Pacific NW

Expeditions

As we approached our 15N latitude level-off goal, the winds shifted more E-NE and intensified, as forecast. We are now racing off to the west. Our strategy to sail north of the rhumb line has paid off very well so far: for three days now we’ve just been able to hold a 120 degree sailing angle for wing-on-wing. Keeping the yankee poled out is helping to stabilize the boat, and gives us excellent boat speed. We’re making 150 NM-plus days, easy.

Along with the winds have come a thick series of very annoying squalls. Usually they form in the pre-dawn hours and last until noon. When a squall passes over us, me have to adjust steerage to run deeper downwind, as the wind speeds creep into the 30-35 knot range and the seas kick up. We’ve been slapped around by several dozen of these squalls now. At sea, they remind me of what an F-5 tornado looks like on the great plains. A massive dark and wide funnel on the horizon.

Last night we had a wonderful 100 NM squall-free run, Privateer tracking steady and straight as an arrow. Even better, I was off-watch for most of it, and got a good sleep! The squalls started up again and lasted my entire 0800-1400 watch today. I’m always glad when the squalls land on my watch. Most of the time it seems they happen during my off-watch, when I’ll have to jump out of bed and sit outside in the rain and spray…

Just as I wrote “spray” above, a rogue wave broke across the cockpit, sending water droplets down through the hatch and onto my computer! It’s the ocean’s way of talking to me…

My friend DanDan has a saying that there’s no “off” button at sea. I really like that expression. We take whatever comes our way, every hour of the day and night. We can’t turn down the wind or shut out the squalls. We turned the button “on” when we slipped the mooring lines in St. Helena, and it will stay on until the voyage end. It’s a good way to deal with these squalls that seem to go on endlessly. When the ocean gets in one of her moods, you tune in and pay alert attention. As we near the Caribbean, we are seeing many planes in the sky, bound of Europe. The passengers (“passive-gers”) inside are tuned out, sleeping, “off” buttons for all…

We’re sailing through vast schools of tuna, who are hunting the flying fish. At sunrise yesterday a tuna arced out of the water just underneath the sheeted-out boom. It looked like a shimmering war club, with its jagged toothy spikes along its tail. If I’d had a camera going it would have made a one-in-a-million shot! The same tuna happened again, right at sunset. This morning after a squall passed over us, a vivid miniature rainbow formed right off the bow. I’ve never seen such a “close” rainbow before. The two ends came down into the waves just off the bow and it was about 20 feet high, arcing right through the forestay.

It’s the big count-down for us now–as I write, we have just over 500 NM to go to Tortola. At 150 NM per day, we should cover the distance pretty quick! We are dreaming of the land and waking up to flat water.

I believe I read that the Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific or the Indian. Judging by the rock-salt crystals all over the boat, I would have to agree. It’s like someone took a giant salt grinder and sprinkled a fine powder on every surface of the boat. You can run your finger across the woodwork, and it comes up white. Large square crystals gather in the winch handle sockets, in the deck iron, in the sails and on the solar panels. The stanchions are weeping rust. I am looking forward to the day we enter into the Intra-Coastal Waterway, where we will blast every surface with hot fresh water, joy soap, and vinegar!

Gradually over the past few days our persistent cloud-cover has given way to a clear trade-wind sky. We’re coming up on the new moon now, and the nights are filled with stars. We’ve reached a great milestone on the journey: at Latitude 9N, the North Star finally rose above the haze of the night horizon! The Big Dipper pours upside-down above. Looking to the south, we can see the Southern Cross, lowering gently and slowly toward the ocean swells. Direction never felt so certain at sea, with both North Star and Southern Cross (and the associated Pointer stars) to guide us true. Privateer is the needle in the celestial compass.

We’ve had a pleasant last two sailing days, with a return to low seas and and fair winds. The forecast is showing stronger trades in the 20-21 knot range next week as we approach the Caribbean, so we are taking a more northerly tack now, to set us up for an easterly approach once the winds kick up. No complaints for now, we’ve been moving right along between 5-7 knots at a steady clip.

The isobars have angled off to the NW for the past few days, and we are taking advantage of the wind direction to sail north. This will allow us to crack off and sail more downwind when the trade-winds start piping out of the NE in a few days. Forecast is for 20-22 knots NE from 65 degrees true. We’re going to try and sail right up to latitude 15N and then drive down on the Caribbean island chain, approaching from the east. While adding a half-day or so to our overall passage time, we hope that this dog-leg strategy will provide for all downwind sailing, and that our week of windward work just north of the equator will be our last.

We’ve had a very good few days of sailing now, with moderate winds. We’ve been alternating between deep reaching on starboard tack and sailing wing-on-wing. We’ve also picked up quite a good current and are making 150 NM days in light winds with ease. It’s nice to have the boat riding on an even keel again, with dry decks and cockpit. Next week will probably get a bit bumpy again…although I keep telling myself that we just got soft in the South Atlantic ocean! This would be an excellent forecast in the Indian Ocean.

The nights are dark and starry due to the new moon approaching, and much more pleasant than the days. Perfect temperatures and steady breezes have been prevailing at night. Globs of phosphorescence boil off the rudder and leave a galaxy of temporary and comets in our wake. The days are cooler now that we are sailing up and away from the oppressive heat of the equator, but it still gets quite hot down below.

We’ve been catching these weird purple things in the waves out of the corners of our eyes. One morning I got a good look as we sailed through another patch of them. They are a sailing type of jellyfish like the Velella-velellas, but much larger–about the size of a shower cap above the surface. Each balloon sail looks like crinkled purple and pink cling-wrap. And they definitely look like they’d give you a nasty sting! Animals have certainly adapted to take advantage of the furthest reaches of the planet, in the strangest ways…

Today we are sailing through thick carpets of Sargasso again. The yellowy-brown plants gather in endless streaks and strands across the horizon. Below water, filtered through the blue lens of clear ocean water, they appear a bright algae-green color. Our world is filled with every color of the rainbow: the ever-present crystal blue ocean, strings of green & yellow Sargasso, rafts of pink and purple jellyfish, tribes of iridescent flying fish, orange sunrises, red sunsets.

We just passed our 1,000 miles left to go to BVI now! It was extremely satisfying to watch the clicker turn to 999–triple digits! We are 39 days and about 4,800 NM out of Cape Town, Africa. Aside from climbing the 700 stairs of Jakob’s Ladder a few times on St. Helena, our legs have gotten little-to-no exercise. My upper body is doing well with all the sail changes & boat chores, but my legs are starting to feel cramped, sore, and soft. I am looking forward to walking around in the BVI! Some sort of electricity-generating bike pedal system at the helm would be a great asset for long-distance voyagers.

Walking the decks tonight I put a double-reef in the main and set the running back-stay in preparation for our stronger trades to come. I’ve just noticed an alarming amount of chafe at the jib sheet at the clew, where it’s been rubbing against the end of the downwind pole. The sheet is cow-hitched to the clew ring, and I am afraid that if one sheet side parts, the other will go with it, and we’d lose control of rolling up the jib. It’s a high-cut Yankee so the clew is way up off deck level. The sail will have to be lowered to tie new sheets on. In the meantime, I’m hoping we will make it to BVI without an issue with this. Any sailing friends out there who can think of a temporary solution, send me a sailmail! Ideally I could fix this at sea without lowering the furling jib…

Our diesel fuel consumption has been so low, and the sailing forecast looking so great, that it looks like we’ll be arriving in BVI with basically full fuel tanks–whoo-hoo! I always scratch my head when other sailboats need 50, 70, 100 gallons in seemingly every port. Where does it all go? It’s very cool that we can hoist a few rags up on a pole in Africa and blow 1/4 of the way around the world–pretty good gas mileage I’d say. I’ve also been thinking that on this passage–from an outer-space perspective–Privateer will begin at Cape Town and plan to finish in the Caribbean at a right angle to herself, fore and aft. Pretty weird, gravity. Ah well, such are the thoughts we think about over the long ocean miles…

Our bumpy beam reach through the NE trades continues…the weather was stifling hot until yesterday morning, when a cold front swept over us. Winds suddenly accelerated to 25-30 knots and held there for about 6 hours, as the temperature dropped 10 degrees F. We cracked off a bit to ride with the winds, but the seas still made a mess of it. We were “inside the washing machine” as they say, high chop all around. One wave broke into the cockpit filling it to the brim, but Privateer just shrugs off these seas and keeps on sailing. With the Yankee rolled up, our storm sails kept us moving along at a comfortable pace.

Now that we’re on the other side of it, we have fresh cooler air and a great sailing breeze, although it lacks the steadiness and constant direction of the SE trades. I’ve been making several dozen course and sail adjustments every day (& sometimes every hour), to keep us sailing in a relatively straight line.

Flying fish erupt from the ocean all around the boat in astonishing numbers. They arc through the rigging and thump off the dodger and cockpit bimini. The boat charging through the water must give them a good scare. We’ve been at sea for 20 days now, and have another 10 or so to go until we reach the Caribbean. It’s a long ocean road!

Now that we are just above the ITCZ our NE winds have filled in, and we are out of the squalls. There’s quite a bit of a NNE component to the wind, so we have to sail slightly to windward to hold a rhumb-line course. Wind speeds are in the 17-20 knot range, which makes for wet sailing! We are forced to dog down all hatches & ports, and during the day the cabin is like a steam-box. It’s just like the Winnipeg Folk Festival camping–after a long night of music & partying, the hot sun rises on the treeless field, begrudgingly baking everyone out of their tents by 7 am. One benefit of sailing to windward, however, is that our wind generator is producing unlimited amps and we can freely use as much electricity as we desire. All the cabin fans are running 24/7, and the fridge is stocked with cold drinks. We’re living on a 15-20 degree angle of heel which is a bit annoying, but manageable. Temperatures are in the 90s(F) and the steaming torrid jungles of Brazil lie just 450 NM to our south.

Nep did his job well on the night watch the other night. He woke me urgently after spotting nav lights on the horizon up ahead of the boat. “Pete, we’ve got a ship ahead, not on AIS, and it’s pretty close” is just about the fastest way that you can wake me out of a deep slumber. I was on deck in literally three seconds. Sure enough, there was a fishing boat drifting directly on our path, dead ahead. I couldn’t make sense of their lights because they were all on–anchor, running, steaming, deck lights. No response from them on VHF. They were surely all asleep for the night, drifting. I quickly altered course 45 degrees and re-set the sails as we charged on at 7 knots into the night. What a great relief as the bearing of the lights fell off to port and we soon passed the hazard! I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping an alert night watch at all times–this boat was not on AIS, and the seas were lumpy enough that our radar was picking up nothing of the low-lying boat. No alarm would have gone off to warn us–only a set of human eyes will do the trick.

Earlier the previous morning we had another fishing boat encounter, right at dawn. I saw the light and no later than 10 minutes, the fishing boat had altered course and was steaming directly toward us! The situation grew tense as they drew closer and I demanded their intentions on the VHF. Eventually I heard some incomprehensible Portugese, and whistling. I whistled back, and they whistled again. At least we had made contact… Soon I saw that there was a buoy in the water quite near Privateer, about 200 feet away. Just like approaching a wild bear, we made sure not to get between the mother and cub (fishing boat and buoy) lest there be a net or lines connecting the two. After not seeing a thing on the horizon for two weeks, it was a shock to look at three other humans standing on the deck of the other boat. They came up to within four boat-lengths of us and we got a good look at each other. This morning we passed through fields of Sargasso plants, floating on the swells. As we sailed along Privateer sucked the plants in through her leeward scuppers and they entangled in the lifeline netting. What a crazy plant…each stem has little hollow “bouys” attached to keep them floating. At times the patches were so thick it looked like we were sailing across a watery golf course. I wonder if this swath is a blown-off remnant from the Sargasso Sea, or if it is associated with the Amazon delta somehow…

Big day for Privateer today–we’ve found the doldrums, and we sailed across the Equator and into the North Atlantic!

It all started at about 5:30am. I was sleeping peacefully in my bunk, Nep was sailing the boat wing-on-wing in light breezes as we’d been doing for the past 3,300 NM. Suddenly I awoke to big fat raindrops splashing on my face, and then felt the boat lurch as the mainsail was caught aback in the preventers. It was a soaker! The winds dropped right off to zero. We had finally found the ITCZ and it was like a wall.

We rolled up the Yankee, stowed the downwind pole, double-reefed the main, sheeted the storm staysail tight, disconnected the Monitor vane, engaged the electric tiller pilot, and fired up the engine. All while taking an involuntary early-bird morning “swim” on deck, as the rainwater flooded the decks and shot out of every scupper.

We’ve been under power all day now and into the night, and will probably motor for at least another 24-36 hours to get clear of the doldrums and into the NE trades. The sailors of old had to bob around in this mess for weeks hoping for a breeze,and making hundreds of sail changes as the sails flogged in the swells. Our plan is to motor-reach up to the NNW to about 2 degrees N and then lay an approximate rhumb-line course to the British Virgin Islands.

Last night we turned our clocks back 2 hours to better time the sunrise/sunset into our watch schedule. The sunsets started to come too late–after 2000 hrs–and it affected the sleep of the off-watch. You can pretty much set your clock to whatever time you want at sea, so long as you keep in touch with Greenwich Mean Time. We’ve sailed through a few time zones since leaving Cape Town so we were due for a switch. We’re now using GMT -2 for our local ship’s time. We’re kind of in a continental time zone “gap” in the ocean, and I was interested to see that except for a handful of people in Greenland perhaps, we are only ones in the world using time zone GMT -2. I’ll have to Google it later. We’re on “Privateer Ocean Time” now.

Squalls all over the horizon surrounded us all day today as we motored along. We keep the hatches open for much-needed ventilation belowdecks. The heat and humidity are stifling. But when a squall passes over, we have to batten down again, until the rain lets up again. Nep seems to enjoy watching all the squalls and guessing which ones will hit us. I am happy for the hard rain–it’s finally washing off all the terrible coal dust we were coated with in South Africa. The halyards and sails were black with soot, and we can now start to see the original color of the lines again.

At 2142 hrs Privateer Ocean Time we rolled across the equator and into the North Atlantic! It is exciting seeing the coordinates read out N and W lat/long on the SSB, GPS & VHF again. It feels like we’re home again!

Away from my lady this Valentine’s Day…but at least we can chat via the Delorme Inreach. All’s well on the home front. We are making our final push to North America where the family will reunite hopefully in 6 week’s time, weather depending.

Just as we were settling into a fine sunset one evening we felt a tug on the fishing line: a perfect-size tuna! Within an hour we caught, cleaned, cooked, and ate our dinner–fresh fish & chips!

The South Atlantic has been very kind to us. We’ve hardly had any winds over 20 knots and very few instances below 12 knots–the perfect wind range. We covered the entire distance except for a hundred miles or so with our wing-and-wing configuration, staysail sheeted flat to reduce roll. It was a downwind run the whole way, and we kept every hatch and port open the entire distance, keeping a bone-dry deck. The SE trades have been good to us, and I will remember the South Atlantic as the most pleasant sailing of the entire world cruise. All good things must come to an end, however, as we are fast approaching the ITCZ (doldrums) that divide the N and S Atlantic. It’s an area with heavy rain and light, variable winds. We must cross this “road” to get into the fresh NE tradewinds on the other side. The doldrums might be only 80 NM wide, or they might 300 NM wide–the position and width of the snaking road is always in flux.

The winds and currents in the South Atlantic swirl around the ocean in a counter-clockwise rotation, while the winds and currents in the North Atlantic go the opposite, in a clockwise direction. It’s like we’re riding a giant figure-8 pattern from Africa to the Caribbean. We’re about to jump horse off one merry-go-round and onto another, the ITCZ constituting the leap right where the two loops criss-cross on the figure-8.

It’s definitely starting to feel like we’re approaching the doldrums. The past few days have been dull and cloudy with lowering pressure. Our solar panels are struggling to make any output with the combines heat and clouds. We have to run the engine every other day for a few hours to top up our batteries. On the positive side, we’re still sailing along nicely, on some of our highest mileage days so far since leaving St. Helena. We must be in a good strong current because it looks like the boat is only going 4.5 knots or so through the water, but we are charging along at 6.5-7 knots.

We’re on the long, long ocean road. It kind of hit us when we reached the 1/4 way from St. Helena to BVI mile…long way coming, l-o-n-g way to go. The pace of life has really slowed down, and we’re totally relaxed into the routine of reading and watching the course as we cut a straight line across the South Atlantic. Sometimes I just sit and stare at the horizon for hours.

We pitched the last few dozens of rotted eggs over the side today–did the old shake test and they all sounded pretty loose inside, and certainly did not smell right on the outside! The other day Nep put in more of a gallant effort at finishing his egg salad than I did, and now he’s paying the price–he’s been a bit queasy for the past 24 hrs. Just goes to show, the only eggs you can trust are the ones you pick fresh from the coop. I did the math on days at sea and remaining food on board, and we should be fine. The last week may get a bit boring, but that will just make the food taste better after we make landfall.

As we reach into the torrid Equatorial climes, the fridge cycles a bit longer each day, sucking more amps out of the battery bank. The night watch is greatly preferred, under a full moon now. We’re picking up radio signals from Trinidad & Chile now as we get further from Africa. And the BBC news is keeping us entertained and happy to be out here on the ocean, dealing with the real issues of the planet! The Orange madman was blathering something about making America “impenetrable”… Winds have picked up a bit and today we finally made more than 150 miles (151) made good on our noon-to-noon. Privateer is slushing down the waves with a single reef, speeds in the 6’s now.

Last night the moon was partially shaded by the earth for a few hours. Around 2230 hrs the full moon dimmed and cast a weird greenish light over the clouds, the sails, and the ocean. It was kind of an X-Files light, and a UFO would have completed the picture. As I was watching the eclipse a sea-bird landed on the end of the boom, and it cocked its head toward the moon, and I swear it was watching the eclipse too. Like riding an elephant’s back, we sailed on Privateer over the gentle waves under the alien-green moon.

We’ve seen two Chinese fish-pillagers in the last few days, otherwise it’s been an empty horizon. We got an AIS signal from the supply ship from Ascension Island, and Nep hallucinated a few ships the other night. Sometimes, when you go for so long at sea, you wish to see something, anything, on the horizon. I remember one time in Alaska when we’d been weeks without seeing another boat or person. We thought we saw a powerboat in the distance, but as we neared we were disappointed to find it was just an iceberg… We’ve lost contact with the Beguine. Yesterday I overslept the sked, and today no contact on the radio. Hopefully we’ll raise them again tomorrow. It kind of feels like Apollo 13 a bit, and we’re on the far side of the moon…

The eggs we bought on St. Helena have already gone bad…they probably sat on some hot wharf in Cape Town for 24 hours before being loaded onto the ship, then were put into refrigeration on St. Helena. Ironically, chicken feed is so expensive on St. Helena that they don’t do any kind of commercial egg production there. So, it was a bit of a blow to our fresh food supply. Now that we’ve discovered a dozen bad ones, the rest are looking pretty suspicious and unappetizing. S/V “Beguine” told us they’d seen a French catamaran in Durban with a chicken coop bolted to the transom including several crowing roosters. I don’t know what would be worse–cleaning a chicken coop at sea, or dealing with the occasional bad egg…either way I’m not in the mood for lunch right now!

Our winds have picked up and we’ve been moving along under 1st reef sails. Mileage has been in the 130’s range for the past few days, and the seas are still gentle enough that we can sail with all hatches & ports wide open. How kind the South Atlantic has been to us! We are closing in on the equator. Nights are hot and staying around 89F through the night.

It’s almost a dead-downwind run to our waypoint at the equator, so we are sailing a combo of wing-on-wing and starboard tack. We don’t want to stay too far to the west once we hit the ITCZ, otherwise we’ll just have extra miles to cover in the NE trades. Better to lollygag along down here while the getting is good and easy. There’s also a mid-ocean rock pile called “Penedos De Sao Pedro E Sau Paulo” which we want to keep downwind and down-current of.

A bit more polishing here, reading some books and articles there, easy watches, easy miles.

We’ve fallen into a cadence of wonderfully easy 125-135 NM days, lightly sailing along in 12-14 knots of gentle SE breeze. Like the hands on a clock, we’re making steady progress across the South Atlantic ocean. The days flash by in a blur of watches, and each night grows a bit friendlier with the waxing moon. We could certainly get used to this! After the challenges of the SW corner of the Indian Ocean and the South African coast, it’s a joke, really. The deck work is so minimal that all we really have to do each day is pull on the string to adjust the air vane 5 degrees here, 5 degrees there, a few times a day. And scrape the flying fish off the deck under the light of the moon. Otherwise, our time is ours to do what we please.

Our spare time allows us to be OCD with our daily chores, which is actually a good practice at sea if you can afford the time. A friend of ours from the Galapagos Islands taught us the trick of using a wide-mouth plastic water jug as a trash can. Only plastic goes into the trash–all else goes overboard to be composted by the sea. You can stuff an amazing amount of trash into a 1-gallon water jug if you shred it up first. As you add more the bottom layers compress, making it essentially a manual trash compactor. When the jug gets full (we can stuff about 2-3 weeks of trash into a 1-gallon container) you just screw on the jug’s cap and stow it in the quarterberth. No odors, spillage etc and it’s easy to take to shore in the dinghy when you get to land.

My fist-smashing cockroach killing is getting more accurate, and their numbers are dwindling for now. The remaining survivors seem to be getting quicker, though. We could be inadvertently creating a generation of high-speed cockroaches if the ones that are breeding are the ones that escape our attacks. The trick is to leap on them the moment you catch them out of the corner of your eye, so they don’t have time to react.

Our friends on S/V “Beguine” are also on passage to BVI with us. They’ve consistently been about 35 NM behind us, and we are matched for speed just as we were crossing the Coral Sea. We chat daily on the radio at 0800. We had a good laugh when they told us they were polishing their Stainless, just like we’ve been doing! Easy going, for sure. Circumnavigating is much like doing a long-distance through-hike on the PCT or AT. You run into the same folks at random intervals and as time goes on, the coincidences add up. Take, for example, the fact that we met Beguine in Vanuatu. We had both already decided to sail for Thursday Island, Australia, on the same day. Fast-forward a few months, and again we had both come to the independent conclusion to sail from Cape Town, SA, to St. Helena on the same day, and again from St. Helena to BVI on the same day, without having discussed our plans. On the long trail, it’s like that too–a series of hellos and good-byes, and chance reunions when you least expect them. After awhile, you get to know everyone around you on the sea/trail.

As the Southern Cross lowers on the horizon, the Big Dipper is arcing up onto the horizon each night now, upside-down. We should raise the North Star in about 8-10 days. Very exciting to be nearing the NW Hemisphere again! It already feels like we’re coming home. Our long range forecast is looking really good right now. The ITCZ is compressing again and it looks like our strategy to cross at 30W will work well. We’re still a week away from crossing the Equator, but right now it looks like our fair winds will carry us right up to the ITCZ, with fresh NE trades meeting us on the other side. Anything could happen between now and then, but in the meantime, we carry on…