast to pipe up again so we have our clearance paperwork done in case we are unable to get ashore again. Mark has also got a tentative date with the surfers… best to keep all bases covered.
Important Info for Passage Ascension to Azores
| Date: | April 27, 2016, 1 a.m. |
After a nice week in Ascension (Cat will give more details in a following post), we're preparing to make our departure from here for the long passage to the Azores. Yesterday we cleared out of the island with our clearance dated for this Friday the 29th, although we might also leave tomorrow (Thursday the 28th). The authorities allow you to clear out a long time in advance here in case a big swell comes in and you cannot land at the wharf and come ashore to clear out (which happened to us over the weekend).
All we have to do over the next 36-48 hours before going is a final top-up of water with jerry cans (easier said than done with the swell on the wharf here) and I might dive on the hull and change the anodes for the fridge and freezer and generally check the condition of the hull and rudder.
In the past 48 hours we have been joined by another 4 boats here in Ascension. A French catamaran called "Banana"; a Spanish mono "Badoc"; a French mono "Obione"; and a South African mono "Dreamcatcher". Most of the boats in St Helena and here now are too late in the season to head to Brazil or the Carib so many have plans to head to either Cape Verde or Azores on the way to Europe. "Dreamcatcher" and a Polish boat called "Tapasya" and a Slovenian boat called "Wet Lady" are definitely heading to the Cape Verdes. While I believe the boats heading on our route to the Azores are: "Uhambo" (our French friends who we crossed the Indian Ocean with) as well as "Badoc" and another French boat called "Papillion". We have yet to speak with "Obione" or "Banana".
The boats are staying in touch with each other on the radio on 6227kHz at 8000 and 1800 utc each day. As we move further west this may change to 0900 and 1900 utc.
The passage to the Azores is 2800nm as the bird flies, however by the time we have been pushed west by the NE trade winds it is likely that the passage will be closer to 4000nm. At an average rate of 5-knots (120nm per day) this should take around 33 days so I'm expecting the passage to take anywhere between 30 to 40 days at sea. Our expected route should take us about 300nm West of the Cape Verde islands. However, depending on the weather conditions around the ITCZ (doldrums) we may go closer than that. If conditions are unusually favourable we may actually be able to pass through the island group. The Cape Verdes are almost exactly half way so in the case of any emergency that is our preferred stopping point, although motoring to windward for 200-300nm to get there would be tedious, it could be done in an emergency.
I have been watching the weather in the Northern Hemisphere and North Atlantic now since we left Cape Town. The region around the Azores and Bermuda are still being swept by quite "wintery" looking low-pressure systems, however the frequency and intensity of those lows are reducing. Looking at the historical weather for the region it appears that around mid-May these low-pressure systems start to decrease in strength very rapidly and almost disappear completely over a few weeks with the onset of summer. The intensity of the NE trade winds between the Cape Verdes and the Carib are also reducing with extended periods where they are forecast between 10-15 knots. This all indicates that summer-time conditions are setting-in in the Northern Hemisphere and it is a good time to make our move. As we cannot get an accurate forecast for 30-40 days in advance this, unfortunately, is the best we can do. For a long passage like this you can just look at the general trends in the weather and historical precedents and then you just have to go based on that.
One of the main thing I have been watching is the position of the ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone) otherwise known as the "doldrums". This is the region of light and variable winds interspersed with thunderstorms and heavy squalls where the north-east trades and south-east trades converge. Last week it had moved quite far south and become very wide which would have meant that we could not have sailed far before having to start motoring through thunderstorms and getting headwinds. Next week it appears to be moving north again back up to around 1-degree North and also getting a bit thinner. If this holds true then hopefully we might be able to sail with favourable winds as far as the equator and then only have to motor for a day or two to cross the worst of it. Sometimes you can get lucky enough that it is moving south while you are moving north and you punch through it in a day - if you're unlucky it can be many days.
Interestingly, Cook's log on the Endeavour indicated that they had favourable SE and Easterly winds as far north as 5-degrees north before hitting a few days of calm where they had to row their long-boats to tow the ship. The longer we wait into the Northern Summer the further north the ITCZ will move, however it appears very unlikely that the ITCZ will move that far north over the next 2 weeks or so (to the date when Cook crossed). For us, it does not seem worth waiting for it to move further north as there is a chance that it may not happen and/or that the forecasts for that region are simply incorrect. The forecast models are unable to resolve all of the complex weather that happens around the ITCZ so they are notoriously inaccurate in that region. It does however seem that Cook and the Endeavour managed to get lucky with a good year when they crossed the ITCZ and we will probably not be as lucky this year. We will likely have to motor further and/or encounter headwinds a few hundred miles earlier.
En-route we will get our weather information mostly from Grib files through Sailmail and/or Winlink (email). There are an abundance of stations around the North Atlantic so I believe that reception and ability to send/receive emails will only get easier. We are already making relatively strong connection to the Belgium station so hopefully that will only get stronger as we get closer to Europe. In conjunction with the Grib files I have also been able to get Radiofax transmissions from: a) New Orleans, Louisianna - gives very good analysis of the North Atlantic tropical weather; b) Boston, Massachusetts - very good analysis of the North Atlantic at higher latitudes; c) Northwood, UK - another analysis of the North Atlantic (north of the Azores) and; d) Hamburg, Germany - North Atlantic north and east of the Azores.
Our water tank appears to have stopped leaking about 150-200 liters from the bottom. So we are going to top up the tanks with about 300 liters or so of water. Although we will lose a bit into the bilge over the first week the leaking is slow enough that we'll still get a few good days (or our first week) of water before it stops leaking. We then have about 2 weeks of water supply in the tank. We then still have the remaining 260 liters in the jerry cans and bladder which should give us at least another 2-3 weeks of water. If we have extended periods of calm or motoring we'll run the motor and make water with the RO system at the same time. All told this should supply us with ample water for the passage.
We have been able to sail the 2400nm to here from Cape Town using almost no diesel fuel. We have consumed only 7 gallons (26 liters) of diesel which was mostly in motoring out of Saldanha Bay and into and out of St Helena; making hot-water some days; and, actually, most was consumed when we test-ran the new exhaust system at sea. So we still have the 6 jerry cans (130 liters) strapped to the deck (from Cape Town) plus the 1018 liters in the tanks totalling 1148 liters. This gives us a motoring range of around 1800nm and much further if we motor-sail. I anticipate that we will have to motor a few hundred miles (300-400nm) as we cross the ITCZ and then another few hundred miles as we approach the Azores with possibly a few hundred miles of motor-sailing in between (if the trade-winds are light and motor-sailing allows us to maintain a better angle to the wind).
In lieu of the diesel we have been consuming quite a lot of Petrol fuel in the Honda generator. This has mostly been due to our broken fridge which is in need of a new compressor I believe. It was in need of replacement in South Africa but we just didn't have the time to do it between visa applications and the major work on the exhaust system. It has been struggling along since then with the situation not made any better for it since we are now in the warm water near the equator (the fridge and freezer are water-cooled). We are only running the fridge to keep our green vegetables from South Africa fresh for as long as possible. It appears we're going to run out of those veggies in the next 1-2 weeks so we'll decommission the fridge then and that should vastly reduce the amount of time we need to run the generator. In any case we have filled up with petrol fuel in St Helena and again here in Ascension yesterday so we're still carrying 80 liters which should be more than sufficient for the month - even with the dodgy fridge.
We've been fortunate enough to be able to test the exhaust system now in some pretty decent following seas with a lot of bouncing and rolling while we were running dead-downwind from Cape Town to here in Ascension. I've been regularly checking the exhaust system to ensure that water has not been making it in and so far it seems to be performing nicely. I'm now starting to have more faith in the exhaust.
Exploring Georgetown
| Date: | April 23, 2016, 10:51 a.m. |
| Position: | 7 55.12 S, 14 25.27 W |
After talking to the harbour master and having seen the swell forecast we re-anchored a bit further out. I spent Friday poking around Georgetown and completing our health insurance/immigration paperwork. In hindsight we would have done this in Jamestown and perhaps ended up paying a day or so more for assumed arrival dates. The St Helena Insurance office had kindly suggested that we do it here so that we did not have to pay for unused days, however It does take a little messing around at Ascension and there is a processing fee of 2.5 pounds anyway so for the sake of an extra pound or so we probably would have done it back there. On the upside, as I trudged around from shop to bank to shop to police/immigration station, I think I managed to meet half the population of Georgetown.
The town is a strange blend of beautiful historic buildings, forts and utilitarian government style housing which looks like it harks back to the Falkland War era, circa 1980. Set in barren red and black volcanic rocks and inhabited by a noisy brigade of feral donkeys. The main tourist draw cards to the island are the marine and bird life. At the moment it is the height of the Turtle hatching season and we are anchored off long beach, one of the most important breeding sites for the Atlantic population of Green and occasional Hawksbill Turtles. I have seen turtle tracks before but never as large or in the numbers there are here. With a full moon I can see the great beasts lumbering up the beach at night. Hopefully we can get up early one morning to view the little ones making their way to the sea.
I did quite a bit of reconnoissance for sightseeing, you have to be a little strategic here as with a tiny population most operations are part time affairs. (800 over 4 settlements - majority of which are at the military base.) I did manage to book a rental car but not until Tuesday, with an airport and a few ships that unload passengers here the place gets swamped easily by 40 or so visitors. The Obsidian Hotel (and only hotel) rents out cars at 25 pounds, apparently we can get a slightly cheeper one at the fuel station but it is out of town so you would have to hitch a ride to get there I am told. A good but basic grocery store has few fresh food offerings but I will check by on flight days to see if anything turns up. The port have just installed a washing machine for visiting yachts (1pound/load) and they have a dryer due on the next ship. Apart from the obnoxious music from the almost empty karaoke bar and the braying donkeys, this sleepy town is rather quiet.
Today and possibly tomorrow, we are stuck on the boat as a huge swell pounds in, washing right over the landing. Time to get some chores done, the flopper stopper is keeping glassware upright and fortunately we can get a weak internet signal out here thanks to our Wifi booster. (I purchased 24hr access from the Sure office for 10 pounds, you can also get if from the Obsidian Hotel. It only works on one device but does work at any hotspot around the island.) The warm water looks amazing and we are engulfed by colourful fish, hopefully things will calm off tomorrow for a snorkel.
Anchored in Clarence Bay, Ascension
| Date: | April 22, 2016, 10 a.m. |
| Position: | 7 55.20 S, 14 24.68 W |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 8.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
We arrived yesterday midday and dropped anchor in 14 meters off the beach in Clarence Bay. The island of Ascension is very scenic when approaching from sea. We went ashore to sort our our harbour fees and immigration. Total cost to clear in was 15 GBP for harbour fees and 20 GBP per person for immigration = 55 GBP in total. Importantly they have a new washing machine that they just installed which is only 1GBP per load! Pretty excited about that.
We finished the passage last night with a fillet of sushimi tuna and a glass of South African white wine while we watched the sunset over the South Atlantic. Not a bad ending to a 700nm passage. We learned that what they call a Bonito Tuna here is not the same as an Australian Bonito Tuna. These ones here have a much redder flesh and don't have the fishy taste. We found just eating it raw after being chilled in the freezer for 24-hours was perfect, up there with a yellowfin.
The dinghy ashore is interesting as you have to somehow leave your dinghy anchored way out off the dock wall to avoid it getting slammed by the surge. All the cruisers have different ways of doing it but most involve going for a swim at some stage and/or getting their dinghy stern-anchor stuck in the rocks which are closer to the dock. We solved the issue by dropping our dinghy anchor way out where it is clearly sandy and then putting a block on the end of the anchor rode with a long sheet through it in a loop back to the dinghy. When we get off at the dock we are then able to pull on the sheet to pull the dinghy out away from the dock about 15 meters or so.
The only hiccup for us was getting insurance sorted from Solomons (evacuation insurance which is required for immigration) - they require 24-hours to process the application if you submit it here. No problems if you get insurance at St Helena before coming obviously - in hindsight we would have just got it in St Helena. But it was no problem as we were able to get stamped in at the police station/immigration and then had to return to the boat which we were planning to do anyway. no-footer
St Helena to Ascension: Day 5
| Date: | April 20, 2016, 10 a.m. |
| Position: | 9 3.84 S, 13 12.05 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 310.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 18.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
We had a good day with steady wind and clear skies. We are now less than 100nm from Ascension and should be arriving there tomorrow (Thursday) late morning or midday.
We had the lines out at fish o-clock this morning as we passed between the seamounts. We got a big strike that ran with the line for a few hundred meters but managed to shake off the hook. Later in the day we got a double-hookup. We landed an 8kg "Bonito" tuna on the Penn 50 reel running a purple squid lure. We were running a large Halco laser-pro on the other line with full-on rope and 200-pound trace on a bungy cord - whatever took that broke the trace line like it was cotton string - ping! That must have been a very large fish indeed. Unfortunately we lost the lure.
I am not normally a fan of the "cruiser-style" trolling like that where you use heavy-line and a bungy-cord. It works fine if you get a small enough fish and you can just drag them in while you are still moving. But I think any tuna over about 10kg is simply either going to break (as happened in this case) or it will just rip through their mouth as tuna have pretty soft mouths. I think if you really want to land any tuna over 10-20kg then you have to have a game reel with lots of line and a good drag and be willing to play it for a while. I was running it more for an experiment and to setup a fish-type lure as a "teaser" to attract the fish before they got to the squid-lure. It worked a bit too well on the "teasing" and attracted the big one straight to it. I won't be doing that anymore when in the vicinity of very large fish.
We cleared about 5kg of fillets off the bonito pretty quickly and stowed them away in the freezer. It was a pretty healthy-sized tuna and our front deck looked like an abattoirs for a while there. While not sushimi-grade like Yellowfin the Bonito is still nice if seasoned and lightly seared on the outside which seems to get rid of the fishy-taste.
St Helena to Ascension: Day 4
| Date: | April 19, 2016, 10 a.m. |
| Position: | 10 29.23 S, 11 29.36 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.5 |
| Heading (True): | 320.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 18.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 2.0 |
It seems our log-entry from Day 2 might have been lost and/or delayed in getting posted to the internet so if you get our log post from Day 2 randomly then that is the explanation. Unbelievably, the sailmail station which we have the best connection with is based in Belgium nearly 4000nm away, but we have just been notified that that station has had difficulty connecting to the internet for the past 48-hours. We are using the (very slow) Maputo station in Mozambique in the meantime until the internet connection in Belgium gets sorted out.
Last night we did end up switching the genoa to the other side to put us on a broad reach. At the same time we put the second reef in the mainsail as the gribs showed the wind picking up a little bit. Even though the gribs showed it "only" coming up from 16knots to around 18-19knots (which seems like a very minor increase) we've seen these little windy patches enough to know what they are really like. In the context of the broader weather systems with a high-pressure system moving below us this typically means real wind speeds of 20-25 knots. Putting the reef in at sunset turned out to be a good decision as the wind picked up to a nice 20-25 and we were able to spend another 24-hour run without touching anything. The stronger wind picked up a pretty messy sea-state earlier this morning but conditions are settling down now somewhat. We've just switched the genoa back out on the pole again to maintain our heading for the night so hopefully we won't need to touch anything until morning again.
We've managed 145nm in the past 24-hour thus keeping up a 6-knot average. At sunset we now have only 228nm to go. If we can keep up this average it looks like we'll be getting in Thursday morning sometime.
We are heading to go between two large seamounts tomrrow morning which get up to a shallow depth of 22 and 70 meters respectively. These seamounts are around 40nm apart at coordinates (09 44S, 012 05W) and (09 44S, 012 48W) respectively. Normally we would give these types of seamounts a very wide berth and go around them. This is because the ocean-currents do strange things around these types of oceanic seamounts and the sea can become quite unpredictable and very rough in their vicinity. In this case however the 40nm between them looks like a safe-enough corridor and the potential to catch large yellow-fin tuna and other pelagics is too great too pass up. These types of seamounts attract a large ecosystem of fish-life and this part of the world is famous for its giant yellow-fin tune which is also our favorite eating-fish. To get an idea of the size of the fish we are talking about just Google "spearfishing Ascension" or "Ascension tuna". The fish you see in those pic tures are too large but hopefully we'll pick up a more reasonable sized fish around the 5-10 kg range. A 10-20 kg fish would stock the freezer nicely at this stage and give us sushimi when we get to Ascension. We'll hopefully be passing between the seamounts at first-light tomorrow morning which is perfect timing at what we call "fish o-clock". The fish are waking up and the large predators are hungry for their first meal. no-footer
St Helena to Ascension: Day 3
| Date: | April 18, 2016, 10 a.m. |
| Position: | 12 19.67 S, 9 55.45 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.5 |
| Heading (True): | 305.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 18.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
The wind picked up slightly today but we were able to continue with our same rig and managed to get through another day without touching the wheel or anything. The sea picked up with the wind for a while and things got a bit rolly for a few hours but at sunset now conditions are settling down somewhat. We may take down the pole and head more north for the night just to stabilise the boat and add some variety/spice to our life. We are, after all, meant to be sailing so we should probably pull on a rope or move the wheel once every 48 hours or so!
With the increased wind we managed to make 150nm in the past 24 hours. At sunset we are now 360nm from Ascension and should be able to easily make it in less than 72 hours putting our arrival sometime on Thursday.
Cook managed to make this passage in the Endeavour also in around 5 days with seemingly very similar conditions. He also had overcast conditions the first 2 days and then fresh breezes and "pleasant conditions" for the remainder. Cook only stopped in St Helena for 5 days while we spent 2 weeks there, so we are now only about 3 weeks (less 245 years) ahead of the Endeavour. Cook did not stop in Ascension but only passed close by while sailing in company with the fleet that he encountered at St Helena. We plan to stop for a week or so in Ascension thus all going well we should be departing Ascension only 1 or 2 weeks before he passed by. The reason for our earlier schedule is because we also want to stop at the Azores for a few weeks where, again, he passed close by but did not stop. no-footer
St Helena to Ascension: Day 1
| Date: | April 16, 2016, 10:30 a.m. |
| Position: | 15 16.54 S, 6 14.11 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 300.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 14.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 120.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
We departed St Helena this morning at 0930 into very nice conditions that would have been "brochure-like" except for the overcast sky. The sea was very flat with almost no swell and a nice steady 14-knots from directly behind. If anything the conditions are a bit light and we are going slower than normal, however the lighter wind is creating very comfortable sailing.
We ended up having to delay our departure by several days as we tried to resolve the issue of a hole in our water tank. When the tank was filled we were losing close to 90 liters per day - on a 900 liter tank that means we would have run out of water in 10 days. Not a good thing when we are about to embark for 40-days or so at sea from Ascension. We have a reverse-osmosis water-maker on board but I am not at all comfortable putting our lives in the hands of a mechanical contraption which is prone to failure.
In the end we managed to scratch together 110 liters worth of jerry-cans for us to store water. Fortunately, a German solo sailor loaned us a bladder which he said probably held 60-80 liters - but it turned out to hold another 110 liters. Plus our 2 jerry cans we already had brings it to a total of 260 liters of water-storage. That is enough for us to make a 30-40 day passage if we are very frugal on water. If we run the watermaker and also catch rainwater then we should be able to afford some other luxuries like freshwater showers etc. Furthermore the leak in the tank seems to be slowing and today we only lost about 10 liters. This is leading us to believe that the hole might not be on the very underside and we may be able to retain another 200 liters in the tank.
The saying goes that cruising is "fixing your boat in exotic ports". That might be true when you are close to ports which have services where you can effect repair. However when we are in more remote places I tend to find that cruising is more about making decisions between necessities and luxuries... what is absolutely necessary and what you can live without. You can go and do a one-day sailing course which will teach you how to pull on the ropes and set the sails - but there is simply no course which teaches you what to do when you have a hole in your water tank in one of the most remote islands in the South Atlantic. The decision between: trying to effect repair; changing your plans; or finding alternative solutions can be quite agonizing but some would say that is part of the challenge and joy of cruising these distances.
St Helena: Days 7-14
| Date: | April 14, 2016, 10 p.m. |
Over the weekend we had all the cruisers in the mooring field (17 people) onboard for drinks, it was great fun and we had intended it as a final hurrah before moving on. The next evening however, we came back to the boat to discover our bilge was full of freshwater. After much exploration, it seems we have a small leak in our tank. We cannot pinpoint exactly where at this stage due to the construction and location of the tank. While this is quite a blow at least it did not occur at sea. We have never liked the fact that we only have one very large, and very built in tank, we have talked often about rebuilding it with several compartments for exactly this situation as well as creating an inspection/entry hole. This one we are blaming on the friendly immigration lady, who arranged our paperwork 'just in case we extended our stay.' When we visited her yesterday to do just that she volunteered that she had perhaps jinxed us. Who says sailors are superstitious...
So Mark again misses out on having a passage birthday, unlike me - every year so far and always in crappy weather. No only did he get a stack of fluffy pancakes and magnificently calm, sunny weather in St Helena, but our fellow cruisers have spoilt him rotten. Our Polish neighbours sent him a mouthwatering hot loaf of sourdough, (they were most confused that we don't really make bread aboard, but what do we eat!?!) The Canadians sent over a hard drive of movies, music and more importantly, half a bottle of saltwater soap. The Slovenian and South Africans have offered various specialty glues if we find the leak. But we have been completely bowled over by our lovely German friend who dug out a back up bladder tank (120L) he got when purchasing his lovely boat several years ago. When combined with buying as many jerry cans as we could find on the island we will now be able to carry enough water to safely make the crossing to the Azores and not be totally beholden to the watermaker. Furthermore as he departed the anchorage today, bound for Brazil, he did a lap around us while he played happy birthday on his trumpet!
Yesterday we were a bit dejected after spending a futile day trying to come up with options in Jamestown, but thanks to the generosity of our cruising community our spirits are buoyed and we should be comfortably on our way again soon - and should still be able to stand the smell of each other. no-footer
St Helena: Day 5-6
| Date: | April 8, 2016, 9 a.m. |
| Position: | 15 55.57 S, 5 43.55 W |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
After a Day of chores we went ashore Wednesday night to Anne's place. A usually quiet, relaxed shack out the back of the gardens in Jamestown. Popular among the yachties for a good inexpensive burger, tonight with the help of some South African cruisers who worked in hospitality, they were testing out a different menu. It was a nice excuse to gather the fleet and meet many of the other cruisers as there are few opportunities to do so unless you happen to catch the same ferry ashore. They also had a good crowd of guests from the RMS St Helena. The ship had just arrived to pick up those passengers and shipping containers it had dropped ashore a week ago and this was their last night here. The food was good and inexpensive by St Helenian standards and we had a really fun night. The only thing I can't really recommend is the local wine. It is made by the distillery from South African grapes just to give the locals an inexpensive option due to the very high import tax on alcohol. In future we will skip the wine and stick to the distilleries other rather good offerings.
For after hours service on the ferry it costs a hefty 5pp. with a large group of us we tried negotiating but the boatmen live an hour out of town and were not really interested. So we collaborated and took in a couple of dinghies. It is permissible and entirely possible to so, (we do after all pay rather high harbour fees,) but it is a pain as you have to lift the dinghy up the rock wall and secure it on the concrete landing out of the way of the fishermen and RMS crew. Luckily the tide was up and with our light little dinghy it turned out to work rather well, we were grateful to have a few extra hands to assist us back into the water later though.
On Thursday mornings Thorps grocery store put out fresh locally grown vegetables in their back courtyard at 0900. Don't be late, sharpen your elbows, we were warned and they we not wrong! I arrived to see the shop looking quiet from the outside thinking that I had misheard but when I stuck my head in I saw dozens of locals queued up with baskets at the now shut courtyard doors. One little old lady was peering through a hole in the door quietly letting those near her know what she could see being unloaded. The small, first of the season broccoli caused some excitement as the locals politely but determinedly fell upon the produce when the doors opened. I held back a bit chatting to a nice older gentleman, thinking there was plenty until I realised I was in danger of missing out on the cabbages entirely. All morning as I wandered back and forth past the dock I saw the guys unloading the last of the shipping containers, one was filled entirely of coca-cola. Watching the rather hairy procedure to unload and reload the containers from dock to barge to ship in the rolling swell one marvels at how coke got to be such a priority.
That afternoon, just as my legs had recovered from Jacob's very steep ladder, I jumped in with a group of other yachties to do a guided walk to Diana's Peak, the highest point on the island. It was a grey, rainy morning but it cleared to a balmy humid afternoon with unusually good visibility. Our guide David, was from the local trust and was an English invertebrate expert who had been living on the Island for the past 3 years. His grant/job was to create the endangered listings for all the endemic and native bugs on the island. Being so isolated there are a huge number of endemic bugs and plants, little St Helena contributes a whopping 30% of the UK empire's biodiversity. Sadly most exist in tiny pockets, surrounded by many, many introduced pests and the majority face a grim future. It was not a cheep tour at 15pp, down from 20pp because there was six of us, but it included a hair raising drive out there and Bug-nerd David's incredible flora and invertebrate knowledge. (With latin names and the explanations of the latin names, just don't ask him to remember your name.) It was actually quiet fun and I am glad I went. You can certainly walk the well maintained track yourself and the 360 degree view over the island makes it well worthwhile. From up there the island seems like a key lime pie, with a deceptively barren rock crust plunging into the sea, cradling the lush green interior. By shear stroke of luck we got to the peak just in time to watch the RMS St Helena departing the island on what will be one of her last voyages.
Several boats are planning to depart tomorrow but a couple have turned up today and we expect a couple more in the next few days so yacht numbers remain stable. As we have the dinghy down I have been heading out to assist them onto the mooring as one of our friends did for us on arrival. The mooring buoys are huge with a hard core and firm foam edging. a single, heavy (un-swivelled) metal ring sits in the centre. It is quite a feat to thread your lines through this from the boat so instead I dinghy over and stand on the flat topped buoy to take lines from the other boats. In the swell prone, unprotected bay, it is kind of like one of those physical challenges in Takeshi's Castle or some other Japanese game show but I have somehow managed to stay dry so far. It was nice to know that my comedic efforts to assist have been appreciated, as this afternoon one of those boats dropped by with a freshly speared fish for us.
St Helena, Day 2-5
| Date: | April 7, 2016, 10:55 a.m. |
On Sunday everything shuts down in Jamestown, so we spent the morning doing laundry and some boat maintenance. The port provides hot showers and some tubs to handwash laundry ashore and you can get the entry code from the Harbourmaster when you arrive. Almost all water on the island is potable coming from a mix of rainwater and groundwater, the only exeption are the 3/4 taps (as opposed to usual 1/2 inch,) you may find about Jamestown. Whilst these come initially from the reservoir they pass through an open drain and so are used for non-potable purposes.
In the afternoon we snuck into the hotel to watch the West Indies beat England in the cricket in a nail-biting T20 final, made more fun by being surrounded by flabbergasted Englishmen. We also managed to climb up Jacobs ladder, 699 TALL steps to the fort overlooking town. (Originally it was 700 but resurfacing of the road at the base has gradually covered over the first.) It was well worth the 30-45 minute return climb but 3 days later our legs were still complaining about how steep those steps are.
Monday we got properly cleared in with immigration and did some business about town. There no ATMs on the island but you can get money from the bank during normal business hours and Saturday mornings. They charge 5% and you can request sterling in place of St Helena pounds if you prefer. The extremely slow internet is an eye-watering £6.60 per hour, with no hope of Skype or major downloads/uploads. Even the payphones are £1/minute internationally. It must be quite a handicap for the younger generation who could otherwise establish online businesses but on the flipside it helps preserve the strong community character of this remote place. With the airport due to open next month, St Helena will definitely not be the same if we ever visit again in future. Until the first of the test flights late last year all arrivals to this island had occured by ship only.
We discovered a jumbled but fabulous collection at the little museum. Entry is free (donations appreaciated) which is lovely because then you can enjoy a few short visits to absorb all the neat things in there. In between I have been scavenging about the shops continuosly to build up fresh supplies. They seem to unload the RMS cargo slowly so each day something else turns up but you have to snap them up, you will be lucky to see the same thing a few hours later let alone the next day. Elder Saints have lamented that the younger generation have shown no interest in agriculture. Once this fertile place was completely self sufficient as well as supplying Ascension and all visiting boats. Now most food is imported at hefty prices and running out of fresh food is not uncommon.
On Tuesday we took a taxi-tour of the island. There seem to be two operators, Robert and Colin and if you get 6 people together it costs about £12pp for a 4-5 hour trip. Robert can be booked through the tourist office and has won awards. He is quite the history buff but speaks with one of those strong 'Saint' accents, I've warned about. Colin can be booked through his daughter Tracey. You'll find her at her little shop with a blue door up some stairs a few door down from the Consulate hotel. Colin's milder accent was much less challenging and as we were traveling with some German cruisers it seemed like a better option for us. You can include a stop at the distillery, which we really enjoyed, the £5 tasting fee was waved as we made some purchases of their excellent offerings.
Pleasantly buzzed from the distillery we continued on to the islands suprisingly lush interior to see the Napoleonic sites. The tour of Longwood house where the little emperor spent most of his time of the island is a further £10 but is fully guided and we rather enjoyed it. We managed to spot a rare wirebird as we passed the 9 hole golf course, on the way to the airport. Initially we did not think this much of an attraction but seeing the double cliff ended tarmac changed our minds on that point. Absolutely no room for error. At all. You also pass some stunning rainbow soils on the road down there. It will make for a spectacular entrance for those arriving here by plane.
We drove across the little island checking out various historic sites, both old and contemporary but the most magical part had to be the view over Sandy Bay. Luckily for us some drizzling rain cleared to reaveal this fairytale landscape of soaring rock formations and trees gnarled into fantastic shapes, all standing over a lush green landscape of grazing pastures and hillsides covered in New Zealand flax. Down in that valley we encountered Jonathan, a giant tortoise from the Seychelles who at roughly 200 years old is thought to be the oldest living creature on the planet. He was looking rather spiffy having recently recieved a shell clean in preparation for prince Edward coming out to open the Airport. Alas there is no hope of uploading the photos we took, perhaps in Ascension.
Moored at Jamestown, Saint Helena
| Date: | April 2, 2016, 2:05 p.m. |
Saint Helena
Day 1
We approached the historic island of Saint Helena at dawn. In the cloudy morning conditions it rose moodily out of a choppy grey sea. It has, rather aptly been described as an inhospitable rock in the middle of nowhere. Indeed rounding the Northern capes the only sign of life was the lights for the new airport and the fairy terns who have been wheeling about us for the last day or so. Arriving after 12 days at sea to find this seemingly uninhabitable land formation gives a great perspective on the exile of the little emperor. Saint Helena's most famous resident, Napoleon Bonaparte was truly banished and clearly, greatly feared to be sent all the way out here.
Tropic birds also began to appear close to immense rocky cliffs that plunge dramatically into the sea. It began to remind us of Christmas Island but this island sits boldly as one rocky monolith and lacks the tiers of its more tropical cousin. It's a bit more windswept looking and certainly more barren, though not lacking greenery. As we rounded the North West we notice historical stone fortifications built umungst the cliffs as any point where a tenacious landing party might hope to scabble ashore. Then a Brazilian navy vessal, a rabble of little fishing boats and the flotilla of international yachts come into view. A dense township perches above high on a windswept plane whilst Jamestown iteslf nestles into one of the few gullies that run down to the sea.
We pick up a mooring buoy with the help of a fellow cruiser in a dinghy. Then the chaotic start to our Saint Helena visit begins. The adorable little yellow ferry boat putters around waiting for us to scramble into decent clothes and grab our paperwork. The customs and port authority have come in on a Saturday especially to clear us and another yacht in, so we are hurried along. The Saint Helenians or Saints as they refer to themselves could not be more friendly but it is certainly a challenge to get your ears around their incredible accent. They claim to speak English, but words are clipped and compounded beyond recognition and there is definitely some local slang thrown in. Its sounds perhaps like something you might hear in a welsh backwater combined with Jamaican. It must be one of the most fun local accents I've ever heard. Usually I manage to pick up an understanding of local dialects quickly but I am struggling with this one, Mark is not coping at all.
Every single person we walk past says hello (or some greeting) as we trek around Jamestown to find the police station and clear in with immigration. The town is bustling with people and there is a little market made particularly busy today as an English TV celebrity is in town. He is an antiques expert (of Antiques Roadshow and Bargin Hunt fame) and is doing a Saint Helena version purely for fun with the locals. I spy many pieces of Napoleonic memorabilia.
The little township is a charming mix of historical architecture, at one moment grandly european and another faintly creole-colonial. As we finished rushing around to get cleared in, we bump into other cruisers and learn that the freash fruit and vegetables that just arrived on the last monthly mail ship have been put out for sale at the various shops today. This starts another little scramble as we join the locals hunting down friut and vegetables. Luckily we are still well provisioned and need very little, supplies are so limited I hate to deprive locals in remote places like this. The appearance of watermelon seems to create considerable excitement as the Saints politely but briskly shuffle between the various shops to stock up. Whilst there seems to be some sentimental regret at having to farewell their mail ship, no doubt the opening of the airport in about 7 weeks will bring a lot more convinence to a place that only recieved mobile phone access last year.
The weather is glorious and we should have spent the afternoon enjoying it as we have been told it has been unusually rainy this summer. We are however too tired from the passage and chaotic arrival. We head back to the boat, via adorable little ferry and decide for the first time to install the flopper stopper. This makes a remarkable difference to our motion, we are still bobbing about but with the lateral rolling retarded it is much more comfortable. The device turns out to be the best thing magma make, (those of you complaining about their bbq's should consider repurposing them!) Our improved motion and the pleasant sounds of the topic birds overhead make for a sound sleep.
Cape Town to St Helena: Day 12
| Date: | April 1, 2016, 9 a.m. |
| Position: | 16 27.63 S, 4 19.73 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 300.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 16.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 145.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
We had quite steady conditions overnight last night with mostly clear skies. This morning we had patches of cloud and rain with very variable winds and squally conditions. Wind shifts were as much as 90-degrees so we had a slow morning chasing the wind around in circles and changing sails. By midday the skies cleared and we've had steady sailing goosewinged with full genoa and double-reefed main.
So this morning I was able to pick up the boats Solstice, Nightfly, Totem and Anke-Sophie on the radio on 6227kHz. This is good because Nigthfly (Dutch) and Anke-Sophie (German) are sailing the same route that we will to the Azores. They are about to cross the Equator any day now as they are at 2.5-degrees South and 19 West. We hung out with Warren and Maria from Nightfly in Durban when we rented a car together and drove up to Drakensberg for the night so its good to have some company and familiar voices out here. Although they should be in the Azores around the time we are departing Ascension it will be good to follow their progress.
Bill (the single-hander on Solstice) is heading for the Carib but got us with a good one this morning. He came on the radio and mentioned that he was becalmed nearby another all-female crew yacht so they had invited him to raft-up to eat the freshly baked coissants they had made... nice one Bill. Jamie from Totem picked up on it straight away - I did a double-take though. Like all good April fools it started with an element of truth: he is in quite light conditions.
We're now 80nm from the North-East point of St Helena and at this rate we expect we should rounding that point at about 7 or 8 am tomorrow morning. All going well we should be picking up a mooring off Jamestown by 9am or so.
Cape Town to St Helena: Day 11
| Date: | March 31, 2016, 9 a.m. |
| Position: | 17 29.14 S, 2 12.23 W |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.5 |
| Heading (True): | 300.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 18.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 140.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
Last night lots of cloud and squally conditions came over with the wind squalling up to 25-30 at times but mostly around 20-25 knots. The thing happened where the big cross-swell started to fade away while the following sea picked up and made for a very rough night which persisted through to the morning. It felt like we were back in the Indian Ocean. Late morning the skies cleared up and the seas settled and we've had a pleasant day running dead downwind in 18 knots or so of wind.
We are 220nm from St Helena now and it looks quite certain we will make it in Saturday morning sometime.
Cape Town to St Helena: Day 10
| Date: | March 29, 2016, 8:38 a.m. |
| Position: | 18 51.09 S, 0 0.00 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 305.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 14.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 140.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 3.0 |
At the time of writing this we have just crossed the prime meridian and we're now back in the Western hemisphere. While this in itself is a milestone, it has further significance for us because the furthest east from Australia we have been was just beyond the International dateline at the Fijian island of Fulanga at 178.5 degrees West. Thus we have now officially sailed half way around the world by longitude. In actual logged miles we have sailed nearly the full circumference of the globe, but continents and things to see get in the way of course. It will be exciting to leave the Southern Hemisphere next month for the first time and cross the Equator into the Northern Hemisphere.
At this point in Cook's log of the Endeavour voyage he noted: "In the A.M. crossed the line of our first Meridian, viz., that of Greenwich, having now Circumnavigated the Globe in a West direction.". The Endeavour crossed at around 17 degrees and 40 minutes South which put them at a latitude about 60-miles north of us. Thus the Endeavour completed this passage in a more arcing route sailing more East and North of us for most of the way. I believe this simply comes down to us having had better conditions to follow the rhumb line more closely - although we have also arced slightly east and north of it.
Conditions have been lovely again today and we have been able to keep a good pace throughout daylight hours using the spinnaker. Last night there were many patches of rain and squalls which vindicated our decision to lower the spinnaker for the night, and with similar conditions building for tonight we are doing the same. A prodigious swell has come in from the south today, probably the result of a large low-pressure system which swept Cape Town over the weekend.
We are now 365nm from St Helena about 1-hour from sunset. If we can maintain a 5-knot average then we will hopefully arrive at St Helena during daylight hours on Saturday.
Cape Town to St Helena: Day 9
| Date: | March 29, 2016, 8 a.m. |
| Position: | 20 13.83 S, 2 3.26 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 310.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 12.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 180.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
Finally the weather of the past few days has culminated into one of those magical days that rarely happen. The sea state died down to almost flat and the wind was a perfect steady 8-9 knots on the port quarter allowing us to broad-reach under spinnaker for 24-hours in idyllic conditions. To give an idea of how calm and smooth it was, I laid an Easter egg down on the saloon table while I attended to something and it was still there where I left it 5 minutes later - and we were sailing at 6-knots! We have barely had to touch the wheel at all as the boats been sailing itself under a combination of Hydrovane with a little help from Raymarine (in light conditions the hydrovane doensn't have quite enough "ooph" to steer on its own - although I don't recall hearing Ray make a noise at all today).
We would have kept up a 6-knot average for the 24-hours but we've only managed 5 because we had a slow start last night before the conditions picked up and then also this morning for an hour or so the wind dropped away. Otherwise it has been, literally, smooth sailing. Conditions have been so smooth we had crepes for breakfast and the last of our Osterich meat patties on a works-hamburger for lunch. Life is pretty good on days like this.
The conditions are forecast to increase slightly overnight and then gradually increase over the next few days. So we've just handed in the spinnaker as it was starting to get on the windy side (we were making 8-knots in 12 knots of wind a moment ago!). We're back now to full genoa and mainsail on a broad-reaching port tack with respectable speed in the high-five's to six.
Malcolm: Well done Mark and Cat..........An Easter egg left for 5 minutes untouched is a remarkable achievement that rarely happens. March 29, 2016, 6:45 p.m.
Mark&Caz: Smooth running on the last of your ostrich legs sounds like a symbolic way to depart Africa. Happy sailing! March 30, 2016, 2:08 a.m.
Add a commentCape Town to St Helena: Day 8
| Date: | March 28, 2016, 8 a.m. |
| Position: | 21 37.34 S, 3 31.75 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 340.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 6.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 225.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
A slow day as per forecast however I was surprised that we were still able to manage to make 90nm since yesterday - an average of about 3.75 knots. Although there have been extended periods of calms we have been able to take advantage of little puffs of breeze and small squalls around rain clouds to get little bursts up to 5 knots or more every now and then. We've run the spinnaker almost non-stop for the past 24-hours except for an hour or so this morning when it squalled up to 15 knots. Conditions are more overcast than I would have expected and we have been almost constantly covered in a blanket of high cloud cover and surrounded by patches of lower cloud with rain. If you are lucky then you can ride along the edge of these patches of rain "riding the squall" for an extended period. We seem to be doing that at the moment as we have been chasing down a rain cloud which is few miles off our bow for most of the afternoon.
We are at the same latitude as Cook reported in his log on day 10 of their voyage from Cape Town. We are however nearly 2-degrees of longitude further to the west of their position, closer to St Helena. From this point onwards the Endeavour sailed very quickly on what Cook described as "Fresh Gales and Cloudy" which allowed them to cover distances of 168, 152, 136 and 126 miles over the final four days to complete the passage. Due to the light conditions we'll probably be a bit slower than that but I'm still hoping we can make it in 13 days thus beating the Endeavour by 1 day. Interestingly, when they arrived at St Helena they found an Indiaman anchored there shortly before them who had departed Cape Town 2 days after them and thus done the passage, with the same weather, in only 12 days. This reveals something of the poor sailing performance of the Endeavour: it was not a great sailing vessel at the best of times. Rather, it was chosen by Cook more for its robustness. It was a Whitby built bark built for merchant trade of bulk goods along the English coast. Cook was raised sailing on these vessels in the early days before he joined the Navy. It was slow and heavy for that size ship but her robustness, strength and flat bottom is probably what saved their lives when they struck Endeavour reef off the Queensland coast. The construction also allowed them to careen the ship (run aground in Cooktown) and effect repair quite easily. This style of ship was quite different from any that went before her, but after the success of the expedition it became the standard for exploration vessels thereafter.
Cape Town to St Helena: Day 7
| Date: | March 27, 2016, 8 a.m. |
| Position: | 22 35.34 S, 4 44.33 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 2.5 |
| Heading (True): | 320.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 5.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 135.0 |
| Sea state: | Slight |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
We had another fantastic night of sailing in just-enough wind to keep up a 5-6 knot average, the sea became very calm and we were gliding along beautifully with both of us getting lots of rest. Around midday today the wind started to fade away so we rolled up the genoa and hoisted the spinnaker. That kept us going for another few hours but in the past hour or so the spinnaker has started to go limp and we're pretty much just bobbing around. The gribs indicate we might be able to scratch out 2-3 knots for tonight but tomorrow they are showing complete dead calm around midday and very light conditions right through Tuesday also. Hopefully conditions will start to pick up again on Wednesday.
Unfortunately the voyage seemed to be a bit too slow for our Sparrow friend and he seems to have flown the coup. Closest land is 1100km back to the mainland...
Tom: The Sparrow is a compact little story about freedom. The sparrow could have stayed on board but would rather die trying to live than live trying not to die. March 28, 2016, 1:57 a.m.
Add a commentCape Town to St Helena: Day 6
| Date: | March 26, 2016, 7 a.m. |
| Position: | 23 42.34 S, 6 43.91 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 320.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 14.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 170.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
We've had a fantastic 24-hours of sailing with the wind just teetering on the edge of being too light but generally just enough to keep the sails full. We slowed down this morning for a few hours and the sails were flogging a bit but otherwise there has been enough wind to keep us going around 6 knots and we've managed 135nm in the past 24-hours. We're alternating between running dead downwind goosewinged and broad-reaching on a port tack. Danish lessons are in full swing on board and we're doing a few hours each day amongst Cat knitting jumpers.
Wind forecast to really drop away tomorrow to less than 5-knots on the gribs so the calms might finally catch up to us. Happy Easter to everyone wherever you may be.
Cape Town to St Helena: Day 5
| Date: | March 25, 2016, 7 a.m. |
| Position: | 25 25.06 S, 8 28.66 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 305.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 12.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 155.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.0 |
The wind has dropped away today as per forecast and our speed is down around 5-knots which will affect the fantastic average we've had until now. As of this morning we had done 630nm in 4-days. These conditions are forecast to continue for the next 48-hours at least so we might have a few slower days ahead of us. The easing conditions have made things quite comfortable today so we've got the generator out on the back deck and giving the batteries a good top-up and we're having a nice dinner of baked nachos as opposed to our regular dinners of pre-prepared frozen passage meals (which are awesome thanks Cat!).
Interestingly, by sheer coincidence, last night we passed within 4 miles or so of Cook's reported position on the 23rd of April 1771. The Endeavour had departed Cape Town on the 16th of April and it had taken them around 7-days to cover the same distance we have done in a little under 4-days. The Endeavour ended up completing this passage to St Helena in 14-days, arriving on the 1st of May 1771. They had a slower run for the first half as they were plagued with lighter winds, with average days of around 80-90nm and managing to cover only 19 miles on one day. However they had a very good run for the second half as they hit a strong trade-wind and did three days in excess of 150nm during that time. On two of those days they covered a distance of 168nm which is on a par with the speeds we have been doing the past few days (and about the top manageable speed without current-assistance for both her and Tuuletar).
It seems like we will have a somewhat inverse passage to the Endeavour with our second half likely slower than the first. There are a couple of likely reasons: a) the Endeavour departed a month later than us at a time of the year where the winds are shifting to a more wintery pattern in South Africa. Actually the forecast for two-weeks around when we departed showed the typically summer-time strong south-easterlies deteriorating in frequency and strength and being replaced with prolonged calms and the more regular north-westerly winds of winter (it is these north-westerly winds which is why Simonstown exists because it was around April/May that the Dutch East India Company would move their fleet around to False Bay for protection from these winds throughout the winter); and b) we simply have forecasts now which allow us to get a good run for the first few days. Back in Cook's day they just set sail whenever the weather looked nice and hoped for the best.
This morning we had several showers of rain come through and there are still patches of lower, grey clouds around. Fortunately the rains don't carry much squally wind with them so we've been confident to run our full main and genoa goosewinged - not confident enough yet to run the spinnaker however. The spinnaker would probably keep our 6-knot average going but it doesn't seem worth the risk for the extra knot of speed at this stage.
The sea remains slightly more lumpy than I would expect for this amount of wind. I'm hoping that it might take another night of light winds for the sea to settle right down to the wonderfully smooth conditions we got when we were departing Rowley Shoals for Christmas Island and also sound of Reunion Island. They are the conditions you dream of but come along very rarely.
Finally, today I managed to pick up radiofax signals from Northwood, UK on 11086.5kHz at around 0700UTC. I was also able to pick up radiofax from Hamburg, Germany on 13882.5 around 0800UTC. These stations in the UK and Germany transmit with 20kW and 10kW respectively which is 20 and 10 times stronger than the 1kW which Australia uses to transmit radiofax signals! The signal is still quite weak and I didn't try to capture the image however I was able to pick up the distinct clicking sound of the fax signal. This is good to know because it is yet another source of good weather information along with the Gribs when we are planning to depart Ascension and sailing through the North Atlantic.
Cape Town to St Helena: Day 4
| Date: | March 24, 2016, 7 a.m. |
| Position: | 26 49.59 S, 10 30.09 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.5 |
| Heading (True): | 305.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 17.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 160.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
It was another bouncy-but-fast night and by the morning we had covered 475nm in 3-days which is a very fast average for us.
Last night the wind piped up to around 25 knots with overcast conditions and prolonged squalls to around 30-knots with light rain. We continued running goosewinged with a double-reefed genoa and mainsail which took us quite a long way north of the rhumb line but was the most comfortable point of sail so we stuck with it. Throughout today the wind has eased somewhat and the sea state is also settling down with a clear sky.
This afternoon we gybed the genoa to sail back on a broad-reach with full genoa and still the double-reefed mainsail. We're now gliding along back towards the rhumb line in quite comfortable conditions. Forecast is for conditions to continue to ease overnight and throughout tomorrow to around 10-knots on the gribs. If that happens we might have to start to think about running the spinnaker for the next few days.
Scott Pitman: Go guys! You are hammering along.You'll be in St Helena in no time! The conditions sound remarkably favourable. Long may they continue. March 24, 2016, 5:23 p.m.
Add a commentCape Town to St Helena: Day 3
| Date: | March 23, 2016, 7 a.m. |
| Position: | 28 53.86 S, 12 36.35 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 5.0 |
| Heading (True): | 330.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 15.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 160.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 0.5 |
The wind stayed steady most of last night and only picked up slightly this morning so we continued on our broad-reach with the two headsail and a double reefed main. The wind shifted from the SSW to the SSE this morning and the sea became quite lumpy and uncomfortable for a few hours after the wind shift. Around midday we changed sails to a goosewinged full genoa and double reefed main. Conditions have gradually eased throughout the day and we are now barely managing to maintain 5 knots.
The sea has settled significantly though and the sailing is wonderfully smooth as we slowly roll and amble our way downwind. The boat is fully laden with provisions and fuel for months which caused us to sit noticeably lower in the water before we left. We can also notice the extra weight in the way the boat moves. It rolls with a much slower frequency than normal and we plough through the waves like a tanker.
I've been checking the exhaust every few hours since we departed to ensure that we don't have any water entering. Its been good to test the new exhaust in the quite boisterous downwind conditions we have had over the past few days. So far everything seems to be working fine in that department.
This afternoon a tiny land-bird like a sparrow appeared on our deck and started foraging around like land-birds do. Its quite sad but they sometimes get blown out to sea great distances and take shelter on anything they can find, most normally perish at sea but if they are lucky enough to find your boat they'll cling to it for their life. Cat's sprinkled some seeds around the deck to encourage him to survive the trip and hopefully make St Helena his new home. no-footer
Sideways Jim, Ship's Biologist/Botanical Officer: Bird, possible new species, two wings, possibly no feet :-) March 24, 2016, 3:14 a.m.
Add a commentCape Town to St Helena: Day 2
| Date: | March 22, 2016, 5 a.m. |
| Position: | 30 41.51 S, 15 7.41 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 310.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 20.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 200.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 2.0 |
We departed Saldanha Bay at around mid-morning yesterday into very light but at least sail-able conditions. The 24-hours we had in Saldanha gave us a nice rest. We went ashore to see the yacht club and had lunch at a quaint little restaurant in the industrial slip-yard. We managed to re-fuel at a BP we could easily access 100m from a beach and I also managed to make an oil and filter change. When we departed the wind was around 8-10 knots from the SW and the sea state was slight and comfortable except for a very large 3-4m swell which was still rolling in from the day before. Although when we saw them they were just "gentle giants" - we felt the size of the larger sets vindicated our decision to pull into Saldanha Bay.
The sailing for the first few hours was sublime. Africa disappeared over the horizon as we pulled away at 4-5 knots with full rig up. The conditions were forecast to increase to 20-knots or so on the Gribs. Unfortunately when it kicked in it was quite a bit stronger and the remaining 2-3 meter cross-swell with 25-30 knots of wind from behind us made us feel like we were back in the Indian Ocean again. At least it was fast. We were slewing down the waves hitting speeds of up to 11.5 knots with our "Indian Ocean rig" up (heavily reefed main, staysail and double-reefed headsail). It was worth it though: we covered 170nm in the first 24-hours at an average speed of just over 7 knots - and that included the first 5-6 hours where we averaged 4-5 knots!
Fortunately, the wind is coming much more from the SW than indicated on the forecasts which means that we are able to stay on a broad-reaching port tack which is our fastest and most comfortable point of sail. Even then we did have quite an uncomfortable night as the boat rolled and slewed all over the waves and sea - the worst time (as in the Indian Ocean) seems to be at a critical point after a big swell when the swell has faded to a point where it starts to compete with the wind-driven sea from behind. There are a few hours at the end of a big swell where this happens and life gets miserable.
The wind has now settled to a more moderate 20-knots or so and the swell is also down. The forecasts had the wind increasing again this afternoon/tonight but so far that hasn't come to fruition. Here's hoping it stays like this as we're making good speed in relatively comfortable conditions. no-footer
Departing Saldanha Bay
| Date: | March 21, 2016, 6:25 a.m. |
| Position: | 33 1.11 S, 17 57.46 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 90.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 10.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 225.0 |
| Sea state: | moderate |
| Swell (m): | 3.0 |
Out of Africa: Take 2. Winds are still very light from the SW but are forecast to increase throughout the day. Hopefully we will have enough to start sailing.
The forecast for the entire passage winds are getting lighter on each forecast so this could be a very slow passage overall.
Pulled in to Saldanha Bay
| Date: | March 20, 2016, 6:35 a.m. |
| Position: | 33 1.09 S, 17 57.21 E |
After we had rounded the Cape of Good Hope the forecast was for idyllic 10-15 knots SW winds which I was expecting to starting sailing on straight away. We ended up rounding the Cape in calm conditions and once around actually had the opposite of light 6-8 knots of winds on our nose from the North.
We persisted motoring into it and tried making an offing from the land to get away from the land effect. We motored about 30 miles offshore and conditions remained glassy. There was simply no wind to be found.
After motoring for 12-hours and with the prospect of having to motor for another 36-hours before the wind kicked in (the forecast of 10-15 knots SW winds was for a 48-hour period) we decided to pull in to Saldanha Bay to re-fuel/recover the fuel we have used. We pulled in to Saldanha Bay and dropped anchor at around 3am this morning having covered the 120nm from Simonstown in about 19 hours of motoring.
This has the added advantage of allowing us to rest while this very large swell moves along the coast today. Forecasts were for warnings of very rough seas and a swell "in excess of 4 meters" today - and with almost no wind to speak of that would not be fun to just bob around in watching our sails get flogged.
We've attached some pictures to this log entry (see link to the website below) so you can see the Cape of Good Hope on a calm day and the glassy conditions we woke up to this morning in Saldanha Bay.
Departing Simonstown, False Bay
| Date: | March 18, 2016, 8 p.m. |
| Position: | 34 11.60 S, 18 28.04 E |
| Speed over Ground: | 6.0 |
| Heading (True): | 180.0 |
| Wind Speed (kts): | 10.0 |
| Wind Direction (True): | 225.0 |
| Sea state: | Moderate |
| Swell (m): | 1.5 |
Leaving False Bay Marina now. The boat is loving the light sanding that I gave the prop yesterday as well as the clean hull and new exhaust system. We are motoring at 6.5 knots. The passage to St Helena is 1700nm and routing calculations indicate that it will take us around 14-15 days.
The most recent routing calculation shows that we'll have a very large swell tomorrow (5 meters!!) and then the wind peaks on Monday afternoon/evening at around 23-24 knots on the gribs (probably 30 or so in reality). After that it the wind decays to around 18-19 knots on the gribs for the rest of the first week and then on the second week the wind closer to St Helena looks to be averaging lighter at around 12-knots on the gribs. That should create very comfortable conditions on the second week, although it might be a bit light and require some spinnaker work.
Why can't we sail straight there? (In the wake of the Endeavour)
| Date: | March 12, 2016, 5:10 a.m. |
| Position: | 34 11.32 S, 18 25.93 E |
The news of us potentially getting a residence/working permit for Denmark mean that we are abandoning our plans for heading across to Brazil and then down to Cape Horn and Patagonia next summer. Instead we are now planning to head directly to Northern Europe and Denmark via the “up the middle” route as the cruisers are referring to it. An image of this route with rough timing is attached to this blog post (see link at the bottom of emails). It involves Cape Town->St Helena->Ascension->Azores->Northern Europe Mainland (Spain or France).
This is a well-trodden route that has been sailed by explorers and merchant ships for hundreds of years and, as I explain at the bottom of this post, we'll be doing an almost identical route and timing to that of the Endeavor on its return voyage to England exactly 245 years ago.
So why the “up the middle route”? In an ideal world one would just follow the west African coastline all the way around to the Mediterranean then up the Portuguese coast to the English Channel. Unfortunately, there are several issues with this approach:
1 – The west African coast is not very hospitable for sailing boats. There are long distances between ports, piracy and security issues as well as poor wind/weather conditions when you are close to shore. Many cruisers sail from Cape Town up to Walvis Bay and Namibia (and we would also loved to have done that if we had more time) but few venture much further north up the “Skeleton Coast” to Angola and beyond.
2 – Once you get close to the Equator then the “Doldrums” (an extended region of light variable winds with intermittent rains and squalls) are at their widest close to the African coast. This means that there will be very little wind from basically Equatorial Guinea right the way around to Dakar, Senegal – a distance of about 3000nm! That's a LOT of motoring. If you are offshore then you'll get better sailing conditions, and if crossing the equator somewhere around the middle of the Atlantic (halfway between Africa and Brazil) then the Doldrums are usually reduced to a few hundred miles in width. If you pick your weather and use the motor strategically then you should, in theory, only have to motor for a couple of days to get through the calms.
3 – Even if you do somehow manage to motor through the wide Doldrums and make it to Dakar or the Cape Verde Islands (which has been done before) then you've then got the issue of the incredibly consistent and often strong northerly winds which blow down the Moroccan coast from Portugal/Gibraltar. Motoring or sailing to windward into these winds is a monumental task, and as our boat doesn't sail well to windward I would say its almost an impossible feat for us. There is a story we have heard of a delivery skipper who managed to beat his way into the weather to make it to the Canary Islands however he simply couldn't make the final 500nm to Gibraltar and, in the end, he still had to reach all the way around the Azores High (crossing the North Atlantic almost twice) to arrive at the Azores where he could reach down to Gibraltar.
These strong and consistent northerly winds are created by a persistent high-pressure system that hangs over the north Atlantic. It is called the Azores High as it tends to roughly remain centered over the Azores Islands. This high pressure system is responsible for the prevailing northerly winds off Portugal, the NE winds off Morocca, the NE trade winds across the Atlatic north of the equator and the E to SE winds at the Caribbean Islands.
In order to (literally) circumvent this wind most of the cruisers who are heading to Europe left a few months earlier than us and are now (in March) passaging from St Helena (and/or Ascension) to Brazil or even directly to the Caribbean Islands. They will then re-stock in the Caribbean and get some rest before sailing north towards Bermuda in order to get above the Azores High and catch the more westerly winds created on its top-half. This involves crossing the Atlantic TWICE in order to get home to Europe. It adds thousands of miles to the journey but is, perversely, the easiest way to get back to Europe.
Unfortunately, because we have had to organize our Danish visas here in Cape Town, we are running out of time to make that route via the Caribbean. Why are we running out of time? Because we need to depart the Caribbean before hurricane season sets in around June and also we want to be sailing around the Azores and English Channel during the best months of June/July. At this late stage, if we did sail all the way to the Caribbean then we'd have only a few days to stop and re-stock before having to move on again – which does not seem really worth it.
So we are planning to take the “up the middle” route. This route has four distinct parts as follows:
1 – To start with we will also go from St Helena and then on to Ascension like the others
2 – However after Ascension we will head in a more northerly route and cross the Equator somewhere around the middle point where its a good trade-off between keeping your Easting but also not getting into the worst of the Doldrums off Africa. Advice seems to be that this is somewhere around 25-30 degrees West.
3 – Once we cross through the doldrums we will encounter the NE trade winds which will come mostly on our nose. At that point we will go hard on the wind and sail as tight as we can into it. However with our boat sailing poorly to windward we will likely end up mostly cracking off a bit and reaching across the wind in a direction towards Bermuda. This is the reason the image of our route below shows a large detour to the west once we get into the North Atlantic. I expect that this will be the worst part of the passage for us as we'll have to sail hard on the wind on a starboard tack for nearly 1600nm – going in a direction almost away from where we want to go – it will be tough keeping morale up.
4 – Once we get to around 30-degrees north (latitude of Bermuda) then we will be around the centre of the Azores High and should get variable winds again with the odd front coming down from the north. There can also be extended periods of calms in this region that they call the “Horse Latitudes”. However we should be able to start making easting as the wind shifts in our favor. This will allow us to make up the nearly 1000nm we lost to the West and head back towards the Azores to make landfall there.
Captain Cook took a very similar route on the return voyage of the Endeavour in 1771, except that he didn't stop at the Azores but continued on to England. Actually it was almost this very day (13th of March) 245 years ago that the Endeavour rounded the Cape of Good Hope and pulled in to Cape Town for re-provisioning. They then went on to depart St Helena island at almost the exact same date that we hope to also depart there (around the 5th of May). The Endeavour had a mostly straight-forward passage home which went according to the plan above, however they did experience some strong winds (albeit favorable) once north of the horse latitudes.
There are several passages that we have done at similar timing to the Endeavour and I have found it quite useful to follow their logs because the sailing parameters of the Endeavour (its speed and ability to windward) are not dissimilar to our on Tuuletar. Generally if the Endeavour can make a windward passage then we should also be able to make it in similar time and following a similar course. They do handle heavy weather better than we do though – but that is compensated somewhat by us having access to better weather information these days.
Overall its nice to have the novelty of replicating 8000nm of Cooks epic voyage nearly 245 years later and comparing our relative experiences will provide some entertainment on a very long passage. So if you see a lot of references to Cook and comparison to their log entries as we are passaging then now you know why!
New logbook
| Date: | March 10, 2016, 9:25 a.m. |
| Position: | 34 11.32 S, 18 25.93 E |
Cape Town to the Azores.
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