Loading ...
« Preparing for the first big leg… | Main | British Virgin Islands »
The (great) Atlantic crossing
By Alex | January 13, 2009
Clearly we’ve been rather lax in keeping you lovely audience up to date in our goings on. This we have lamented on numerous occasions over the last few weeks and so now you’ll suffer a veritable inundation of blog posts over the next few days, bringing you up to speed with what we’ve been up to…
So we left you as we were about to set off across the Atlantic, what seems like many moons ago. We were seven. Duncan, Ewan and me of course, joined after much interviewing of potential crew in Las Palmas by Gilad, Maya and Mairi and by Conor who’d arranged to sail with us a few months before. The winds were light and the sailing plane for the first while, the trades were not where they normally are and so the 15-20 knots behind us that we were expecting was much hoped for as we beat our way across the great ocean. I say plane sailing but we did manage to wrap the spinnaker around the forestay in what was ‘the worst wrap’ that Duncan had ever seen only about two hours after leaving Las Palmas. Much to Maya’s relief, Ewan (rather than Gilad) went up the forestay to unwrap the spinnaker and though I’m sure it was no fun at all, it was quite comical seeing Ewan getting blown round and round the forestay.
Our days revolved around eating so as I recall (maybe that was just me), Gilad, who looks like Will Ferrell, taught us how to make the ultimate humous and his and Maya’s Israeli influence had us eating massive salads and stacks of raw veg at every opportunity. We quickly instigated a daily routine of watching a film every evening with dinner which was a great way to chill out after a whole day spent… chilling out. It was best for those on the 19:00 – 22:00 watch who could get through most of the shift sat at the top of the companion way watching the film with the occasional glance seawards for a quick squall/shipping check.
Duncan took to learning how to use his sextant whilst I spend many a night watch gazing at the heavens learning the names of constellations and their stars. Conor gave guitar lessons and sang and Mairi clearly took a decision to learn everything – by the end of the trip we’d had a good go at filling an exercise book with notes on topics from sail theory to recipes to wave/particle duality. Ewan had another trip up the mast, or maybe even two to sort out various things and Mairi kicked off the peg game, which went some way to distract from the sameness of the open seas. Clothes pegs would be sneakily clipped to clothing when you were least expecting it, even through hatches and whilst you were asleep – it was fun, I promise.
For the last five years Duncan has been on a one-man mission to get me to shave my head and so one day, more for something to do rather than an eventual succumbing, I let him cut off all my hair and finished it off with a wet shave. This caused for a little entertainment and minor distraction from the monotony. We had a couple of days of patching up the mainsail after a little squall induced damage and failed to catch a single fish on the entire trip (save the odd flying fish that did just that into the cockpit).
Interest was sparked when we saw another yacht one day, as she slowly sailed across us we bore away a little to catch her and after a while we kicked off radio banter culminating in us sailing alongside Cool Runnings Two and deftly catching a six pack of beer that was lobbed to us by her kindly skipper. This was drunk on my birthday one chilled out sunny afternoon after a breakfast of rum and chocolate toroid cake that Duncan whipped up in our doughnut-shaped stove top oven.
After a time, don’t ask me how much time, the wind did pick up. This was more like the sailing we were after. With 15-25 knots behind us and a decent sized swell we had periods averaging over 9 knots and making over 13 surfing down waves. Ewan did double and maybe even triple watches throughout the day loving the sailing with the massive asymmetric and we all took turns to dry out the bilges as with the extra wind came the extra stress on the rudder and litres and litres of water per hour that would ingress through the rudder bearing. Yes, I know, that was why we took the boat out of the water in Las Palmas – to fix the rudder; clearly it didn’t work and we now suffered the daily mop out. Aside from the discomfort caused by our leak issue, the worst casualty by far was Conor’s rucksack of electrical goods that got swamped after someone who never identified themselves moved his bag from its place of safety.
A shout of whales whales whales brought everyone one deck one morning, I’ve no idea what they were but they were big. They swam with us for a while until presumably they got bored and went off to do other whaley things – eating dolphins or whatever. Showers on deck were had, the best being those taken during a sudden downpour when semi-naked figures could be seen prancing about on deck hoping that the rain would last long enough to wash off all the lather.
And that was pretty much it, 18 days of sailing, sleeping, eating, star-gazing and more sleeping later, the great Atlantic Ocean was crossed and relaxing in the Caribbean was about to commence.
See some photos of our crossing here
Topics: The Voyage - Leg 1 |