Pacific NW

Expeditions

Privateer glides across the blue plains, like a paper plane riding on a gentle breeze. Today the winds and seas mellowed out, as forecast, and we shook out the reefs. Dry decks, hatches open, easy motion, happy sailors!! It almost feels like cheating after all of the challenging sailing across the Indian Ocean and South African coast. We’ve got a perfect 13 knot breeze and more of the same in the long-range forecast. Yes!!!!

This morning we found several more squid with their strange blue eyes on deck, and a few robust flying fish too. The waters have gone back to a deep crystal blue, as we are now sailing over depths of 15,000 feet plus again. We haven’t seen any on the horizon since leaving Cape Town, but we’re always checking because we’re astride the Cape Town to New York route.

Neptune is the perfect watch mate, always getting out of bed before his watch. I give him parameters to stay within while I sleep, so I know he will wake me if anything goes awry while I am off-watch. We’re both getting a lot of sleep. Double-handed sailing is largely a solo experience, because most often the off-watch goes to sleep.

It’s a great feeling to have all the time in the world with these easy watches. I’ve been catching up on small boat maintenance projects and reading a book by a fellow sailor we just met, about sailing across the Atlantic Ocean with his wife and 4 of his kids. In the book, he talks about the need to do things slowly. And he also describes that sometimes there’s a need to do things quickly, but carefully. I’ve been taking that advice to heart these past few days and it’s worked well. For example yesterday we fixed the Monitor rudder quickly, but carefully. And with these easy watches, I can go all around the boat with a fine-tooth comb, really taking my time, enjoying even the most mundane tasks.

The days are quickly growing hotter and the nights pleasantly warm as we approach the tropics. Today we stowed the sleeping bags and traded them for thin cotton sheets. Privateer is all ship-shape and effortlessly cruising along at 5-6 knots, day and night, day and night…

The past 24 hours have been “sleigh ride sailing”, and our noon-to-noon mileage came out to 176 miles made good! Privateer is like a horse shooting out of the barn. Life has been a bit rolly for the past few days now, but we were happy to see the 1/4 way to St. Helena mile slip by & it hardly even seems like the voyage has begun.

Early this morning before daylight, Nep woke me up urgently. The boat was rounding into the wind. I shot out of bed from a deep slumber and instinctively jumped out into the cockpit and checked the Monitor. Once again, the rudder post tube had sheared off. Unlike the clean break like in the Indian Ocean, this time to rudder was bent off at 90 degrees. Damn! Thank god I got that extra spare for the spare in San Francisco before we left. I can clearly remember the moment.

This time, the repair went much smoother than the Indian Ocean heaving-to “astronaut” experience. I knew exactly what needed to happen now. We quickly rigged up the new electric tiller pilot to take over while we made the repair. Nep still had to hold me by the ankles as I hung upside-down over the rail to slip a few cotter-ring pins out. I was careful to tie multiple safety lines to each precious part of the Monitor that I disassembled. We lit up the cockpit with the LED deck lights, and at some point a squid must’ve been attracted to the light, because later on in the day we found a squid in the cockpit. I didn’t know they could leap out of the water! It’s human-like eyeballs dangled out of the sockets and it lay in a pool of black ink.

I worked quickly and carefully down below at the tool bench, and soon had the new tube installed. I also got a good look at the cracked hinge lever, which we need to repair in St. Helena ASAP. My cruising notes say there’s a good stainless steel welder on St. Helena, so hopefully we can find them when we get there. We’ve got 6,500 more miles of sailing in front of us and no chance of flying in any spares, so any fixes will be Alaskan “Wrangellized” style, as we like to say in Wrangell Alaska. We will also try and make new shorter rudder tubes by sawing off the broken ends and drilling new holes. The rudder is back on again and we are back in business.

Fortunately, it looks like the weather is taking a turn for the ideal! Winds are forecast to drop to around 10-13 knots with seas diminishing to 1.5 meters throughout next week. We’re looking forward to some quiet sailing, with hopefully enough wind to keep the sails from flogging.

Another setback with boat equipment today–our water-maker is producing un-potable water again, even after I had cleaned it out in Cape Town. I suspect we may have a problem with the membrane itself, which basically means we can’t rely on the water-maker on this passage across the Atlantic. Fortunately, we have loads of fresh bottled water on board already. And Privateer also has massive water tanks–about 250 gallons in 3 separate tanks, which are totally full. We will still use the water-maker to top up one or two of our tanks for doing dishes and showers, but all of our drinking water will have to come out of bottles filled in St. Helena from here on out.

Talking with the other circumnavigators in Africa, it seems as if we’re all at a point in the voyage where we’re all dealing with multiple breakages and gear failure. After using everything on the boat to the max for so long, it’s only a matter of time before things start to give out. We all take what spares we think we’ll need, and then deal with the problems as they come. Improvisation is key to success.

In other news, we hear that the orange-faced clown was sworn in as President of the USA today. Quite the contrast to Billy Bush, who lost his job after the jocular video surfaced. I smell a fraud…

I’m on graveyard watch tonight. The moon isn’t up yet and the winds are brisk. Bursting galaxies of bioluminescence create an eerie green glow around the boat as we charge through the waves. Privateer herself is creating her own night lights as she tears a wide wake through the ocean swell.

250 NM off to starboard lays the shore of the Namibian desert. Cape Town is already several hundred miles astern, and the cold Benguela current is giving us an extra boost. We’re making good speeds in the SE winds, clocking a solid 8.3 knots with regular accelerations to 9 and 10 knots. The miles are slipping by. It looks like the forecast will settle down in a few days, with the winds moderating to 10 knots. For now it’s a bit rolly, but an OK price to pay for the added speed. I noticed a problematic hairline crack in the stainless steel hinge on the Monitor rudder shaft. We’ll get that looked at by a welder ASAP in St. Helena. In the meantime I am going through in my head what I’d do if the piece failed out here. Sailing is all about perceiving the dangers around you and trying to eliminate a problem before it arises.

Speaking of problems, we have a major cockroach and ant infestation on board Privateer! Such is the problem with tying alongside the docks in Africa–the marinas are teeming with roaches. Every now & then as I type, a roach crawls onto & across my computer screen. I think they like the heat inside the laptop. They’re very smart & quick–if you take the time to find something to smash them with, they will certainly get away. They have a disturbing ability to slip off countertops and literally disappear before your eyes. The only way to get them is to pound them with your bare fist, a method Kelsey pioneered and perfected. It all started when we spotted one roach a few weeks ago, and then found a hatched egg nest inside a clove of garlic. Now they have gone through a few generations=85 I’ve laid out dozens of “hotels” in all the lockers & bilges. Hopefully between that and the old fist-smash, we can get them under control without resorting to fumigation. I’d like to bring the boat to a freezing climate in North America for the winter, and freeze them off the boat. The ants were making highways across the bulkheads. Tiny little things-they didn’t have the gross-out factor like the roaches. Neptune and I laid out poison syrup traps for them and within a few hours, I was surprised to see literally thousands of ants swarming the traps. Within 24 hours almost all the ants have vanished, and my tool bench is littered with dead ants like a civil war battlefield.

We’ve just crossed latitude 30S and are now climbing back into the 20s and toward the tropics again. The nights are growing warmer and more pleasant as we sail north. In a few days we will also cross the Prime Meridian, longitude 0, and pass back into the Western hemisphere, =BD way around the world from Fiji! And shortly after St. Helena we’ll cross the Equator into the Northern hemisphere. There will be many milestones on this trans-Atlantic passage.

Nep and I are settling into our offshore routine, and the days and nights are once again blending together into the series of watches and naps. It’s pretty ideal, but I miss Kelsey & especially Taz, and tend to daydream about what they’re doing back in Minnesota right now.

It’s been awhile since our last post, so here’s a quick run-down to get you back up to speed:

My Dad & I are sailing the boat across the Atlantic now, a 7,000 NM voyage to the US Eastern Seaboard. We are currently on passage to St. Helena, 1,700 NM distant from Cape Town, South Africa. Kelsey and Taz have flown ahead to the USA, as we didn’t want to risk having baby #2 in the middle of the ocean! They are back with the Grammys in Minnesota & Taz is reportedly enjoying the snow and being the center of attention.

After Kelsey, Taz, and I made landfall in Richards Bay, South Africa, we picked our way down the treacherous coast, weathering storms in each of the ports we came across–Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, Mossel Bay, and finally on to Cape Town. Until we post our journals of this leg, be sure to check out our pictures from the safari we took in Hluhlue/Imfolozi game park! Just like being in Jurassic Park… we were blown away by the magnitude of wildlife.

It’s been a very busy last two months sailing down the infamous Agulhas current to Cape Town–it took us almost 4 weeks to accomplish the 850 or so NM in between weather windows, and we spent Christmas at sea, rounding the Cape of Good Hope. In Cape Town we spent several weeks getting Privateer in order for her next major ocean passage across the Atlantic.

Privateer has come so far already this year. Of special note is that during 2016, Privateer has had her bow in 3 oceans: The Pacific (NZ-Vanuatu-Australia), all the way across the South Indian Ocean, and finally into the Atlantic at Cape Agulhas, just before reaching Cape Town. 3 oceans this year, and also across the breadth of the Coral Sea, the Arafura Sea, and the Timor Sea. And all with baby Taz (now over 2 years old!) and baby #2 has crossed the Indian Ocean & into the Atlantic in the womb, feeling every ocean wave. It has been a crowning achievement what we did this year. I am very sad to see Kelsey & Taz go off the boat for the Atlantic crossing–it’s as if one world voyage has come to an end, and another one beginning. If all goes well we should re-unite in about 2.5 months in North America.

My Dad (whom I will refer to as “Neptune” hereafter) & I departed Cape Town at 1100 hrs on Jan 17 & have been at sea for a few days now, settling into the new rhythms of the Atlantic. The first 24 hours were pretty ideal in light winds & sunny skies. Good old Privateer is all organized and shipshape. The passage from here to St. Helena and onward to the Caribbean is considered one of the most pleasant downwind sails in the world, but the first few days out of Cape Town can be bouncy.

Sure enough, the winds piped up to SE 25, but the seas were much kinder than the cross-swells of the Indian Ocean. We kept a double reef in the Main and are using our same “Indian Ocean sail plan” with the pole out to port, but we’re taking the swells at a much better angle now that we’re sailing off to the NW, & back into the tropics. Yesterday we had covered 124 NM in light winds and our noon-to-noon today shows we’ve covered 164 NM now that we’ve got a decent breeze. Things have tapered off a bit now, and we’re hoping for generally pleasant conditions from here on out, maybe with a bit more high winds tonight. Yesterday was just too bumpy to write, and it takes a few days to readjust to the ocean after sitting in a marina for a few weeks.

Nep and I are on a regular watch schedule now that Taz is no longer the determining factor. It’s nice for me to know exactly when my watch will end! We break the night watch into three 4-hour blocks, and the day into two sets of 6 hours. This gives us 6-hour stretches of sleep during the day, and one night will be sunset/sunrise watches and the next night the “graveyard” watch, from midnight to 0400. It should take us a few weeks to reach our first destination, St. Helena, a tiny dot in the middle of the South Atlantic…