I have just returned home from a wonderful holiday in Bonaire (SW Caribbean) together with Clare (Ellen's middle sister), her husband Mike, and their two little boys Henry(10) and James (7), where we met up with Ellen and Nick.
After a 10 hour flight (I now know the meaning of long haul!) we arrived safely, and on leaving the aeroplane walked into a wall of heat which turned out to be a constant on the island but fortunately was always accompanied by soft breezes and the occasional soft rain shower. We very soon became accustomed to the weather and there was also plenty of shade from towering palm trees. It is important to note that when we left England, it had been snowing and our aeroplane had to be de-iced at Humberside Airport.
Our apartment was ideal,with cool tiled floors, air conditioning, spacious bedrooms and bathrooms. The whole being kept beautifully clean by "Housekeeping" on a daily basis. We also had wonderful sea and sky views. Nearby we had access to two or three pools, all of which sported its own bar and restaurant.
The architecture seemed to me to be a mixture of Dutch colonial with highly coloured gables, and gaily coloured bungalows inevitably surrounded by verandas where one suspects most of family life was conducted. The islanders were unfailingly kind and helpful, waving and calling out cheery greetings as we passed by.
Our days quickly took on a routine, with Ellen meeting us for a swim and lunch whilst Nick carried on with "work in progress" on Kika. He then met us usually arriving by dinghy and ferried us in two trips either to snorkel on the edge of a quiet little beach, or to go to a dive site. Karel's bar was a hot spot on the island and because it was within waving/shouting distance of Kika, Nick was able to watch out for us. Sadly, I never got the hang of clambering out of the dinghy, so I had to be hauled up like a beached whale. Must do better next time! We had two terrific days sailing, on one occasion going out to a really good dive site and the next visiting Klein Bonaire which is a tiny barren island sheltering in the lee of the larger Bonaire. Nick took on the aura of a deity with Henry and James because he really encouraged them to "have a go", steering, navigating, trimming sails and they were in heaven. Ellie provided tasty lunches but made a mental note not to do a hot meal in the middle of the day in temperatures of 100 plus! Sadly I don't swim (that's my next challenge) but the family saw a wonderful assortment of tropical fish including an octopus, and one morning Ellie and Nick went for a quick dive and came across a turtle.
The islanders are very strict about the conservation of their natural resources, namely the coastline, the coral reefs and the turtles to name but a few, and it is paying off because the island is almost totally unspoiled and the fish do not seem to be afraid of divers.
The whole adventure was a huge success, with Ellen and Nick pulling out all the stops as they always do for visitors, making our holiday even more fun. When we left from Flamingo International at 3.30 am leaving Ellie and Nick behind, we came down to earth with a bang but it was well worthwhile.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Los Roques to Bonaire
Enthused by our first taste of reef navigation we wasted no time exploring other anchorages in Los Roques.Perhaps our first experience made us over confident as on the approach to our second anchorage we briefly ran aground on a sandy bottom. With no harm done, we bid a hasty retreat and found an easier anchorage just before sunset. Close to the shore the water appeared to be boiling, instead we found a large school of reasonably sized tasty looking fish on a feeding frenzy. Unfortunately we'd left our fishing gear on Kika, so the evening meal was, as ever, from our recently replenished can supply.
It would easily be possible to spend a month in Los Roques moving to a new anchorage every day, but our brief stay gave us an enticing sample of the kind of navigation and remoteness we're hoping to experience in the Pacific and en route to Panama.
After Los Roques we arrived at the stunning Aves de Barlavento - the island of the birds. An uninhabited, coral atoll with clear water, a huge quantity of bird-life living in the dense mangrove, and stunning sea-life. We'd arrived in paradise which we shared with half a dozen other yachts spread between five anchorages. Above water we inhabited an aviary with pelicans, red-footed and other varieties of boobies filling the air.
Underwater we entered a world full of a huge variety and quantity of the most stunning and vividly coloured fish and coral we'd seen. On our first snorkelling expedition we found ourselves face to face with a large stingray in a narrow coral passage. It remained on the bottom eyeing us suspiciously before stetting off in our direction through the break in the coral. We hastily retreated, marvelling at its effortless motion. Other delights included the poe-faced trunk fish and the huge groupers. After two days in paradise, we departed in the evening for Bonaire. The channel we'd easily picked between the reefs on our entry proved difficult to navigate with the sun in our eyes as we left just before sunset. We were fortunate not to run aground again with the depth under Kika suddenly vanishing to less than 2m as we crossed a shoal patch we'd failed to spot. It was clearly visible when we turned round, but nearly impossible to see with the sun in our eyes. Around the Venezuelan islands we've relied on eye-ball navigation; the positions of the GPS and charts appear to differ, sometimes by as much as 1/4 of mile. Thus with some relief we identified the unlit island to the west of us before sunset, and confirmed our course to Bonaire.
An overnight sail brought us to Bonaire for the long planned rendezvous with Ellen's family. All went according to plan apart from some confusion over flight times meant we missed them at the airport, but found them in their apartment with James and Henry already excited about their first sighting of an iguana.
Spent a great 10 days in their company with snorkelling, a couple of sailing trips to some dive sights, general relaxing and Ellen's first bath since leaving the UK. I've been working on Kika between visits to the family. Bonaire has proved a great place to spend some time with a laid back hassle free atmosphere combined with just enough infrastructure to meet our needs ie a chandlery, bars, supermarkets and for the first time since Lanzarote we're connected to the Internet in the boat via Wifi - no need for perilous dinghy rides with laptop to hang around outside Wifi enabled offices here! The sea-life has been spectacular. Between us we've seen a turtle, an octopus, moray eels, stunning parrot fish, much coral and many other vividly colour reef fish.
The conservation policy of the Bonaire has meant our fishing tackle has been forced to remain idle, but it hasn't stopped us from studying our fishing books and replacing our lost lure. We're confident that we'll be reporting more success soon.
There's a definite sense of purpose about the boats we're meeting now - the destination is Panama and excitement, mixed with some trepidation about the canal passage, is growing.
It would easily be possible to spend a month in Los Roques moving to a new anchorage every day, but our brief stay gave us an enticing sample of the kind of navigation and remoteness we're hoping to experience in the Pacific and en route to Panama.
After Los Roques we arrived at the stunning Aves de Barlavento - the island of the birds. An uninhabited, coral atoll with clear water, a huge quantity of bird-life living in the dense mangrove, and stunning sea-life. We'd arrived in paradise which we shared with half a dozen other yachts spread between five anchorages. Above water we inhabited an aviary with pelicans, red-footed and other varieties of boobies filling the air.
Underwater we entered a world full of a huge variety and quantity of the most stunning and vividly coloured fish and coral we'd seen. On our first snorkelling expedition we found ourselves face to face with a large stingray in a narrow coral passage. It remained on the bottom eyeing us suspiciously before stetting off in our direction through the break in the coral. We hastily retreated, marvelling at its effortless motion. Other delights included the poe-faced trunk fish and the huge groupers. After two days in paradise, we departed in the evening for Bonaire. The channel we'd easily picked between the reefs on our entry proved difficult to navigate with the sun in our eyes as we left just before sunset. We were fortunate not to run aground again with the depth under Kika suddenly vanishing to less than 2m as we crossed a shoal patch we'd failed to spot. It was clearly visible when we turned round, but nearly impossible to see with the sun in our eyes. Around the Venezuelan islands we've relied on eye-ball navigation; the positions of the GPS and charts appear to differ, sometimes by as much as 1/4 of mile. Thus with some relief we identified the unlit island to the west of us before sunset, and confirmed our course to Bonaire.
An overnight sail brought us to Bonaire for the long planned rendezvous with Ellen's family. All went according to plan apart from some confusion over flight times meant we missed them at the airport, but found them in their apartment with James and Henry already excited about their first sighting of an iguana.
Spent a great 10 days in their company with snorkelling, a couple of sailing trips to some dive sights, general relaxing and Ellen's first bath since leaving the UK. I've been working on Kika between visits to the family. Bonaire has proved a great place to spend some time with a laid back hassle free atmosphere combined with just enough infrastructure to meet our needs ie a chandlery, bars, supermarkets and for the first time since Lanzarote we're connected to the Internet in the boat via Wifi - no need for perilous dinghy rides with laptop to hang around outside Wifi enabled offices here! The sea-life has been spectacular. Between us we've seen a turtle, an octopus, moray eels, stunning parrot fish, much coral and many other vividly colour reef fish.
The conservation policy of the Bonaire has meant our fishing tackle has been forced to remain idle, but it hasn't stopped us from studying our fishing books and replacing our lost lure. We're confident that we'll be reporting more success soon.
There's a definite sense of purpose about the boats we're meeting now - the destination is Panama and excitement, mixed with some trepidation about the canal passage, is growing.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Cruising Gringos
We were greeted into the bay of Porlamar in Margarita by hundreds of pelicans whose appearance and behaviour are fascinating to watch. They look like a mistake with their giant bills and scraggy plumage but their appearance belies their agility and grace. They skim across the water, almost but never touching the surface, and they are expert divers, always coming up with a meal. They are also quite haughty and ignored us rudely the whole time we were watching them showing no fear or interest in us at all. The bay was busy but we anchored that evening without a problem and went ashore to explore. It quickly became clear that not much English is spoken in Venezuela and Nick's Spench and my Spanglish were soon put to good use. No cashpoint around but we managed to buy a beer with some US dollars.
The next morning we went to see 'Juan' who owns a small shop in the bay and is recommended in our pilot guide as someone who will organise the checking in process with the authorities as it can be a bit of a palaver. He knows everything there is to know about his town and is more than happy to share it, punctuating his statements with lengthy drags on his fags for dramatic effect. It worked: us gringos were mesmerised. His office was full of towers - towers of cds, towers of books, towers of newspapers and journals, towers of fag ends and towers of laundry! Classical music blared out of inside and outside speakers so that it was difficult to hear all the gems of advice he was giving us about our stay in Venezuela, but basically it amounted to: don't trust anyone when it comes to money, change your dollars for bolivars on the black market as you'll get much more, and stock up with fags and booze for bartering, because; 'you can't eatid, drinkid or smokid de dollars my friends'.
Armed with our new knowledge, and feeling considerably less green than we had when we stepped out the dinghy, we headed off into town to check out the shops for some serious provisioning and maybe some sightseeing. Down at the local market, sure enough we got a good rate for our dollars and we found a cheap place to spend them.
The town was difficult to fathom - sometimes it's hard when you don't spend long in a place - but we both found it a bit soulless. No real heart, no old town, perhaps like many holiday resorts around the world. It was a strange mixture of modern highrises and slums, and security appeared an obvious priority. Most of the vehicles are fantastic, big, dirty old Fords with throbbing engines. Deisel here is incredibly cheap (it's duty free) 25p a litre! We really wished we'd not stocked up in Martinique!
Everyone we met was polite and welcoming, and curiously uncurious about us, which was quite nice really as though naturally we would come here on holiday from England. We decided to take advantage of the shops, stock up and head out west as soon as we could. We filled up Kika's empty lockers and lifted anchor at about 5pm on Friday. We were motoring out of the anchorage when 'Alliage' called on the VHF to say they had just arrived from Los Testigos. We were on a mission though and decided to carry on with our plan, just pulling alongside long enough to swap news and catch a fillet of the big Dorado that Brendan had caught on passage.
We had a good passage to Los Rochas where we are now anchored. We had fairly good winds and arrived so early this morning that we had to 'heave to' to wait for light. We have been enjoying the delights of our replenished stores and happily, even though it was pretty rolly at times, I was able to cook some delicious meals without a twinge of 'you know what!' Los Rochas consists of a few small islands amidst coral reefs. It's possible to go and find an anchorage to yourself here if you have the energy but we settled for sharing ours with one other boat. I had to stand on the pulpit in order to get a better perspective on the coral reefs and safely direct Nick through to the anchorage. It was pretty scary as the water is like glass and every rock looks like it will pierce the hull, but it was fine and guess what..........it's really beautiful here! We've seen a huge variety of fish while snorkelling near the boat this afternoon and we're looking forward to finding a lobster tomorrow. There's one out there with Kika's name on it!
The next morning we went to see 'Juan' who owns a small shop in the bay and is recommended in our pilot guide as someone who will organise the checking in process with the authorities as it can be a bit of a palaver. He knows everything there is to know about his town and is more than happy to share it, punctuating his statements with lengthy drags on his fags for dramatic effect. It worked: us gringos were mesmerised. His office was full of towers - towers of cds, towers of books, towers of newspapers and journals, towers of fag ends and towers of laundry! Classical music blared out of inside and outside speakers so that it was difficult to hear all the gems of advice he was giving us about our stay in Venezuela, but basically it amounted to: don't trust anyone when it comes to money, change your dollars for bolivars on the black market as you'll get much more, and stock up with fags and booze for bartering, because; 'you can't eatid, drinkid or smokid de dollars my friends'.
Armed with our new knowledge, and feeling considerably less green than we had when we stepped out the dinghy, we headed off into town to check out the shops for some serious provisioning and maybe some sightseeing. Down at the local market, sure enough we got a good rate for our dollars and we found a cheap place to spend them.
The town was difficult to fathom - sometimes it's hard when you don't spend long in a place - but we both found it a bit soulless. No real heart, no old town, perhaps like many holiday resorts around the world. It was a strange mixture of modern highrises and slums, and security appeared an obvious priority. Most of the vehicles are fantastic, big, dirty old Fords with throbbing engines. Deisel here is incredibly cheap (it's duty free) 25p a litre! We really wished we'd not stocked up in Martinique!
Everyone we met was polite and welcoming, and curiously uncurious about us, which was quite nice really as though naturally we would come here on holiday from England. We decided to take advantage of the shops, stock up and head out west as soon as we could. We filled up Kika's empty lockers and lifted anchor at about 5pm on Friday. We were motoring out of the anchorage when 'Alliage' called on the VHF to say they had just arrived from Los Testigos. We were on a mission though and decided to carry on with our plan, just pulling alongside long enough to swap news and catch a fillet of the big Dorado that Brendan had caught on passage.
We had a good passage to Los Rochas where we are now anchored. We had fairly good winds and arrived so early this morning that we had to 'heave to' to wait for light. We have been enjoying the delights of our replenished stores and happily, even though it was pretty rolly at times, I was able to cook some delicious meals without a twinge of 'you know what!' Los Rochas consists of a few small islands amidst coral reefs. It's possible to go and find an anchorage to yourself here if you have the energy but we settled for sharing ours with one other boat. I had to stand on the pulpit in order to get a better perspective on the coral reefs and safely direct Nick through to the anchorage. It was pretty scary as the water is like glass and every rock looks like it will pierce the hull, but it was fine and guess what..........it's really beautiful here! We've seen a huge variety of fish while snorkelling near the boat this afternoon and we're looking forward to finding a lobster tomorrow. There's one out there with Kika's name on it!
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Grenada to Venezuela
Apologies again for the sporadic nature of the recent entries. Crossing the Atlantic, blog writing was a welcome distraction and fitted in well with our watch keeping. Now we're in the Caribbean the distractions are numerous and days unstructured; we'll do our best to find time to write.
The last entry left us in Bequia heading for Grenada for a rendezvous with my parents. En route to Grenada we called into Union Island, anchoring securely (after a few attempts) in the shelter of a reef. It was impressive seeing the full fury of the Atlantic crashing onto the reef while laying in calm waters on the other side. Union Island is an official port of entry/exit for St Vincent and the Grenadines and I duly arrived at the customs office half an hour before closing time to check-out. The office closes at 6pm and despite arriving at 5.30pm was stung for an overtime payment. A little frustrating, but all good humoured and they included a ride to immigration (1 mile away) as part of the payment. From Union Island we could see the enticing Tobago Cays - confusingly situated between St Vincent and Grenada - not even close to Tobago. They come highly recommended by the pilot guides and we planned to visit them with my parents.
Friday we had a beautiful sail down to Grenada, marred only by a soaking received in the torrential rain which started just as we prepared to anchor in Prickly Bay.
The following day we waited anxiously outside Arrivals as the last of the passengers emerged, but no Jenny and Brian. They eventually appeared full of tales of Grenadan customs bureaucracy - Brian had been a little over-honest and declared they were carrying spare parts for Kika and had been hit with import duties. On previous visits we've kept my parents busy helping with boat maintenance. For this trip we were determined to spend our time sailing. Unfortunately the forecast predicted huge swells and high winds for the first few days so island exploration was the order of the day. The first few days we explored the local beaches and St Georges, the capital, on the fabulous reggae buses.
Grenada is mountainous and covered in vibrant rainforest. A trip through the forest to a waterfall was decided upon and Jenny, Brian and Nick set off - sadly Ellen was recovering from stomach upset and remained on Kika. Jenny requested a level walk, "without too many hills" so inevitably the waterfall we headed for turned out to be at the end of a steep descent along an occasionally treacherous path. We all made it, partly thanks to the help of David, a Grenadian, who supported Jenny as she wobbled across a log over the river.
David turned out to make part of his living from diving off the top of the waterfall and duly impressed us - I don't remember this being mentioned as an option in my careers lessons.
He stayed with us on the trip back, pointing out mango, nutmeg, cinnamon trees and helping us past the more perilous sections. We supported further entrepreneurship with a stop at the "Keep Taxi clean shoe wash" bench and enjoyed a hair-raising high-speed bus ride back down the mountains.
Unfortunately the weather continued to be unfavourable, so we sailed 10 miles from Prickly bay round to St Georges, then back a couple of days later. Brian was reluctantly dragged to the local beach away from essential maintenance on a blocked toilet.
Most of the day was spent disassembling and reassembling the pump, finally passing Jenny and Brian heading back from their day enjoying the sun as we headed to the beach to clean off. Jenny and Brian seemed satisfied with the brief sail and hopefully we've wetted their appetites for further Kika sailing trips.
The following day we headed off for Los Testigos. There's always too much to do and see, so although our time in the Windward Islands has been brief, we've been so enthused by other sailors with the treasures that await us off the Venezuelan, Columbian and Panamanian coasts never mind the Pacific, that we're excited to be heading west again. We've also arranged a rendezvous with Ellen's sister and family in Bonaire on the 10th Feb so we need to keep moving.
We sailed overnight from Grenada to Los Testigos in the company of Brendan and Amanda on Alliage who we met in St Georges (Alliage is a a Rival 34, a smaller version of Kika).We've spent three days at anchor in a bay with a low sandly spit protecting us from the Atlantic swell. Our first taste of Venezuela. The air is full of Frigate birds, brown Bobbies and the occasional pelican. The islands are practically deserted, and only frequented by passing yachts and fishermen.
A highlight of the visit was bartering some sugar and coffee for a Barracuda and three unidentified red spiky fish, which we were assured were safe to eat. We cooked them on a drift wood beach fire, under a clear starry sky exchanging sailing stories with Brendan and Amanda.
Today our time at Los Testigos is over - its not an official port of entry, but we were granted a temporary stay of three days. We're currently sailing on a slight sea to Margarita - the official port, which the guide describes as having ".. a carefree holiday atmosphere and is the most popular holiday destination for Venezulans". Time to dust down our Spanish and practice the Salsa - should be fun.
The last entry left us in Bequia heading for Grenada for a rendezvous with my parents. En route to Grenada we called into Union Island, anchoring securely (after a few attempts) in the shelter of a reef. It was impressive seeing the full fury of the Atlantic crashing onto the reef while laying in calm waters on the other side. Union Island is an official port of entry/exit for St Vincent and the Grenadines and I duly arrived at the customs office half an hour before closing time to check-out. The office closes at 6pm and despite arriving at 5.30pm was stung for an overtime payment. A little frustrating, but all good humoured and they included a ride to immigration (1 mile away) as part of the payment. From Union Island we could see the enticing Tobago Cays - confusingly situated between St Vincent and Grenada - not even close to Tobago. They come highly recommended by the pilot guides and we planned to visit them with my parents.
Friday we had a beautiful sail down to Grenada, marred only by a soaking received in the torrential rain which started just as we prepared to anchor in Prickly Bay.
The following day we waited anxiously outside Arrivals as the last of the passengers emerged, but no Jenny and Brian. They eventually appeared full of tales of Grenadan customs bureaucracy - Brian had been a little over-honest and declared they were carrying spare parts for Kika and had been hit with import duties. On previous visits we've kept my parents busy helping with boat maintenance. For this trip we were determined to spend our time sailing. Unfortunately the forecast predicted huge swells and high winds for the first few days so island exploration was the order of the day. The first few days we explored the local beaches and St Georges, the capital, on the fabulous reggae buses.
Grenada is mountainous and covered in vibrant rainforest. A trip through the forest to a waterfall was decided upon and Jenny, Brian and Nick set off - sadly Ellen was recovering from stomach upset and remained on Kika. Jenny requested a level walk, "without too many hills" so inevitably the waterfall we headed for turned out to be at the end of a steep descent along an occasionally treacherous path. We all made it, partly thanks to the help of David, a Grenadian, who supported Jenny as she wobbled across a log over the river.
David turned out to make part of his living from diving off the top of the waterfall and duly impressed us - I don't remember this being mentioned as an option in my careers lessons.
He stayed with us on the trip back, pointing out mango, nutmeg, cinnamon trees and helping us past the more perilous sections. We supported further entrepreneurship with a stop at the "Keep Taxi clean shoe wash" bench and enjoyed a hair-raising high-speed bus ride back down the mountains.
Unfortunately the weather continued to be unfavourable, so we sailed 10 miles from Prickly bay round to St Georges, then back a couple of days later. Brian was reluctantly dragged to the local beach away from essential maintenance on a blocked toilet.
Most of the day was spent disassembling and reassembling the pump, finally passing Jenny and Brian heading back from their day enjoying the sun as we headed to the beach to clean off. Jenny and Brian seemed satisfied with the brief sail and hopefully we've wetted their appetites for further Kika sailing trips.
The following day we headed off for Los Testigos. There's always too much to do and see, so although our time in the Windward Islands has been brief, we've been so enthused by other sailors with the treasures that await us off the Venezuelan, Columbian and Panamanian coasts never mind the Pacific, that we're excited to be heading west again. We've also arranged a rendezvous with Ellen's sister and family in Bonaire on the 10th Feb so we need to keep moving.
We sailed overnight from Grenada to Los Testigos in the company of Brendan and Amanda on Alliage who we met in St Georges (Alliage is a a Rival 34, a smaller version of Kika).We've spent three days at anchor in a bay with a low sandly spit protecting us from the Atlantic swell. Our first taste of Venezuela. The air is full of Frigate birds, brown Bobbies and the occasional pelican. The islands are practically deserted, and only frequented by passing yachts and fishermen.
A highlight of the visit was bartering some sugar and coffee for a Barracuda and three unidentified red spiky fish, which we were assured were safe to eat. We cooked them on a drift wood beach fire, under a clear starry sky exchanging sailing stories with Brendan and Amanda.
Today our time at Los Testigos is over - its not an official port of entry, but we were granted a temporary stay of three days. We're currently sailing on a slight sea to Margarita - the official port, which the guide describes as having ".. a carefree holiday atmosphere and is the most popular holiday destination for Venezulans". Time to dust down our Spanish and practice the Salsa - should be fun.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Sailing down the Windward Islands
We have been here in the Caribbean over 2 weeks and so much has happened. We are mindful of the fact that during the crossing, the blog was being updated daily ensuring regular news from home just when we needed it, and now, when we have reached a decent place, we practically abandon it altogether! Cruisers are fickle too! Well it was fantastic making landfall, and we quickly found a decent bar where we could use the internet for free and meet other cruisers, which is what we did on New Year's Eve. We met up with Margot, Leigh and Nigel (and Hamish the Westie) on Aqua Symphony. We had been moored opposite each other in Gibraltar way back in November and when I accidentally barged into Nigel in the bar, everything gradually fell into place.
We saw in 2006 with great food, great music, and in the company of French and Brit cruisers. More friends were met when I bumped into Peter from Valhalla in the customs office and we enjoyed catching up with their adventures on the Blue Water Rally.
So, we were beginning to feel quite at home, when who should motor into the harbour but none other than Free Spirit! Mark and Nat had made landfall on St Lucia but wanted to sample the delights of Martinique (better class of cruiser). We spent quite some time reliving the passage with them as we felt bonded after speaking to them on the SSB every day through good and bad. Both boats went to anchor in the gorgeous Ste Anne's bay just south east of Le Marin.
It was here in the calm crystal waters where Kika got her port side hull cleaned of naughty barnacles. I was helped by a curious duo of fish - real little busy bodies who kept coming to assist. I also discovered a shy brown fish skulking in our stern heads through-hull. We hope it was just it's temporary home! It was a tough but satisfying job. The barnacles are very tenacious and I still have the starboard side to complete but I need a calm, clean anchorage to finish the job off. Until then, we just have to stop her going round in circles!
Having been in Martinique for a week, Nick and I decided to hire a car and see a little more of the island. We didn't do as much as we wanted of course, but the highlight was an unplanned walk through tropical forest around one of the peaks. We climbed pretty high and our stairway was the roots of the trees. I have never been in an environment where greenery was so abundant. The smells, sights and sounds of the forest were a delight.
So as everyone knows, New Year is a time for reassessment and planning, and after our crossing, we had some tough decisions to make regarding time, direction, seasickness etc. When we started the trip, it soon became clear from our conversations with other cruisers that to do this in 2 years would be difficult, so we have decided to extend it in order to complete and enjoy a passage across the Pacific. This may mean stopping off somewhere to wait for a weather window for a while, and perhaps doing a bit of work to ease the pressure of the finances. It will also mean that for those long passages, I will have to take some drugs in order to function fully as a crew member.
In Ste Annes we met the legendary 'Peace and Aloha' the very boat from where the net controller, Ellen, had made her broadcast on passage every morning. We had imagined a NASA style communications centre humming with the lateset electronics but were delighted to discover the identical SSB set to ours. We had built up a picture of Ellen and her family and it was good finally to meet them. Their arrival in Martinique signalled the end of their 5 yr 6 month circumnavigation. We took over some fresh bread to say 'thanks' for the support during the crossing, and were invited over to share their experiences and advice. We learned some invaluable things such as which sharks to watch for when spear fishing, and which day to head through the Red Sea 'corridor' to avoid pirates, but one of the best pieces of information was the fact that Ellen was never without a seasickness patch when on passage - a very reassuring fact for me.
So now we are making our way south and then west to meet up with family before our passage through Panama. We have anchored in a couple of beautiful picture postcard bays first in St Lucia, and then St Vincent, and we are currently moored in Port Elizabeth, Bequia. A boat boy brought round some fresh bread and banana cake this morning - a little extravagant but so delicious! We had just arrived yesterday when Julie, Andy and Jacques from Blue Iguana sped past in their flash dinghy. They crossed the Atlantic with us, arriving a day before and, as usual, it was fun to catch up and swap stories.
Nick adds:
Unfortunately the free WiFi at the bar vanished in the New Year and we were left struggling with the crazy French keyboards in overpriced Internet Cafes. However we spied a set of yachties using their laptops in a passageway outside some offices and we 'sped' back to Kika and grabbed our laptop. Sure enough free WiFi access. Unfortunately limited battery life meant frequent trips to the bar to plug in - amazing how many drinks it takes to recharge a laptop.
The unplanned walk was great fun - our free hire-car map deceived us into thinking the road along the north coast of the Island is continuous. It isn't. After risking life and car round precipitous hair-pin bends in dense forest we arrived at a dead end. By this time we were starting to think of lunch. A cursory study of the map, appeared to indicate that Grand Rivière, the village we were aiming for, would be a 1/2 hour hike through the forest. We set off at a good speed anticipating the guide's promised seafood delights. Two hours later we met a French guy coming in the opposite direction. It turned out he was four hours from Grand Rivière. Our promised lunch there never materialised, but we had a spectacular walk through rainforest, alternately winding its way along the coast before plunging back into the forest.
We would have loved to explore the less visited anchorages on the east side of the Martinique - they are protected from the Atlantic by a reef, however navigation is a tad tricky and the pilot guide recommends a calm day to visit which we haven't had since we've arrived. The winds have been blowing consistently 20-25knots with gusts up-to 35knots.
The crossing from Martinique to St Lucia was short, but choppy and showed how two weeks at anchor one starts to become blase about secure stowage as all manner of items escaped from their resting place and crashed around the saloon. The reward was the beautiful Marigot bay, a small inlet surround by high green cliffs containing a couple of bars - an almost perfect anchorage.After 5 attempts we managed to get the anchor to hold and in a spot where we weren't in danger of dropping back on other boats [Ellen thinks our anchor is rebelling as we bought another one just before leaving Martinique]. We took so long to anchor that the customs office had closed by the time we made it in. In theory as we hadn't checked in we should have stayed on the boat however undercover of darkness we sneaked ashore and without local currency exchanged some US dollars for beers.
The following day we sailed into another idyllic anchorage; Cumberland bay in St Lucia. We negotiated for one of the boat-boys that form a "welcoming committee" at these small anchorages to take a line ashore and found ourselves anchored with our stern tied to a coconut tree. Other negotiations ensued, in which we had to bargain hard as we didn't have any local currency, we'd drunk our US dollars the previous night and our small euro change was no good to them. Eventually we exchanged some of the largest grapefruit I've ever seen and some passion fruit for a couple of Kika special rum punches. We're still perfecting the recipe as the boat boys' verdict was "dis a drink for da ladies, more rum". Once the mixture consisted of 80% rum they seemed satisfied and the grapefruit looked less of a bargain.
Cumberland bay was slightly marred when I trod on a sea urchin and spines broke off and embedded themselves in my feet. After consulting "Offshore Doctor", Ellen put away the amputation kit and bought out the toilet cleaning vinegar. It's supposed to dissolve the spines - but we're concerned Kika will smell like a fish and chip shop before the treatment finishes. Its been an interesting reversal of fortunes, I've been milking my incapacitation while Ellen races round tending to the boat and the invalid.
It seems that Blue Iguana practically lived off the fish they caught. After another fishless sail here I noticed that the hook had vanished from the lure and am hoping for more success on the sail down to Grenada.
We saw in 2006 with great food, great music, and in the company of French and Brit cruisers. More friends were met when I bumped into Peter from Valhalla in the customs office and we enjoyed catching up with their adventures on the Blue Water Rally.
So, we were beginning to feel quite at home, when who should motor into the harbour but none other than Free Spirit! Mark and Nat had made landfall on St Lucia but wanted to sample the delights of Martinique (better class of cruiser). We spent quite some time reliving the passage with them as we felt bonded after speaking to them on the SSB every day through good and bad. Both boats went to anchor in the gorgeous Ste Anne's bay just south east of Le Marin.
It was here in the calm crystal waters where Kika got her port side hull cleaned of naughty barnacles. I was helped by a curious duo of fish - real little busy bodies who kept coming to assist. I also discovered a shy brown fish skulking in our stern heads through-hull. We hope it was just it's temporary home! It was a tough but satisfying job. The barnacles are very tenacious and I still have the starboard side to complete but I need a calm, clean anchorage to finish the job off. Until then, we just have to stop her going round in circles!
Having been in Martinique for a week, Nick and I decided to hire a car and see a little more of the island. We didn't do as much as we wanted of course, but the highlight was an unplanned walk through tropical forest around one of the peaks. We climbed pretty high and our stairway was the roots of the trees. I have never been in an environment where greenery was so abundant. The smells, sights and sounds of the forest were a delight.
So as everyone knows, New Year is a time for reassessment and planning, and after our crossing, we had some tough decisions to make regarding time, direction, seasickness etc. When we started the trip, it soon became clear from our conversations with other cruisers that to do this in 2 years would be difficult, so we have decided to extend it in order to complete and enjoy a passage across the Pacific. This may mean stopping off somewhere to wait for a weather window for a while, and perhaps doing a bit of work to ease the pressure of the finances. It will also mean that for those long passages, I will have to take some drugs in order to function fully as a crew member.
In Ste Annes we met the legendary 'Peace and Aloha' the very boat from where the net controller, Ellen, had made her broadcast on passage every morning. We had imagined a NASA style communications centre humming with the lateset electronics but were delighted to discover the identical SSB set to ours. We had built up a picture of Ellen and her family and it was good finally to meet them. Their arrival in Martinique signalled the end of their 5 yr 6 month circumnavigation. We took over some fresh bread to say 'thanks' for the support during the crossing, and were invited over to share their experiences and advice. We learned some invaluable things such as which sharks to watch for when spear fishing, and which day to head through the Red Sea 'corridor' to avoid pirates, but one of the best pieces of information was the fact that Ellen was never without a seasickness patch when on passage - a very reassuring fact for me.
So now we are making our way south and then west to meet up with family before our passage through Panama. We have anchored in a couple of beautiful picture postcard bays first in St Lucia, and then St Vincent, and we are currently moored in Port Elizabeth, Bequia. A boat boy brought round some fresh bread and banana cake this morning - a little extravagant but so delicious! We had just arrived yesterday when Julie, Andy and Jacques from Blue Iguana sped past in their flash dinghy. They crossed the Atlantic with us, arriving a day before and, as usual, it was fun to catch up and swap stories.
Nick adds:
Unfortunately the free WiFi at the bar vanished in the New Year and we were left struggling with the crazy French keyboards in overpriced Internet Cafes. However we spied a set of yachties using their laptops in a passageway outside some offices and we 'sped' back to Kika and grabbed our laptop. Sure enough free WiFi access. Unfortunately limited battery life meant frequent trips to the bar to plug in - amazing how many drinks it takes to recharge a laptop.
The unplanned walk was great fun - our free hire-car map deceived us into thinking the road along the north coast of the Island is continuous. It isn't. After risking life and car round precipitous hair-pin bends in dense forest we arrived at a dead end. By this time we were starting to think of lunch. A cursory study of the map, appeared to indicate that Grand Rivière, the village we were aiming for, would be a 1/2 hour hike through the forest. We set off at a good speed anticipating the guide's promised seafood delights. Two hours later we met a French guy coming in the opposite direction. It turned out he was four hours from Grand Rivière. Our promised lunch there never materialised, but we had a spectacular walk through rainforest, alternately winding its way along the coast before plunging back into the forest.
We would have loved to explore the less visited anchorages on the east side of the Martinique - they are protected from the Atlantic by a reef, however navigation is a tad tricky and the pilot guide recommends a calm day to visit which we haven't had since we've arrived. The winds have been blowing consistently 20-25knots with gusts up-to 35knots.
The crossing from Martinique to St Lucia was short, but choppy and showed how two weeks at anchor one starts to become blase about secure stowage as all manner of items escaped from their resting place and crashed around the saloon. The reward was the beautiful Marigot bay, a small inlet surround by high green cliffs containing a couple of bars - an almost perfect anchorage.After 5 attempts we managed to get the anchor to hold and in a spot where we weren't in danger of dropping back on other boats [Ellen thinks our anchor is rebelling as we bought another one just before leaving Martinique]. We took so long to anchor that the customs office had closed by the time we made it in. In theory as we hadn't checked in we should have stayed on the boat however undercover of darkness we sneaked ashore and without local currency exchanged some US dollars for beers.
The following day we sailed into another idyllic anchorage; Cumberland bay in St Lucia. We negotiated for one of the boat-boys that form a "welcoming committee" at these small anchorages to take a line ashore and found ourselves anchored with our stern tied to a coconut tree. Other negotiations ensued, in which we had to bargain hard as we didn't have any local currency, we'd drunk our US dollars the previous night and our small euro change was no good to them. Eventually we exchanged some of the largest grapefruit I've ever seen and some passion fruit for a couple of Kika special rum punches. We're still perfecting the recipe as the boat boys' verdict was "dis a drink for da ladies, more rum". Once the mixture consisted of 80% rum they seemed satisfied and the grapefruit looked less of a bargain.
Cumberland bay was slightly marred when I trod on a sea urchin and spines broke off and embedded themselves in my feet. After consulting "Offshore Doctor", Ellen put away the amputation kit and bought out the toilet cleaning vinegar. It's supposed to dissolve the spines - but we're concerned Kika will smell like a fish and chip shop before the treatment finishes. Its been an interesting reversal of fortunes, I've been milking my incapacitation while Ellen races round tending to the boat and the invalid.
It seems that Blue Iguana practically lived off the fish they caught. After another fishless sail here I noticed that the hook had vanished from the lure and am hoping for more success on the sail down to Grenada.
Friday, December 30, 2005
We`ve arrived
At about 0400 boat time I noticed a faint smudge of light dead ahead - the telltale sign of civilisation. It was a welcome sight. The rest of my watch passed pretty quickly with the excitement of seeing landfall. We had one of the best night`s sailing with a strong NE wind and at times we seemed to be racing toward the land.
We dropped sails at about 1000 and motored in to Le Marin. It`s beautiful. They say you can smell the land and I THINK I did - it smelt of mammals (but that could have been Nick!) Seeing Kika at anchor she looks none the worse for wear, but she has acquired an alarming number of molluscs on her bottom!
We dropped sails at about 1000 and motored in to Le Marin. It`s beautiful. They say you can smell the land and I THINK I did - it smelt of mammals (but that could have been Nick!) Seeing Kika at anchor she looks none the worse for wear, but she has acquired an alarming number of molluscs on her bottom!
Final entry before landfall
Unless disaster strikes we will be in Martinique around noon local time tomorrow (Friday 30th).
At 14.30 (ship's time, Thurs) we celebrated less than 100miles to go with the remains of the chocolate which Ellen managed to save from my cooking experiments.
At 14.45 (ship's time, Thurs) we switched from our small scale "North Atlantic Western Part" chart to our larger scale "Caribbean Sea" chart. Martinique has expanded from the size of a cherry stone to the size of a cherry tomato. The small scale chart covers Brazil to Greenland and we've been painstakingly plotting our progress across the Atlantic on it. It also bares witness to a couple of meals which launched themselves from the galley onto the chart table. Early tomorrow we'll switch to our "Southern Martinique" chart.
Celebrations aside it's been a hard fought last 120 miles. It's as though some malevolent force is testing our resolve. "Let's drop the wind and see what they do. Ha Ha! Great! They've just put up full sail. Let's send in a squall and make it quick so they don't have time to react. They got through that one now let's change wind direction. They've gybed so let's change it back! What? Full sails again? Send in another squall! Cooking? How about some nasty cross-swell to send the boat rolling ..." and so on. I decided the only way to deal with the worst of the weather was to welcome the approach of the black rain bearing squall clouds as the chance for a good shower. Although I think even for me two showers a day is probably adequate - four is excessive and with six I'm in danger of dissolving/becoming clean [Ellen's note].
The timing of our landfall is perfect; we're down to our last kitchen roll. Conditions on Kika would have started to deteriorate rapidly without this essential piece of equipment.
Position at 16.20 UTC: 14deg 19'N, 59deg 04'W
Daily distance run: 98nm; cumulative distance: 2860:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 108nm
Conditions: N/NE/E/SE 6-35 knots,
moderate/rough sea, 1011 millibars
At 14.30 (ship's time, Thurs) we celebrated less than 100miles to go with the remains of the chocolate which Ellen managed to save from my cooking experiments.
At 14.45 (ship's time, Thurs) we switched from our small scale "North Atlantic Western Part" chart to our larger scale "Caribbean Sea" chart. Martinique has expanded from the size of a cherry stone to the size of a cherry tomato. The small scale chart covers Brazil to Greenland and we've been painstakingly plotting our progress across the Atlantic on it. It also bares witness to a couple of meals which launched themselves from the galley onto the chart table. Early tomorrow we'll switch to our "Southern Martinique" chart.
Celebrations aside it's been a hard fought last 120 miles. It's as though some malevolent force is testing our resolve. "Let's drop the wind and see what they do. Ha Ha! Great! They've just put up full sail. Let's send in a squall and make it quick so they don't have time to react. They got through that one now let's change wind direction. They've gybed so let's change it back! What? Full sails again? Send in another squall! Cooking? How about some nasty cross-swell to send the boat rolling ..." and so on. I decided the only way to deal with the worst of the weather was to welcome the approach of the black rain bearing squall clouds as the chance for a good shower. Although I think even for me two showers a day is probably adequate - four is excessive and with six I'm in danger of dissolving/becoming clean [Ellen's note].
The timing of our landfall is perfect; we're down to our last kitchen roll. Conditions on Kika would have started to deteriorate rapidly without this essential piece of equipment.
Position at 16.20 UTC: 14deg 19'N, 59deg 04'W
Daily distance run: 98nm; cumulative distance: 2860:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 108nm
Conditions: N/NE/E/SE 6-35 knots,
moderate/rough sea, 1011 millibars
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Slow progress in light winds
My early morning watch was quite hectic yesterday, involving some bread baking, a radio call and a squall all at the same time. The squall began almost without warning, and conditions soon made it difficult to reef the sails. Poor Nick was in a deep sleep and had to be roused for assistance. Not a nice wakeup call. The squall meant I neglected my dough and this may have had something to do with it not rising sufficiently. As a result, our breakfast loaf was quite 'dense' but delicious nonetheless.
The winds gradually tailed off yesterday, and we both got sick of Kika wallowing in the waves so we decided some serious sail faff was in order. Firstly we took the main down (it's been up for so long that most of the sail ties had been appropriated for other jobs and we had to have a hunt round for them) and tried with the 2 genoas but the pole-less one kept collapsing, so we decided to drop them both, and re-hoist our small genoa only on the furling gear. This worked ok but we weren't getting much speed and we both knew what these light winds really called for ......the cruising chute! So we hoisted that and sailed beautifully for about 6 hours until my watch time was hailed by another squall. Again, this picked up very quickly and sent the chute out of control. We managed to drop it in the nick of time but only with both of us using all our strength.
Other notable events of yesterday include my hat blowing off in a gust of wind (and although man/hat overboard drill quickly ensued, we could only watch as it sank to an irretrievable depth) and my first shark sighting. It wasn't a particularly large shark but it still felt menacing. It slipped out of sight very quickly and soundlessly, not at all like a dolphin which likes you to know it's there and is unmistakable by it's breathing.
So, it looks like we should make landfall on Friday noonish. We're hoping to arrive in daylight as the entry is quite tricky. The buoyage system is different from Europe in that as you enter an estuary, the green are to port and red are to starboard (at home, you have the reversed buoys on your way OUT of the estuary which makes sense as you have just set off on your journey and are probably more alert than if you've been crossing an ocean for a month!) What a nightmare!
Our decorations are looking pretty sad. The balloons are a bit deflated and the paper chains keep coming unstuck. The blutak can't cope with the rolling!
Position at 15.50 UTC: 15deg 06'N, 57deg 25'W
Daily distance run: 125nm; cumulative distance: 2762:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 206nm
Conditions: NE 6-10 knots, moderate sea, 1011 millibars
The winds gradually tailed off yesterday, and we both got sick of Kika wallowing in the waves so we decided some serious sail faff was in order. Firstly we took the main down (it's been up for so long that most of the sail ties had been appropriated for other jobs and we had to have a hunt round for them) and tried with the 2 genoas but the pole-less one kept collapsing, so we decided to drop them both, and re-hoist our small genoa only on the furling gear. This worked ok but we weren't getting much speed and we both knew what these light winds really called for ......the cruising chute! So we hoisted that and sailed beautifully for about 6 hours until my watch time was hailed by another squall. Again, this picked up very quickly and sent the chute out of control. We managed to drop it in the nick of time but only with both of us using all our strength.
Other notable events of yesterday include my hat blowing off in a gust of wind (and although man/hat overboard drill quickly ensued, we could only watch as it sank to an irretrievable depth) and my first shark sighting. It wasn't a particularly large shark but it still felt menacing. It slipped out of sight very quickly and soundlessly, not at all like a dolphin which likes you to know it's there and is unmistakable by it's breathing.
So, it looks like we should make landfall on Friday noonish. We're hoping to arrive in daylight as the entry is quite tricky. The buoyage system is different from Europe in that as you enter an estuary, the green are to port and red are to starboard (at home, you have the reversed buoys on your way OUT of the estuary which makes sense as you have just set off on your journey and are probably more alert than if you've been crossing an ocean for a month!) What a nightmare!
Our decorations are looking pretty sad. The balloons are a bit deflated and the paper chains keep coming unstuck. The blutak can't cope with the rolling!
Position at 15.50 UTC: 15deg 06'N, 57deg 25'W
Daily distance run: 125nm; cumulative distance: 2762:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 206nm
Conditions: NE 6-10 knots, moderate sea, 1011 millibars
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Light winds
The wind has been steadily dropping through the day. We're still making steady progress at 4-5 knots, but compared to the wind we've had over the last week, it feels like we're becalmed. Fortunately the seas have moderated as well, so the wind doesn't get knocked out of the sails too often, but even so from time to time the rig slams in a nerve edging way in the swell. It's satisfying to be sailing under full sails again, I think it's the first time we've run all day without reefing since we were becalmed off the Cape Verde Islands.
We saw our second ship in 24hours today. It's a major event after a week of unbroken sea on the horizon. We were a little worried as the sea-me which detects ships radar wasn't picking anything up, so we called the boat up with, "BIG SHIP, BIG SHIP this is the sailing vessel Kika, Kika OVER". Amazingly he responded. We asked how we showed up on his radar and he told us to "standby while I switch it on"! Slightly worrying. He'd come from Trinidad and was bound for Poland. We must be getting close to the Caribbean then.
We put the clock back another hour, so we're now on UTC-3. The radio nets stay at the same time UTC, so start earlier for us. It takes a few days to get used to the new relative time for everything and we need to loose another hour to be insync with Caribbean time.
With the calmer conditions we thought that we'd have more luck fishing, but the line was out at first light and brought back in at dusk, without a single bite.
I've taken the floor up again to continue my creak eradication programme. I've tackled most of the creaks which sound like a canon ball splitting timbers, but with the decreased noise level a new set of creaks have been revealed. I guess in the heat/humidity panels have expanded causing the creaking.
Position at 15.30 UTC: 14deg 47'N, 55deg 23'W
Daily distance run: 145nm; cumulative distance: 2637:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 319nm
Conditions: NE 10-15 knots, moderate sea, 1012 millibars
We saw our second ship in 24hours today. It's a major event after a week of unbroken sea on the horizon. We were a little worried as the sea-me which detects ships radar wasn't picking anything up, so we called the boat up with, "BIG SHIP, BIG SHIP this is the sailing vessel Kika, Kika OVER". Amazingly he responded. We asked how we showed up on his radar and he told us to "standby while I switch it on"! Slightly worrying. He'd come from Trinidad and was bound for Poland. We must be getting close to the Caribbean then.
We put the clock back another hour, so we're now on UTC-3. The radio nets stay at the same time UTC, so start earlier for us. It takes a few days to get used to the new relative time for everything and we need to loose another hour to be insync with Caribbean time.
With the calmer conditions we thought that we'd have more luck fishing, but the line was out at first light and brought back in at dusk, without a single bite.
I've taken the floor up again to continue my creak eradication programme. I've tackled most of the creaks which sound like a canon ball splitting timbers, but with the decreased noise level a new set of creaks have been revealed. I guess in the heat/humidity panels have expanded causing the creaking.
Position at 15.30 UTC: 14deg 47'N, 55deg 23'W
Daily distance run: 145nm; cumulative distance: 2637:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 319nm
Conditions: NE 10-15 knots, moderate sea, 1012 millibars
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Boxing Day less than 500 miles to go
We are rapidly approaching 3 weeks at sea, and the time has really flown by. Once again, we have had good winds for the last 24 hours and we are currently running with 2 reefs in the mainsail and 2 genoas. We're doing a good 6 knots but it's a big, sloppy sea out there, and we're rolling around somewhat. Nick spent some time today taking up some of Kika's floor as the panels tend to creak quite loudly when we roll, and they can seriously impede sleep! Fortunately, we seem to have silenced all other irritating noises for now. The big seas make it a challenge to keep on the correct course. I hand-helmed for a couple of hours the other day, and afterwards it really felt like I'd done a major workout. George the wind-vane is struggling to keep a direct course in these conditions too, and, more worryingly, the bolts securing him to the stern seem to work loose periodically. Regular checks are necessary as to loose George would be a disaster. We find it astonishing that we have seen so few vessels, particularly since the Cape Verdes. I saw one ship a long way off last night and that was the first in over a week!
We are getting very excited about making landfall, and looking at the forecast, the winds are set to continue so we should be there for New Year! The boats that we have got to know on our twice daily radio check-ins are heading to a variety of Caribbean islands but we're hoping there will be one or two whose names are familiar to us in Martinique. There is a strong sense of camaraderie within the group, even though we have actually never met most of the people involved.
It's been a beautiful sunny day out here on the Atlantic, and there's been a good breeze to keep us from sweltering. We've been trying to catch a fish for 2 days now without success. We are assuming that in conditions like these, the fish are well below the disturbed surface, and our lure just doesn't reach deep enough. Our fresh provisions are getting very thin on the ground, although the eggs have lasted well. Pedro the ham has been a great success especially since he seems to get tastier with every carving session. Breakfast this morning was melon and Pedro. Delicious!
Cooking while underway is a major operation. NOTHING can be left out of cupboards for long or else it'll soon be flying across the galley and the heat and smells involved are guaranteed to bring on latent sea-sickness! It is also imperative that you hold on to something constantly otherwise it's you who's thrown across the galley as happened to me on Christmas eve. I've got a couple of fantastic bruises and I shan't be doing that again.
Position at 16.05 UTC: 14deg 51'N, 52deg 51'W
Daily distance run: 143nm; cumulative distance: 2492:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 470nm
Conditions: NE 20-25 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1012 millibars
We are getting very excited about making landfall, and looking at the forecast, the winds are set to continue so we should be there for New Year! The boats that we have got to know on our twice daily radio check-ins are heading to a variety of Caribbean islands but we're hoping there will be one or two whose names are familiar to us in Martinique. There is a strong sense of camaraderie within the group, even though we have actually never met most of the people involved.
It's been a beautiful sunny day out here on the Atlantic, and there's been a good breeze to keep us from sweltering. We've been trying to catch a fish for 2 days now without success. We are assuming that in conditions like these, the fish are well below the disturbed surface, and our lure just doesn't reach deep enough. Our fresh provisions are getting very thin on the ground, although the eggs have lasted well. Pedro the ham has been a great success especially since he seems to get tastier with every carving session. Breakfast this morning was melon and Pedro. Delicious!
Cooking while underway is a major operation. NOTHING can be left out of cupboards for long or else it'll soon be flying across the galley and the heat and smells involved are guaranteed to bring on latent sea-sickness! It is also imperative that you hold on to something constantly otherwise it's you who's thrown across the galley as happened to me on Christmas eve. I've got a couple of fantastic bruises and I shan't be doing that again.
Position at 16.05 UTC: 14deg 51'N, 52deg 51'W
Daily distance run: 143nm; cumulative distance: 2492:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 470nm
Conditions: NE 20-25 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1012 millibars
Monday, December 26, 2005
Christmas day in the Atlantic
The forecast promised easing conditions today and we were looking forward to a slower, but steadier Christmas day. In fact it was one of the windiest days so far with a sustained 25knots of wind, gusting to 30+knots. We reduced sail accordingly, three reefs in the main and a small genoa peeking out from the furls. Even with this much reduced sail we shot along at 6+knots.
The plan was to catch a fish for Christmas lunch. At first light the line was out. Our line has had 100% success to date; deployed twice and caught two fish, even though we've only landed one. I'm blaming the conditions for our lack of success today; the seas were big and our speed meant the lure skimmed along the surface most of the time. By mid-day we admitted defeat and moved to plan B - frankfurter stew. Red wine in the sauce helped make the stew surprisingly tasty. Making it was a different matter with lids and ingredients escaping from what I supposed were secure resting places and hurling themselves across the boat.
After lunch conditions moderated, to the extent that we shook out the reefs and ran under full sail, making around 5.5knots.
Then at 18.00 utc Radio Kika took to the airwaves, with a slight delay while we frantically searched for Ellen's mouth organ. It had lodged itself in an inaccessible corner under the chart table. The airwaves buzzed with festive spirit as Free Spirit treated us to a nautical twelve days of Christmas and we responded with Jingle Bells on the mouth-organ, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer on trumpet and a special nautical version of "We Three Kings".
With the calm conditions we treated ourselves to a Christmas DVD. The wine must have added to the feeling of unreality as we flipped between watching the animated movie and watch keeping across the vastness of the Atlantic.
VB: thanks for the Christmas cake it went down a treat.
The wind increased as the sun-set and we're currently hurtling along with double reefed main and much reduced head-sail. The good news is that the latest forecast indicates the trade winds are set to stay for the next few days so we might just make Martinique for New Year.
We recorded our best daily run of 155miles today. It's exciting to sit on the foredeck, feel the power in the sails and listen to the roaring of the bow wave especially as we surf down one of the larger waves.
For those that are struggling with the yesterday's joke, try this:
Why does Father Christmas have 3 gardens? Hoe, Hoe, Hoe!
Merry Christmas.
Position at 15.20 UTC: 14deg 52'N, 50deg 20'W
Daily distance run: 155nm; cumulative distance: 2349:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 613nm
Conditions: NE 20-25 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1013 millibars
The plan was to catch a fish for Christmas lunch. At first light the line was out. Our line has had 100% success to date; deployed twice and caught two fish, even though we've only landed one. I'm blaming the conditions for our lack of success today; the seas were big and our speed meant the lure skimmed along the surface most of the time. By mid-day we admitted defeat and moved to plan B - frankfurter stew. Red wine in the sauce helped make the stew surprisingly tasty. Making it was a different matter with lids and ingredients escaping from what I supposed were secure resting places and hurling themselves across the boat.
After lunch conditions moderated, to the extent that we shook out the reefs and ran under full sail, making around 5.5knots.
Then at 18.00 utc Radio Kika took to the airwaves, with a slight delay while we frantically searched for Ellen's mouth organ. It had lodged itself in an inaccessible corner under the chart table. The airwaves buzzed with festive spirit as Free Spirit treated us to a nautical twelve days of Christmas and we responded with Jingle Bells on the mouth-organ, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer on trumpet and a special nautical version of "We Three Kings".
With the calm conditions we treated ourselves to a Christmas DVD. The wine must have added to the feeling of unreality as we flipped between watching the animated movie and watch keeping across the vastness of the Atlantic.
VB: thanks for the Christmas cake it went down a treat.
The wind increased as the sun-set and we're currently hurtling along with double reefed main and much reduced head-sail. The good news is that the latest forecast indicates the trade winds are set to stay for the next few days so we might just make Martinique for New Year.
We recorded our best daily run of 155miles today. It's exciting to sit on the foredeck, feel the power in the sails and listen to the roaring of the bow wave especially as we surf down one of the larger waves.
For those that are struggling with the yesterday's joke, try this:
Why does Father Christmas have 3 gardens? Hoe, Hoe, Hoe!
Merry Christmas.
Position at 15.20 UTC: 14deg 52'N, 50deg 20'W
Daily distance run: 155nm; cumulative distance: 2349:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 613nm
Conditions: NE 20-25 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1013 millibars
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Christmas Eve
We had gusty winds throughout early Saturday morning, and this involved quite a lot of sail faffing throughout my watch. It also meant that Nick was up and down during his off-watch, so I managed to give him an extra hour and a half in bed. The sea was pretty big with a wave height of 3 metres at times. This could have been due to the fact that we went over a sea mount yesterday - literally a mountain under the sea which causes rougher conditions. The depth dropped from 3000 metres to 500 metres. So the day was spent as most days are, watching, cooking (Nick baked some really nice bread) and listening to some cheesy christmas tunes. Later on in the day, my christmas eve treat came in the form of a cockpit shower and during this we saw 2 Tropic Birds - exotic looking specimens with long, white pointed tail feathers. They were skwawking at each other and making such a racket.
For a while now, the wind has been consistently good in terms of direction and speed for us, but is forecast to reduce tomorrow and pick up again on Monday/Tuesday. It feels like we're eating up the miles and the boat literally seems to be loving the adventure!
Thought you might like to hear an outline of our Christmas Day. It will go like this: 8am wake Nick, make cuppa, open prezzies. 0900 check in and listen to festive Christmas morning net. 0930 Ellen goes to sleep, Nick embarks on dinner (catching fish). 1300 Ellen gets up and helps with the dinner preparations - peeling potatoes, opening the tin of peas etc. Open a bottle of wine. 1500 Eat dinner & finish off with delicious cake! Practise performance. 1800 Perform Christmas medley to Free Spirit. Rest of evening to be spent playing with new toys from Father Christmas and keeping a watch!
Lastly, a question for you all. Why does Father Christmas have 3 gardens? Ho, Ho, Ho!
Merry Christmas
Position at 15.10 UTC: 15deg 01'N, 47deg 45'W
Daily distance run: 140nm; cumulative distance: 2194:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 773nm
Conditions: NE 15-20 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1014 millibars
For a while now, the wind has been consistently good in terms of direction and speed for us, but is forecast to reduce tomorrow and pick up again on Monday/Tuesday. It feels like we're eating up the miles and the boat literally seems to be loving the adventure!
Thought you might like to hear an outline of our Christmas Day. It will go like this: 8am wake Nick, make cuppa, open prezzies. 0900 check in and listen to festive Christmas morning net. 0930 Ellen goes to sleep, Nick embarks on dinner (catching fish). 1300 Ellen gets up and helps with the dinner preparations - peeling potatoes, opening the tin of peas etc. Open a bottle of wine. 1500 Eat dinner & finish off with delicious cake! Practise performance. 1800 Perform Christmas medley to Free Spirit. Rest of evening to be spent playing with new toys from Father Christmas and keeping a watch!
Harmonica Practice
Merry Christmas
Position at 15.10 UTC: 15deg 01'N, 47deg 45'W
Daily distance run: 140nm; cumulative distance: 2194:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 773nm
Conditions: NE 15-20 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1014 millibars
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Less than a 1000 miles to go
As I write this entry, its a starry cloudless night and Kika is speeding her way west at 6.5 knots. At present the moon rises around midnight, so on nights like tonight I get to see a myriad of stars; on overcast nights, the darkness is so complete my eyes get tired trying to penetrate the night. The sea-me is quiet tonight, indicating there aren't any boats with radar out there, so I just need to worry about rowers, other yachts and ships without radar.
The wind eased off in the early hours of yesterday night, leaving the sails slamming in the swell (just as I was trying to sleep). It picked up again before dawn so Ellen could sleep and has stayed with us ever since.
We haven't touched the sails today, other than some chafe prevention - a tea-towel tied on the guard rail where the genoa sheet crosses. We've been sailing along comfortably at 5 - 7 knots. The sail configuration feels well balanced, so we're leaving well alone. We're accepting that we'll steer off our compass course as the wind changes direction in squalls. The deviation will only be brief, for once the squall passes, the wind vane will steer us back on track.
The decision of the day was whether to shake out our single reef in the main or continue under the first reef. I was about to take the reef out when we were hit by a brief squall. The decision was taken out of my hands; the reef stayed in.
A tour around the deck this morning produced two flying fish which had been out of the water for too long to revive. I'm sure the sound of one of them flapping on deck penetrated my sleep and I imagined parts of the rig about to collapse.
We mourned the loss of one of our solar showers today. We'd recently refilled it in the torrential rain of a few days ago and were looking forward to using it. We thought it was snugly stowed under the spray hood, but I think must have escaped during one of the more violet rolls in the night. Our water monitor, Ellen, thinks we can spare enough water for a Christmas eve shower and I could certainly do with one.
Kika's starting to show signs of the impending festivities in the saloon. We have two paper chains, an attempt at tinsel around the mast support (silver foil), two mouse balloons (a purchasing error - they have ears and when hung upside down look a little like udders.)
The chart shows some sea-mounts which we'll have to negotiation tomorrow. The charted depth changes from 2500m to 500m and 650m over the mounts, which can produce a choppy sea. On the trip to the Canaries we steered clear of some sea mounts we'd noticed, but Freespirit maintained their course and suffered from a bumpy night as they sailed over them. Based on that experience I think we'll try to avoid the mounts.
In preparation for Christmas I came up with the inspired idea of taking some of our canned fruit and covering them in chocolate. We both thought it was so good that we didn't need to save the unmelted pre-bought chocolates for Christmas day and decided to eat them before they too melted. I tested the idea today with a can of pineapple slices and a packet of diary milk. After slaving away in a hot roller coaster of a galley I duly produced chocolate covered canned pineapples and Ellen's verdict - "I like pineapple and I like chocolate, but I think the two should be kept separate", I wonder if Jamie Oliver suffered from such a critical taster when he was starting out. Undeterred I'm going to try coating the fruit cocktail can's contents tomorrow and perhaps presoak the fruit in some some alcohol for added festive flavour.
We've been rehearsing some Christmas entertainment, for "Radio Kika" - broadcasting to selected boats on Christmas day.
We heard on the radio net this morning that Iolanthe finally left Santa Cruz today for La Gomera. They were unluckily on a pontoon that collapsed in tropical storm Delta. They ended up sandwiched between the quay and all the other boats, as one by one the finger pontoons gave way and the wind pushed them onto Iolanthe. Since then they've been repairing the damage; their wind vane steering was bent out of recognition, their hull suffered from delamination and I think they had problems with their rig. Even with all this damage to put right Don still spared the time to advise us on our broken gate valve. We feel very lucky we picked a pontoon that more or less stayed together and happy that Iolanthe is finally able to set-off.
The forecast is good until Sunday, when there'll start to be a gradual decrease in the strength of the trade wind. It's too early to say if we'll still make a pre-New Year arrival in the Caribbean.
We've been discussing options for Christmas dinner. One option is dependant on us catching another fish. Reports abound of delicious fish meals on the radio net so we remain optimistic. Since we caught our dolphin fish we've learnt that they are also known as Mahi-Mahi and Dorado. Failing fish we might have to resort to some dish based around soya mince.
Position at 15.45 UTC: 15deg 16'N, 45deg 16'W
Daily distance run: 140nm; cumulative distance: 2054:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 913nm
Conditions: NE 15-20 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1014 millibars
The wind eased off in the early hours of yesterday night, leaving the sails slamming in the swell (just as I was trying to sleep). It picked up again before dawn so Ellen could sleep and has stayed with us ever since.
We haven't touched the sails today, other than some chafe prevention - a tea-towel tied on the guard rail where the genoa sheet crosses. We've been sailing along comfortably at 5 - 7 knots. The sail configuration feels well balanced, so we're leaving well alone. We're accepting that we'll steer off our compass course as the wind changes direction in squalls. The deviation will only be brief, for once the squall passes, the wind vane will steer us back on track.
The decision of the day was whether to shake out our single reef in the main or continue under the first reef. I was about to take the reef out when we were hit by a brief squall. The decision was taken out of my hands; the reef stayed in.
A tour around the deck this morning produced two flying fish which had been out of the water for too long to revive. I'm sure the sound of one of them flapping on deck penetrated my sleep and I imagined parts of the rig about to collapse.
We mourned the loss of one of our solar showers today. We'd recently refilled it in the torrential rain of a few days ago and were looking forward to using it. We thought it was snugly stowed under the spray hood, but I think must have escaped during one of the more violet rolls in the night. Our water monitor, Ellen, thinks we can spare enough water for a Christmas eve shower and I could certainly do with one.
Kika's starting to show signs of the impending festivities in the saloon. We have two paper chains, an attempt at tinsel around the mast support (silver foil), two mouse balloons (a purchasing error - they have ears and when hung upside down look a little like udders.)
The chart shows some sea-mounts which we'll have to negotiation tomorrow. The charted depth changes from 2500m to 500m and 650m over the mounts, which can produce a choppy sea. On the trip to the Canaries we steered clear of some sea mounts we'd noticed, but Freespirit maintained their course and suffered from a bumpy night as they sailed over them. Based on that experience I think we'll try to avoid the mounts.
In preparation for Christmas I came up with the inspired idea of taking some of our canned fruit and covering them in chocolate. We both thought it was so good that we didn't need to save the unmelted pre-bought chocolates for Christmas day and decided to eat them before they too melted. I tested the idea today with a can of pineapple slices and a packet of diary milk. After slaving away in a hot roller coaster of a galley I duly produced chocolate covered canned pineapples and Ellen's verdict - "I like pineapple and I like chocolate, but I think the two should be kept separate", I wonder if Jamie Oliver suffered from such a critical taster when he was starting out. Undeterred I'm going to try coating the fruit cocktail can's contents tomorrow and perhaps presoak the fruit in some some alcohol for added festive flavour.
We've been rehearsing some Christmas entertainment, for "Radio Kika" - broadcasting to selected boats on Christmas day.
We heard on the radio net this morning that Iolanthe finally left Santa Cruz today for La Gomera. They were unluckily on a pontoon that collapsed in tropical storm Delta. They ended up sandwiched between the quay and all the other boats, as one by one the finger pontoons gave way and the wind pushed them onto Iolanthe. Since then they've been repairing the damage; their wind vane steering was bent out of recognition, their hull suffered from delamination and I think they had problems with their rig. Even with all this damage to put right Don still spared the time to advise us on our broken gate valve. We feel very lucky we picked a pontoon that more or less stayed together and happy that Iolanthe is finally able to set-off.
The forecast is good until Sunday, when there'll start to be a gradual decrease in the strength of the trade wind. It's too early to say if we'll still make a pre-New Year arrival in the Caribbean.
We've been discussing options for Christmas dinner. One option is dependant on us catching another fish. Reports abound of delicious fish meals on the radio net so we remain optimistic. Since we caught our dolphin fish we've learnt that they are also known as Mahi-Mahi and Dorado. Failing fish we might have to resort to some dish based around soya mince.
Position at 15.45 UTC: 15deg 16'N, 45deg 16'W
Daily distance run: 140nm; cumulative distance: 2054:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 913nm
Conditions: NE 15-20 knots, moderate/rough sea, 1014 millibars
Friday, December 23, 2005
Best day's run so far
Despite the squalls and big waves, the last 24 hours have been quite exciting. We are getting close to passing the 1000 miles to go mark and every day more boats from our net are arriving in the Caribbean. AND, it's Christmas! We spent some time decorating the saloon today with paper chains made from old magazines. They look great! I shall never spend good money on paper chain kits again! Kika is still speeding along and the engine remains surplus to requirements at the moment. The towing generator is proving very efficient, along with the solar panel, so we don't even need to run the engine to recharge the batteries.
Tomorrow is going to be quite busy. We have to rehearse our Christmas performance for our friends on Free Spirit (and anyone else who cares to listen) and we are going to have a clamp down on squeaks and knocks. Every day, something new seems to be rolling around the cupboards - it's almost like all the tins and jars are taking it in turn to be very annoying. Often, you find the smallest thing can make the most irritating noise, such as an empty plastic egg box or books in the bookshelf. Curiously, both Nick and I have given up sleeping in the stern. He sleeps in the saloon and strangely, I find it most comfortable in the bow!
Another day with no sign of any other vessels, and not much wildlife either, just the odd flying fish. It's been lovely and sunny though so we're not complaining.
Position at 15.10 UTC: 15deg 20'N, 42deg 48'W
Daily distance run: 147nm; cumulative distance: 1914:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1053nm
Tomorrow is going to be quite busy. We have to rehearse our Christmas performance for our friends on Free Spirit (and anyone else who cares to listen) and we are going to have a clamp down on squeaks and knocks. Every day, something new seems to be rolling around the cupboards - it's almost like all the tins and jars are taking it in turn to be very annoying. Often, you find the smallest thing can make the most irritating noise, such as an empty plastic egg box or books in the bookshelf. Curiously, both Nick and I have given up sleeping in the stern. He sleeps in the saloon and strangely, I find it most comfortable in the bow!
Another day with no sign of any other vessels, and not much wildlife either, just the odd flying fish. It's been lovely and sunny though so we're not complaining.
Position at 15.10 UTC: 15deg 20'N, 42deg 48'W
Daily distance run: 147nm; cumulative distance: 1914:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1053nm
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Trade wind sailing
It's been an exhilarating and wild day's sailing under clear skies. The trade winds have reestablished themselves and we're well within them. The sea is still lumpy, but the wind has been consistent 18-25 knots and we've been making a good 6+knots under double reefed main and reefed twin head sails. It's great to be making good progress under sail again.
We crossed the 40deg west line today at 10am (ships time). Ed and Ellen who we met in Santa Cruz and shared much of their hard-won experience with us, gave us a leaving present with strict instructions not to open it until we'd crossed 40deg W. It's a DVD of their first sailing trip - over 20 years ago - we watched the first few sections in which they meet, build their boat, sail to the Bahamas and are just about to set for the Virgin Islands. It's a great present and we plan to watch the rest when we're at anchor in Martinique.
I've been keeping busy fixing odds and ends. One of the jobs on the never ending to-do list was to solve the intermittent problems with the wind instrument. The torrential rain over the last few days seems to have finally killed it - the inside face is covered with condensation making the dial barely readable. I've been putting off looking into the problem as I was concerned that the mast-head cable from the wind-dial might have been damaged when the inner forestay was fitted. Replacing the
cable would be time-consuming and difficult. Also we'd been content to use the mast-head wind indicator. Unfortunately the bimini now obscures our view of the mast-head so the ostrich approach to problem solving couldn't be sustained. Fortunately Kika's inventory included a spare wind instrument. It turned out the fault lay with the instrument and not with the cabling. It was straight-forward to swap the two. We have a working wind instrument once again - just hope the skies remain clear to give
the sealant a chance to cure.
While I was fiddling with wind instrument wiring I heared a buzzing sound which I hadn't registered before. New noises worry me. I want to find out what's making them otherwise I lie awake at night imagining any number of horrors. Normally I discover that the sound of the mast fracturing is in-fact a loose cabbage crashing around in a locker. This time I imagined the electronic autopilot's mptor spinning furiously out of control, which would be strange as the wind-vane steers us. Instead the noise turned out to be the buzz of the wind/water generator's dump resistors. The buzzing sound is a little like the fizzing you hear from high-voltage power-lines on a rainy day. It turned out that the batteries were approaching full charge and the regulator was diverting battery charging current to the dump resistors. We've had the water generator out for a few days and it looks as though it's managed to fully recharge the batteries. This means given decent winds there is no need to run the engine simply to recharge.
We've been having difficulty sending email. It turns out for some frequencies the mail software isn't tuning the transmission frequency correctly. We have a work around of using a more limited set of frequencies we know work and we'll wait until Martinique to download the latest software. In the meantime if we carefully choose the time and station we have no problem connecting.
At 37.5W we passed into another time-zone (utc-3), but we're still acclimatising to our previous change so will probably keep our current ship's time until after Christmas.
Tomorrow we plan to put up Christmas decorations in earnest, although first we'll have to make them out of silver foil and coloured paper - just like being back at school....
Position at 14.40 UTC: 15deg 26'N, 40deg 13'W
Daily distance run: 135nm; cumulative distance: 1767:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1200nm
Conditions: NE 15-20 knots, rough sea, 1012 millibars
We crossed the 40deg west line today at 10am (ships time). Ed and Ellen who we met in Santa Cruz and shared much of their hard-won experience with us, gave us a leaving present with strict instructions not to open it until we'd crossed 40deg W. It's a DVD of their first sailing trip - over 20 years ago - we watched the first few sections in which they meet, build their boat, sail to the Bahamas and are just about to set for the Virgin Islands. It's a great present and we plan to watch the rest when we're at anchor in Martinique.
Ed & Ellen in Tenerife
I've been keeping busy fixing odds and ends. One of the jobs on the never ending to-do list was to solve the intermittent problems with the wind instrument. The torrential rain over the last few days seems to have finally killed it - the inside face is covered with condensation making the dial barely readable. I've been putting off looking into the problem as I was concerned that the mast-head cable from the wind-dial might have been damaged when the inner forestay was fitted. Replacing the
cable would be time-consuming and difficult. Also we'd been content to use the mast-head wind indicator. Unfortunately the bimini now obscures our view of the mast-head so the ostrich approach to problem solving couldn't be sustained. Fortunately Kika's inventory included a spare wind instrument. It turned out the fault lay with the instrument and not with the cabling. It was straight-forward to swap the two. We have a working wind instrument once again - just hope the skies remain clear to give
the sealant a chance to cure.
While I was fiddling with wind instrument wiring I heared a buzzing sound which I hadn't registered before. New noises worry me. I want to find out what's making them otherwise I lie awake at night imagining any number of horrors. Normally I discover that the sound of the mast fracturing is in-fact a loose cabbage crashing around in a locker. This time I imagined the electronic autopilot's mptor spinning furiously out of control, which would be strange as the wind-vane steers us. Instead the noise turned out to be the buzz of the wind/water generator's dump resistors. The buzzing sound is a little like the fizzing you hear from high-voltage power-lines on a rainy day. It turned out that the batteries were approaching full charge and the regulator was diverting battery charging current to the dump resistors. We've had the water generator out for a few days and it looks as though it's managed to fully recharge the batteries. This means given decent winds there is no need to run the engine simply to recharge.
We've been having difficulty sending email. It turns out for some frequencies the mail software isn't tuning the transmission frequency correctly. We have a work around of using a more limited set of frequencies we know work and we'll wait until Martinique to download the latest software. In the meantime if we carefully choose the time and station we have no problem connecting.
At 37.5W we passed into another time-zone (utc-3), but we're still acclimatising to our previous change so will probably keep our current ship's time until after Christmas.
Tomorrow we plan to put up Christmas decorations in earnest, although first we'll have to make them out of silver foil and coloured paper - just like being back at school....
Position at 14.40 UTC: 15deg 26'N, 40deg 13'W
Daily distance run: 135nm; cumulative distance: 1767:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1200nm
Conditions: NE 15-20 knots, rough sea, 1012 millibars
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Squally days
Monday night began calm and Ellen was looking forward to a quiet watch, before long however Nick was woken by the violet motion of the boat and got up to find Ellen struggling to reduce sail.
The majority of the day was overcast and wet, with the skies clearing later in the afternoon, the squally conditions left a large lumpy sea.
Highlight of the day was Nick's scrumptious Shepherds Pie. Soya mince marinated in the remains of yesterday's red wine with a drop of Lea and Perins. Nothing from starboard locker insight.
11.45 utc Nick notes: The skies are now clear and the moon has yet to rise; the only light is from the 1000s of stars. We're making good progress at around 5.5 knots, on a lumpy sea, giving a slightly wild exhilarating ride; its great to hear the roar of Kika's bow wave making determined westerly progress. I've just spent an hour re-jigging the foresail rig; our new extendable pole snapped. No harm done and now it's clear that the pole was undersized for the job. Our single pole is holding out the windward genoa with the leeward genoa now unsupported. It appears to be working well, if anything the sails have a better shape then when they were both poled-out.
Position at 14.40 UTC: 15deg 36'N, 37deg 57'W
Daily distance run: 121nm; cumulative distance: 1632:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1331nm
Conditions: NE 15 knots, rough sea, 1012 millibars
The majority of the day was overcast and wet, with the skies clearing later in the afternoon, the squally conditions left a large lumpy sea.
Highlight of the day was Nick's scrumptious Shepherds Pie. Soya mince marinated in the remains of yesterday's red wine with a drop of Lea and Perins. Nothing from starboard locker insight.
11.45 utc Nick notes: The skies are now clear and the moon has yet to rise; the only light is from the 1000s of stars. We're making good progress at around 5.5 knots, on a lumpy sea, giving a slightly wild exhilarating ride; its great to hear the roar of Kika's bow wave making determined westerly progress. I've just spent an hour re-jigging the foresail rig; our new extendable pole snapped. No harm done and now it's clear that the pole was undersized for the job. Our single pole is holding out the windward genoa with the leeward genoa now unsupported. It appears to be working well, if anything the sails have a better shape then when they were both poled-out.
Position at 14.40 UTC: 15deg 36'N, 37deg 57'W
Daily distance run: 121nm; cumulative distance: 1632:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1331nm
Conditions: NE 15 knots, rough sea, 1012 millibars
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Half way point reached
At 10.00utc Monday we passed our half way point, 1476 nautical miles to go and distance covered 1479 nautical miles. We celebrated by opening a box of chocolates we'd bought for Christmas and bottle of wine. Unfortunately half the box had melted, which we ate trying to guess the chocolate from the constituent parts. We're saving the unmelted portion for Christmas, which no doubt they will have melted by then. Before we left, we decided that we wouldn't touch our wine and beer stash on the way across - its hard enough making your way across the rolling deck to the mast to reef the main when sober. A couple of glasses of wine therefore had a more powerful effect then usual and trips out of the cockpit were tackled with great caution.
Sunday/Monday night we must have sailed through a shoal of flying fish as the deck was littered with bodies in the morning. You hear flapping periodically but they tend to slip under things and can prove difficult to find on a dark night. Winds were fairly light from midnight onwards and at times the sails were flogging in the swell.
During the Monday/Tuesday evening the winds increased to around 15-20knots with gusts up-to 30-35knots. It feels as though we might have finally found the trades, although with the wind direction varying from the N through to E and the strength varying, a large proportion of the day and night have been spent altering course and changing or reefing and unreefing sails. At one stage during a squall in the night we were making 9.5knots, before we managed to reduce sail and bring Kika back under control.
Up until now we've been sending emails via a station in Belgium. However as we move W it becomes harder to get a good connection with Belgium and we've been experimenting with stations in Nova Scotia (Canada), Florida and Panama. The end result is that it takes us longer to find a station and frequency that works. I'm sure the propagation will improve the further W we head.
Position at 14.20 UTC(local noon):15deg 29 N 35deg 51 W
Daily distance run: 105nm; cumulative distance: 1511:
Engine hours: 5
Distance to go: ~ 1453nm
Conditions: NE 15 knots, moderate sea, 1011 millibars
Sunday/Monday night we must have sailed through a shoal of flying fish as the deck was littered with bodies in the morning. You hear flapping periodically but they tend to slip under things and can prove difficult to find on a dark night. Winds were fairly light from midnight onwards and at times the sails were flogging in the swell.
During the Monday/Tuesday evening the winds increased to around 15-20knots with gusts up-to 30-35knots. It feels as though we might have finally found the trades, although with the wind direction varying from the N through to E and the strength varying, a large proportion of the day and night have been spent altering course and changing or reefing and unreefing sails. At one stage during a squall in the night we were making 9.5knots, before we managed to reduce sail and bring Kika back under control.
Up until now we've been sending emails via a station in Belgium. However as we move W it becomes harder to get a good connection with Belgium and we've been experimenting with stations in Nova Scotia (Canada), Florida and Panama. The end result is that it takes us longer to find a station and frequency that works. I'm sure the propagation will improve the further W we head.
Position at 14.20 UTC(local noon):15deg 29 N 35deg 51 W
Daily distance run: 105nm; cumulative distance: 1511:
Engine hours: 5
Distance to go: ~ 1453nm
Conditions: NE 15 knots, moderate sea, 1011 millibars
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Washing in the rain
Since we arrived at the latitude of the Cape Verdes we've had blue skies with a blazing hot sun. However, yesterday and today we've had some significant cloud cover which came as a welcome break from the relentless heat of the past week. With a limited supply of fresh water on Kika, we've been rationing the showers. So rather than dreading the ominous black cloud we noticed heading our way this afternoon, we were looking forward to a refreshing shower. We reefed the main in anticipation of
some strong squally winds.
Initially the wind died, while the rain arrived in abundance. We showered and felt wonderfully clean - properly clean for the first time since leaving Tenerife. Then we plugged up the deck drains and laundered our washing, giving them a final rinse in the reservoir of water which had filled the reefed main. We then filled-up the solar showers. Then the wind arrived, but from the West, building a short uncomfortably choppy sea. We decided to hove-to, (a method for riding out adverse weather) and sheltered from the rain down-below - the temperature was more reminiscent of an English channel crossing in April than tropical sailing. It was as though we'd decided to pause our trip for a few hours to listen to the clattering of the rain and howling of the wind while we were snug in the saloon. Eventually the squall passed leaving a flat sea with no wind.
We've been listening to Herb on the SSB, he produces forecasts and routing advice for boats crossing the Atlantic. There are a few boats close to us who have logged on with Herb and we've been acting on his advice to them. Tonight he recommended that a boat at a similar latitiude to us should head north to 16degN to avoid an area of vicious squally weather. So we're deviating slightly from our rhumb line and heading to 16deg N.
Flying fish are becoming more numerous with 5-10 jumping and "flying" out of the water together. We suspect they're being chased by some tasty sizeable fish and the line would have been out, but for the hectic weather and sailing.
We've used the engine intermittently today, to make headway between the squalls. Wish we hadn't talked about not using the engine yesterday - it was too tempting for fate to resist.
Position at 14.23 UTC (local noon): 15deg 02'N 34deg 11'W.
Daily distance run: 121nm; cumulative distance: 1406:
Engine hours: ~0
Distance to go: ~ 1549nm
Conditions: NE 5-10 knots, slight sea, 1011 millibars
some strong squally winds.
Initially the wind died, while the rain arrived in abundance. We showered and felt wonderfully clean - properly clean for the first time since leaving Tenerife. Then we plugged up the deck drains and laundered our washing, giving them a final rinse in the reservoir of water which had filled the reefed main. We then filled-up the solar showers. Then the wind arrived, but from the West, building a short uncomfortably choppy sea. We decided to hove-to, (a method for riding out adverse weather) and sheltered from the rain down-below - the temperature was more reminiscent of an English channel crossing in April than tropical sailing. It was as though we'd decided to pause our trip for a few hours to listen to the clattering of the rain and howling of the wind while we were snug in the saloon. Eventually the squall passed leaving a flat sea with no wind.
We've been listening to Herb on the SSB, he produces forecasts and routing advice for boats crossing the Atlantic. There are a few boats close to us who have logged on with Herb and we've been acting on his advice to them. Tonight he recommended that a boat at a similar latitiude to us should head north to 16degN to avoid an area of vicious squally weather. So we're deviating slightly from our rhumb line and heading to 16deg N.
Flying fish are becoming more numerous with 5-10 jumping and "flying" out of the water together. We suspect they're being chased by some tasty sizeable fish and the line would have been out, but for the hectic weather and sailing.
We've used the engine intermittently today, to make headway between the squalls. Wish we hadn't talked about not using the engine yesterday - it was too tempting for fate to resist.
Position at 14.23 UTC (local noon): 15deg 02'N 34deg 11'W.
Daily distance run: 121nm; cumulative distance: 1406:
Engine hours: ~0
Distance to go: ~ 1549nm
Conditions: NE 5-10 knots, slight sea, 1011 millibars
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Ellen's sealegs arrive
The engine is a marvellous thing but undoubtedly smelly, noisy, hot and greedy! For all these reasons, we have tried to strictly limit its use and it's been very peaceful on board. Early yesterday morning, although the wind was light and our speed sometimes negligible, we soldiered on under sail until the wind picked up later in the day, hence the lowest daily run. We have been sailing along nicely all day, mindful of the rhumb line to Martinique, and checking George the wind-vane for any deviation. He can slyly steer us in the wrong direction for hours if the wind changes.
Last night was a much better watch for me, not least because it began with a delicious pasta dish courtesy of Skipper Nick in which he'd had the excellent idea of adding some Pedro to the sauce (Pedro is our spanish cured ham complete with his trotter). Fortunately, my stomach seemed amenable to the idea of food for the first time in days, and I haven't stopped since.
Boat time has now been altered to UT-2hours to correspond with our westerly route. As a result, both Nick and I have done watches of 7 hours each throughout the night (I'm yawning as I write!) It is now 0835 UT and we are sailing at 5+k with a NE wind of about 12k.
Position at 14.15 UTC: 15deg 06'N 32deg 10'W.
Daily distance run: ~90nm; cumulative distance: 1285:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1670nm
Conditions: N 12 knots, slight sea, 1011 millibars
Last night was a much better watch for me, not least because it began with a delicious pasta dish courtesy of Skipper Nick in which he'd had the excellent idea of adding some Pedro to the sauce (Pedro is our spanish cured ham complete with his trotter). Fortunately, my stomach seemed amenable to the idea of food for the first time in days, and I haven't stopped since.
Boat time has now been altered to UT-2hours to correspond with our westerly route. As a result, both Nick and I have done watches of 7 hours each throughout the night (I'm yawning as I write!) It is now 0835 UT and we are sailing at 5+k with a NE wind of about 12k.
Position at 14.15 UTC: 15deg 06'N 32deg 10'W.
Daily distance run: ~90nm; cumulative distance: 1285:
Engine hours: 0
Distance to go: ~ 1670nm
Conditions: N 12 knots, slight sea, 1011 millibars
Friday, December 16, 2005
Good sailing in light winds
We've been sailing since midnight Thursday. We had a comfortable night sailing on a beam-reach with full main and genoa, making around 4knots. This morning we substituted the genoa for the cruising chute to increase our speed in the light winds. Inevitably the wind veered to the NE and down came the cruising-chute exchanged for our twin-poled-out head-sails rig.
Other than sail changes we've been calculating distance remaining to Martinique. We're making good westerly progress and since we've crossed 30degW longitude we've moved to a new chart which includes the Caribbean. We've drawn a rhumb line
(a straight line) and calculated distance. Reassuringly the chart and GPS agree: 268deg true to Martinique, 1780 nautical miles at 13.55 today. The magnetic variation is 17deg W at our present longitude, so we're steering 285deg magnetic; as the magnetic variation is west its added to the true bearing - if we got this wrong we'd be 34deg out and probably end up in Brazil!
We'll definitely have Christmas aboard, but we're still hoping to arrive in 2005, although if the winds don't pick up soon, its going to be a close call.
We're in touch with Freespirit daily, they started a couple of days before us but put into the Cape Verdes for some minor repairs. Their pit stop cost them dearly as we've sneaked ahead of them, but we're both hoping to arrive before New Year.
Ellen's sea-sickness appears to be subsiding, but her appetite has vanished. I made some chocolate crispies this morning to try to coax her stomach back to normal service, but with only limited success - the crispies turned out on the soggy side of the crisp and they failed to restore her interest in food.
Position at 13.55 UTC: 15deg 12'N 30deg 23'W.
Daily distance run: ~115nm; cumulative distance: 1195:
Engine hours: 10
Distance to go: ~ 1780nm
Conditions: NE 10 knots, slight sea, 1010 millibars
elusive trade winds
Other than sail changes we've been calculating distance remaining to Martinique. We're making good westerly progress and since we've crossed 30degW longitude we've moved to a new chart which includes the Caribbean. We've drawn a rhumb line
(a straight line) and calculated distance. Reassuringly the chart and GPS agree: 268deg true to Martinique, 1780 nautical miles at 13.55 today. The magnetic variation is 17deg W at our present longitude, so we're steering 285deg magnetic; as the magnetic variation is west its added to the true bearing - if we got this wrong we'd be 34deg out and probably end up in Brazil!
We'll definitely have Christmas aboard, but we're still hoping to arrive in 2005, although if the winds don't pick up soon, its going to be a close call.
We're in touch with Freespirit daily, they started a couple of days before us but put into the Cape Verdes for some minor repairs. Their pit stop cost them dearly as we've sneaked ahead of them, but we're both hoping to arrive before New Year.
Ellen's sea-sickness appears to be subsiding, but her appetite has vanished. I made some chocolate crispies this morning to try to coax her stomach back to normal service, but with only limited success - the crispies turned out on the soggy side of the crisp and they failed to restore her interest in food.
Position at 13.55 UTC: 15deg 12'N 30deg 23'W.
Daily distance run: ~115nm; cumulative distance: 1195:
Engine hours: 10
Distance to go: ~ 1780nm
Conditions: NE 10 knots, slight sea, 1010 millibars
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