Going West - Week 1
|
Going West Week 1 “23:54.70N 30:57.17W” 3,372 Miles since leaving Sandwich 7 January 2023 Happy new year and we are ready to go Sun Jan 01 2023 Unfortunately, Rob hurt his ankle yesterday and has decided to jump ship. On the bright side though, this means that Jan from the Gibraltar leg can now fill position number 5 and we are all crewed up as per the original plan. The fuel berth opens at 10:00 apparently and I am currently watching a yacht that is sitting over there waiting for the marina team to arrive. As soon as he moves, we will be off.
Another hitch hiker Happy new year everyone. 26 51.542N 19 06.891W On our way again and we catch a fish Mon Jan 02 2023 This is the second time today that I am writing this update. Not sure what happened to the first one, but it has disappeared into the interverse somewhere. And so here we go again.
Early morning in San Miguel getting ready to go We left at 1130 after fuelling the boat up. 250 litres of diesel topped the tanks up to the brim and a further 100 litres of petrol in containers on deck for the generator and now my bank manager is trying to call me to find out what the hell is going on. The weather report showed little or no wind near the Canaries for the next 48 hours which forced me to plan in a long motor sail southwards to start with in order to get into the trade wind zone. As it happened, we motor sailed for 19 hours in total before the wind filled in and we have been sailing ever since. 139 miles covered in the first noon to noon run and we are currently plodding along at 5.5 knots with the wind behind us. The gallant crew are all fitting in better than expected and we are fast becoming a tight team on this little island of ours. Shaun and myself shadowed Hannah on her first night shift last night, he took the first hour and I took the second, all went well and as Hannah has previous night sailing watch experience she should be good to go it alone tonight, albeit with me sleeping in the saloon within easy shouting distance. There has been very little shipping so far with the only boat of any real interest being a Pleasure Boat of 60 meters that steamed past doing 12 knots in the night. Its name was ‘Comfortably Numb’ which I am told links it to a guitarist in Pink Floyd called David Gillmore. Not sure if that even qualifies for us being nearly famous but there you have it.
Sailing by night Today we caught another fish!!! A Spanish Mackerel jumped onto my new lure and we have just eaten him, Hmmmm. Actually, I think he was either very aggressive or very suicidal as after reeling him in I discovered that the protective sleeve was still on the hook, oops. Of course while removing the safety sleeve I managed to stab the hook under my nail, cruel irony there I thing.
Sea to plate in no time nothing That’s it for now, we made water this morning, which at my age I’m actually quite proud of. Anyway, enough of that I’m rambling so signing off for the day. 26 20.702N 20 52.777W Day 3 Going West Tue Jan 03 2023 The wind has stayed with us and has been moving slowly into the North, which is perfect for our purposes at the beginning anyway. As yesterday progressed our course moved more and more south until we were heading at almost 90 degrees to the direct track. I know we need to keep some south in the heading but that was getting us nowhere westward fast and I decided to gybe everything over onto the starboard tack. That left the staysail. mainsail and mizzen sail all out to port and the big yankee foresail poled out into the wind on starboard. Spectra, gracious old girl that she is, lifted her petticoats and fairly romped along. We were soon averaging over 6 knots and through the night regularly over 7 knots and even 8 knots plus on occasion. The wind peaked in the early hours at 23 knots and the boat speed was regularly touching 9 for an hour before settling back down to a dignified 6 to 7 which is where we find ourselves this morning.
Fair winds and sunny days The generator has just been put on (0930) and after an hour I will start heating water for shower day. Jan made meatballs for dinner last night which I must say were very good, tonight it is my turn to cook and its beef curry, so no pressure there then. I will leave this for now and update at mid-day when I have the last 24 hours day run measured. Update mileage run 146 Nautical Miles 25 59.767N 23 01.679W Day 4 going West Wed Jan 04 2023 The highlight of yesterday was catching two big Dorado’s at the same time. First my line started whizzing out and then a few seconds later Shaun’s followed suit. We did think for a while that the fish had been double hooked but no, soon we could see two big fish jumping clear of the water behind us. Typically, Spectra was bowling along at over 7 knots at the time and with everything locked down and poled out it took a while to get the foresail wound in and our speed reduced.
Two fish on at the same time Down light of the day was that with my fish only about 25 meters from the back of the boat after a very hard fight it did a giant leap in the air shook like mad and escaped the hook. Shaun’s was still over 60 meters behind us, and he kept on doggedly reeling it in. We had the gaff ready, the bucket of water on deck, and were just waiting for Shaun to get the fish alongside. Literally as it came level with the back of the boat the clip holding the lure snapped and number two fish was gone. If you will excuse the pun, instead of the fish being gutted we were. Apart from that it was a peaceful 24 hours. I was on Mummy watch and made huge portions of beef curry for everyone as an evening meal and Roti wrapped burgers for lunch. Which if I say so myself weren’t bad at all. Mummy watch comes around every 5th day and although you are very busy all day doing all of the domestic chores and being Mummy to the kids it does mean that as you are out of the normal shift pattern you do get a full night’s sleep. And last night I was actually left alone to sleep all night, happy days, or happy nights, anyway you know what I mean. Hannah woke me at 07:15 to say that the wind had shifted from Northeast to East and we were now pointing at New York. Lovely place but not on the agenda this year. I came on deck and between the two of us we began the process of Gybing everything over.
Halfway through the process Shaun appeared on deck and helped us sort everything out. End result, we are now heading toward Trinidad at 6 Knots which is all good and we finished all of the messing about with the sails just in time for my watch to start at 8. Hannah shot down below like a rabbit down a hole to get some sleep, Shaun stayed up and we chatted the morning away. I now know far more about vitamin C than I ever thought I would and to be honest it was quite eye opening. Long story short if you’re going to take a vitamin, then C is the one to go for. Great stuff especially for blood pressure. It is now lunchtime, and I am about to plot the last 24 hour run and announce the chocolate bar winner for the predicted distance. Plotting over and I am the winner, ha, harrr! As I sit here eating my Snickers bar, I have to reflect that the winning doesn’t count, it’s the beating the others that really pushes my buttons. Anyway, narcissistic tendencies aside the distance travelled in the last 24 hours was 153 Nautical Miles which is not too shabby at all. Until tomorrow, French word for goodbye. Day 5 going West Hannah has her say Thu Jan 05 2023 HI its Hannah here, its day five here on the boat (I think, even in normal live I lose track so I wouldn’t put money on it) the crew is all getting into the swing of things. We have seen some sea life, dolphins and we get really excited if we see a bird. Other than that its mostly water around and lots of it. Night watch is a combination of sleepy and really cool, alone on deck under the stars and the moon makes you feel like a proper pirate. Shout out to the TCH crew who are probably looking at the tracker as much as my mom and dad. Groetjes en dikke kussen Hannah Daily run for day 5 144 Nautical Miles Day 5A 600 miles down 2000 to go Thu Jan 05 2023 Quick update as the plotter has finally dropped the mileage to go below 2000, big smiles all round. We decided that the boat was looking a bit shabby this afternoon and, after gybing everything over again, we fired up the saltwater deck wash pump and gave everything a good scrub. It was quite amazing how much brown volcanic sand from Tenerife washed out of the ropes. Not to miss an opportunity four of the five of us took advantage of the pump and had saltwater showers on deck. This was followed by a fresh water rinse off from the deck shower and we are all smelling nice again. Norma declined the cold-water showers both salt and fresh, opting instead for the comfort and warmth of the aft heads hot water shower, privacy and fluffy towels, I wonder why?
Shower Al Fresco That’s it we are clean, the boat is clean, we have full bellies, warm sun, a steady breeze, and we are currently aimed right at Antigua doing a steady 6.5 knots. Life is sweet… Day 6 Another day another fish and it is flying Fri Jan 06 2023 Last night due to those pesky wind shifts we ended up pointing just north of New York again and had to put another gybe in. This morning we are heading for Surinam and its looking like we will have to gybe yet again. I have decided to hang on until after lunch as we are still above 24 degrees North and need to get down to 17ish. The south travel should also get us into steadier winds, well that's the top theory of the morning anyway. Two highlights this morning and they are both fish related. Firstly, Shaun put his lure out and before you could count to ten, we had an Atlantic Mackerel on the line. This time I hove the boat too (stopped it in the water using the sails) and the fish was dually landed. It is now filleted, thinly sliced and in a bag being Cevichied if that is a word. The second fish related incident was the sighting of our first flying fish, now we are really crossing oceans. The flying fish are now a regular occurrence and we have swapped the fishing lures for blue and white ones to match the colour of the flying fish which are after all the bait fish for the big chaps out here. I'm not sure if this will go out as the predict wind tracker app is playing up and requesting a software update, not likely in the middle of the Atlantic. But we will see. If it goes you will be reading this today if not it will be in the main blog in a couple of weeks’ time. 144 Nautical miles on the day. Day 7 The first week at sea is over Fri Jan 07 2023 Well reflections on the first week. Honestly apart from the wind being good but not perfect the first week could not have been better. All of us are getting along, I think maybe because we are not long-term friends we are talking more and finding many diverse and interesting subjects of conversation. Politics, History, rock climbing, yoga, sailing, travel, strange German words and many other subjects have been covered. Hannah and Jan are keeping us young and their perspective on the various subjects discussed are an interesting additional input into the conversations. Above all everyone is making the effort to get along and to do their fair share of the little tasks that we need to do to keep Spectra bobbing along. Yesterday we caught another large Mahi Mahi and by mutual agreement have stopped fishing for a while, or at least until we have eaten our way through the mound of frozen fish in the freezer. After heading a decent way south for most of the day we gybed around again and have been going steadily westward for the last 15 hours. Yesterday we crossed the Tropic of Cancer and are now sailing in the tropics again for the first time since 2015. Flying fish are now a pretty regular sight but as of yet none have leaped on deck. I am sure that as soon as some do, we will have the traditional fried flying fish for breakfast. Not sure that I am looking forward to it, as I have tried before, and they are in my opinion like Sardines on steroids and very bony. But the others are looking forward to it so it must be done. Today we have travelled far enough west to make the first-time change. Poor old Shaun will have to do an extra hour on watch at lunchtime as the clocks will go back by 1 hour. 1 week into the Atlantic crossing, 972 miles completed, and all is well onboard Spectra
|
