23 34.485n 33 48.462w

Week 2 starts and the Predict wind App is working again?

Sun Jan 08 2023

 

With no help from me whatsoever the Predict wind App seems to have fixed itself, obviously whatever Gremlin affected it has got seasick and is taking a day off.

Last night we passed the 1000 mile mark which is pretty good in a week. But what a bumpy night that was. The wind dropped to single figures from directly behind and Spectra was not a happy girl. All night the boom and spinnaker pole took turns to rattle and bang in the swell. At 0200 Norma woke me and we gybed everything over yet again all to no benefit as the rattle crash bang carried on. This morning I gave the rigging and booms a good check over for damage and found that one of the cleats on the mast had ripped off in the night. About an hour after breakfast the kicking strap snap shackle gave way with a bang. Shaun fixed replaced shackle and we will rivet the cleat back onto the mast probably tomorrow when I am back on shift.

Today I am Mummy and will be very busy preparing the meals and cleaning the communal areas. Of course, it is Sunday and a full roast dinner with pudding is on the menu. We are having Mahi Mahi on fresh bread for lunch which should keep the boys and girls happy until this evening.

I had to put my serious head on for a while last night and gave everyone a lecture about turning the gas off after they have made drinks. Three times so far I have found the gas tap left open. I do sound like a Moaning Minnie but we are living in a tupperware box and any gas that escapes being heavier than air will find its way into the bilges (bottom of the boat) and sit there waiting to go boom, it has happened. Anyway, everyone looked very chaste and have promised to not do it again, so we are all still friends.

I was going to bring the main sail down today and try running under the mizzen staysail instead in an attempt to stop the rattle bang but as always as soon as i voiced the thought the wind settled down to a steady 18 knots and everything settled down.

 

Fair winds and following seas as we eat up the miles towards Antigua

 

We are now doing 6.5 knots in the right direction, and I am a happy camper.

Mileage run for yesterday was 145 and all in the right direction. Got to go now cooking and cleaning needs to be done.

 

22 42.024n 36 38.387w

Big Sunday dinner and a bumpy night

Mon Jan 09 2023

 

I made a pork roast for dinner yesterday with roast potatoes, sweet potatoes, Peas, cabbage and gravy. Yes, it was a proper sit-down Sunday lunch and the boat was rolling around all over the place. It took all five of us to get it on the plates and transferred to the table. Shaun sat at the table holding the knives, forks, placemats, and condiments in place. no mean feat. Jan and Hannah held the five plates on the kitchen top and passed them to me one at a time in order for me to add each ingredient from the stove top in turn. Finally, Norma came down from being on watch and we passed the plates in a chain to the table eventually all being in place and set to start. If I say so myself it was pretty damn good, and then the washing up.

As it was my turn on Mummy watch the theory is that I get a full nights undisturbed sleep after everything has been tidied away and the boat made ship shape again. What actually happened was the following.

2300: Hannah woke me to say that the wind was up, and the boat was regularly hitting over 9 knots. We hove the boat to and dropped the first reef in the main. This reduces the mainsail area by approximately 8 meters squared which reduced our speed by a knot and made things more comfortable.

0230: Norma woke me up to say the spinnaker pole aft guy was loose. This was being used to hold the foresail out into the wind like an old square rigger. We hove the boat to again which reversed the pressure on the foresail and made the aft guy even slacker. This enabled me to tighten in the slack on the guy rope. When we got the boat back on course the guy was tight. Sorted and back to bed.

0330: Jan’s lee cloth on his bunk gave way and left him hanging over a drop to the floor. A lee cloth is a thick canvas sheet screwed to the side of your bed. You tie this to points in the ceiling/walls and it stops you being rolled out of bed when the boat rolls. Not really my problem but Jan got up to get a screwdriver to fix the cloth in place. When he came into the saloon, he leant on a light switch that shone a spotlight straight into my face as I slept on one of the bunks. Oh, how I just laughed and laughed, the little scamp.

0430: I was actually rolled out of my bunk and landed wedged in the gap beside the saloon table. Again, laughing away at the ironies of sailing life I moved myself and my pillow over to the starboard / downhill bunk.

0745: Hannah woke me for my eight o’clock shift. All bright eyed and bushy tailed I started a new day fully refreshed from my Mummy watch and as a first job took the reef back out of the main sail.

Since then, we have reattached the cleat that ripped off the mast yesterday and swapped the pulley blocks around out on the bow sprit at the very front of the boat. Jan is currently doing a permanent fix to the lee cloth in his cabin and then he is going to do a pre-emptive fix to Shaun’s bunk before that gives way as well.

Hannah is cursing the cooker and all things dough based as she has given herself the task of making Pizza dough making Pizza for lunch. By the smell and language coming from the galley I don’t think MK1 pizza went very well.

156 miles run over the last 24 hours and all in the right direction. Not sure if that completely compensates for the lack of sleep but it comes damn close. All is well on the deep blue sea and we are fishing again.

Norma makes bread

 

Jan has his say:

Guten Morgen Sonnenschein -Good morning sunshine

Mon Jan 09 2023

Finally got everybody saying Guten Morgen Sonnenschein.

 

It makes all the difference in the morning after a night’s watch.

Hello beautiful People, this is Jan, currently Captain since Paul wanted to take some time off and enjoy his holiday.

He is doing (too) well, so I decided to give him some tasks on deck like tighten the rail wires, extent the sheet from the foresail, change some swivel rolls… keeps him busy.

Since he is all but jealous about my profound knowledge and wisdom of the ancient sea I gave him a copy of my mentors book “coastal and offshore navigation”. might be too much for him but he’s doing good and is asking the right questions.

(it is possible that a grain or two of sarcasm is showing in this text)

Shaun and me share the forward cabin, no problems whatsoever apart from the occasional feet touch in the night. You get what you wish for by sailing the Atlantic. And you’ll get used to it.

Hannah brought her gitarlele and some speakers so we can have a music session on occasion.

Norma is busy on full mummy mode even when she is not on mummy watch because, well she just knows how its done the best. Thanks to her we are able to have fantastic food every day regardless of existing skills of the aspiring cook apprentice.

Apart from that everybody is keeping themselves busy with reading, talking history of politics (depending on the time of the day of course either boring or interesting), music, sharpening pencil for the captain (me), watching flying fish fly weird formations or simply lose track of time by watching waves horizon the sun…

I made an application to start talking about politics and war only after 12 o’clock. its currently at the assessment Centre and I guess it remains to be seen if it will be approved or not (my hopes are not particularly high).

I feel the mood here is fantastic , the sea is incredible - no words can describe this. So is Spectra. I am honoured to be the (smelly) cabin boy on this beauty. I feel safe and very well.

Ich gruesse meine Familie, Freunde - alle Kockenbergs und Koettings, Bine, Jobani und alle menschen die das hier lesen und die Reise verfolgen :slight_smile:

Ich liege aktuell auf dem Deck in der Sonne buchtaeblich in der Mitte des Atlantiks.

 

thank you Norma and Paul for making this dream come true,

love,

Jan

 

21 37.903n 39 32.002w

A very bumpy night and our first squall of the trip

Tue Jan 10 2023

 

As we fast approach halfway, I suppose we were long overdue for a squall or two. Last night while I was on the midnight to 0200 watch, we got one. With a full moon it was almost as bright as day, and I could clearly see the dark cloud building behind us. I changed course 10 degrees and honestly thought that I had managed to move out of its path but, oh no. The wind quickly went up to 30 + knots and the sea state became very confused. I called below to get Jan up as he was next on watch and between us, we wrestled the foresail down in the heavy rain and got the boat speed from 10 to below 9 knots again.

It was an exciting 15 minutes which took over an hour to calm down from sufficiently for me to go to bed. Jan and myself gybed the boat over as the wind had shifted by 40 degrees or so but once it settled it slowly moved back to due East and we had to gybe everything back again during the hour.

The rest of the night went peacefully but the sea state has remained lumpy and the wind a steady force 6. This is great for eating up the miles but is certainly not conducive to a good night’s sleep.

This morning I awoke to the smell of fresh coffee and a pot of porridge steaming on the stove, good old Shaun is Mummy today and had already been doing wonders in the galley. It is now early afternoon and we have had another good noon to noon run of 152 miles. We are actually already over halfway by mileage, but I have set the 40-degree West longitude line as our halfway point and that is still 27 miles away so close but no banana yet.

Hanna noticed on her deck check this morning that the sacrificial strip on the foresail has lost some stitching and a 1-meter section is coming loose on the bottom edge. This isn’t a major issue at the moment as it isn’t a structural part of the sail and I have decided to let it lie for a while. If it gets no worse, then we can fix it with the sewing machine in Jolly Harbour. If it does get worse, then the whole sail will have to come down and we will do a repair at sea. Whichever way it pans out the sail will get fixed.

That’s it for now apart from the exciting news that I won the Snickers bar for the predicted 24 hour run yesterday and I’m saving it for the early hours of the morning when I will be on watch again for sure.

Fishing rods are out again, Spectra is thoroughly enjoying herself bouncing along towards the sun and half of the crew are fast asleep below, lucky buggers…

 

Shaun and the children try on their new Spectra T-Shirts after we cross the halfway point

 

Another bumpy night for Norma at least

Wed Jan 11 2023

 

We started the night with a single reef in the mainsail and half of the foresail tucked away. During Norma’s watch two squalls hit us in quick succession resulting in another reef being put in the main sail. That is how we are still sailing. 1 Reef in the foresail, full stay sail, 2 reefs in the main and full mizzen. The wind is a steady Force 6 from the Southeast and we are barrelling along towards Antigua. I have just completed our noon fix and we notched up our longest days run so far at 159 miles meaning Shaun has one the Snickers bar challenge again, boo hiss. During one of our sail changes yesterday we managed to forget about the main preventer. This is a rope that runs from the end of the main sail boom right to the front of the boat and then all the way back to the cockpit. By tightening down on it you stop, or at least seriously slow down, the boom if the wind gets on the wrong side of the sail. This is a distinct possibility in these big wave rolling conditions and if it happened without a preventer the boom would fly across the boat with an almighty crash, no doubt causing serious damage to anyone, or anything, it met on the way. Anyway, we forgot to untie the preventer before winching the mainsail in. As the rope got tighter something had to give and with a bang the splice on the end of the line tore itself apart. The bang was loud enough to bring Norma, Shaun and Jan scurrying up the companionway to see what on earth was going on. Long story short we made a temporary repair which did us for the night, and survived the squalls, before I made a more permanent repair this morning.

 

Hannah makes Pizza while Shaun acts as chief taster.

And the end result ready for eating

 

I have asked the boys and girls to rivet a couple of loops onto the side of the boom today so that we can rig up a bungee to hold the reefing line jammers open as they are a pain when you are trying to shake a reef out.

Clocks go back today, and Hannah has lucked out by being on the noon watch which gets extended by one hour on clock change days.

Apart from that, no damage, we are a bit tired, but we are over halfway and plodding along.

 

Third time lucky

Fri Jan 13 2023

 

This is the third time that I am writing this progress update because the Predict Wind APP keeps on losing it when I upload. Every time I rewrite it It gets shorted and my will to do it is reduced exponentially and so this will be short pithy as they used to say in the military.

Hannah has written a boat song.

Norma is learning new chords on her Ukulele in order to play said boat song

Hannah will accompany on her Guitarelle Guitar and Ukulele hybrid.

Shaun caught a small Mahi Mahi

I caught a big Mahi Mahi (It’s not a competition but if it was, I would have won).

 

She is a big one and provided 4 meals for 4 people with portion sizes you could but dream of in a restaurant

 

We are under 850 miles to go.

Days runs have been 159 and 158 respectively

Hannah is making shortbread

The estimated time of arrival lottery has started.

I am on Mummy watch and should be washing up rather than typing this.

 

50 degrees West

Sat Jan 14 2023

 

Today we will reach another milestone when we cross the 50-degree West longitude line. The boat clocks will go back another hour and we will be that bit closer to Caribbean time. Norma has drawn the short straw this time as her shift is the 10 to 12 meaning that she will get another hour tacked on to accommodate for the time shift.

We have been bowling along in quite lumpy seas for the last 14 hours and it has taken its toll on Spectra’s fittings. The mainsail topping lift managed to detach itself from the end of the boom and wrap itself several times around anything it could find up the mast. It took Jan and myself nearly an hour to get it untangled and attached to the end of the boom again. Overnight another cleat on the main mast gave way and pinged onto the deck. I have a rope looped around the base of the mast which connects to a block and tackle which in turn is used to pull the mainsail boom down when we are running down wind. This rope loop sits under a couple of cleats which stop it from riding up the mast as the boom pumps up and down in a seaway. Unfortunately, the motion has been pretty violent resulting in the rivets holding the cleat in place giving way. On inspection the rivets are showing signs of corrosion and are pretty small in diameter. I will reattach the cleat today with new larger rivets just like the last one that broke free which should fix the problem.

Fishing has been suspended again as the huge Mahi Mahi that I caught yesterday has filled the freezer again. It’s Sunday lunch tomorrow which should get a portion of that eaten at least. While on the fishy subject I found a couple of dead flying fish on deck this morning which Jan is going to cook for late breakfast. Shaun, Jan, and Hannah are all up for eating them but as I have completed that particular ritual before I will give it a miss. If memory serves me correctly, they are very bony and taste like sardines on steroids, very oily and very strong.

 

Big old eyes staring at you

 

Flying fish for breakfast----maybe

 

Highlight of the morning apart from Fish and broken bits on the boat was a ship. The first for many days. It was a large cargo ship called Balsa heading for Curacao, no doubt to pick up a cargo of wood with a name like that. Anyway, it came up behind and passed us 4 miles to port shortly after the sun had come up.

161 miles run yesterday, and we are looking at another big mileage day again when I do the calculations at mid-day. And that’s it for this one, 690 miles to go and we

are steaming along.