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Preparations
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In Spain we took
on our crew to help with the crossing - Donald Fraser. We met
Donald through the yachties 'dating service' crewseekers.co.uk. Donald has
built his own steel boat which he is thinking of taking over to the
Caribbean in a year or two, and so wanted a trial run - also to see
what sailing a catamaran is like. Donald proved a tremendous asset
on board - good company, hard working and a great sailor who taught
me a lot about sail trimming and made several good suggestions for
improving the setup on the boat. |
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We took on most of
our food in Gibraltar at the huge Safeway there. But veg and meat we
left until the Canaries to maximise its freshness. The Corte Ingles
in the Canaries vacuum packs meat so it will last the entire
crossing (we keep the freezer cool, but not frozen). Leonie
bought these crates so the vegetables could live outside and keep
fresher. The skipper was sniffy about cluttering up the cockpit, but
they did work rather well. |
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Las Palmas marina
in Gran Canaria is a hive of activity in December as dozens of
yachts prepare for the Atlantic crossing. It has good chandlers and
we were able to get most of the things we needed to ready the boat.
Just as well as the difficult run down from Gibraltar showed that we
needed to do a bit more work than originally expected. |
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Routing
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It may not look
much, but after the dire weather we had making the run from
Gibraltar to the Canaries, we were glad to see land. We put into
Isla Graciosa (just off Lanzarote) for a day's rest partly because
we could make limited progress against the winds and partly because
it was a day's journey earlier than Las Palmas. |
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It's a big sea out
there. As yachts slipped out of Las Palmas bound for the Caribbean
we watched thoughtfully knowing that we would soon be joining them. |
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Our route from the
Canaries to Barbados followed a well worn path. The general advice
is to work South West until the Trade Winds are encountered, before
turning West. |
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This jink in our
route was not planned. Tropical Storm Peter popped up and got in the
way, forcing us South - and even back towards Africa. It was not
until day 12 that we started to get true trade winds. |
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Another thing
which slowed us down was the extent to which the wind varied. With
the wind behind us we had to set our Autohelm to steer 'by the wind'
to avoid gybing the mainsail. This created a somewhat wandering
course and added miles to our overall route. |
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Weather
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Thank heaven for
our ability to get weatherfax via the radio. We spotted Tropical
Storm Peter when it was just a depression and jinked South to avoid
it - just in case it turned into something nasty, though the
forecasters said it would not. It never became a really dangerous
storm, but several boats got stopped by it and had a much more
uncomfortable time than we did. |
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This is what Trade
Wind clouds should look like - bringing day after day of steady
winds from an Easterly direction. |
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What we actually
got was winds from all kinds of directions. As this chart shows over
one third of our winds were from an unwanted direction, and when we
did get them from the NE they were light for some days. We
were only really Trade Wind sailing for the last week. |
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Squalls were a
regular feature, especially in the early part of the journey.
Fortunately the temperatures were soon in the high 20s so getting
soaked wasn't so bad for the skipper. |
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Communications
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Our Pactor modem
interfaces with the short wave radio and enabled us to receive email
all the way across.
It was hard work though, the connections are slow and unreliable
and the claimed 'roaming capability' with US partners proved not to
work. |
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We worked quite
hard to get good weather reports. There are a lot of stations
transmitting weather data but the atmospherics don't always work, so
you have to be attentive about getting the reports you need. |
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This is what a weatherfax
with decent Trade Winds should look like. Lots of nice little wind arrows
all pointing from the East to the West. Each feather indicates wind
speed - 10kts for a long feather, 5 for a short, so 2 long and 1
short means 25kts. |
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Trudi's Net became
a regular feature of the day. Here yachts tune in and give their
positions and weather reports, and get weather forecasts from Trudi
and specific advice from Gerard. It is only for ham radio operators,
so we could not take part, but it was fun to listen and plot the
positions of other boats (especially as we pulled ahead!). We called
several other boats on the VHF but rarely got a response - probably
because they were preserving power. |
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Running the boat
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We worked a 24
hour watch roster, and followed a suggestion of Donald's that we do
3 hours at night and 4 in the day. This worked really well and meant
that one had a reasonable chance of sleep - though never quite
enough, especially in bad weather. |
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Our main downwind
rig was the classic one used by Trade Winds sailors - the double
headsail, together with main. Being a cat we could fly this without
poles (though the windward genoa did tend to collapse and snap back
and poles might have been better). With this rig we were regularly
touching 13kts with winds under 20kts, and averaging 8kts with winds
of around 15. It's a powerful rig, but difficult to control as you
are running almost as fast as the waves - sometimes faster. The
rudders don't get a good grip, the boat slews around and always
feels close to the edge, so it's hardly relaxing. But runs of nearly
200 miles a day can't be bad. |
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2,700 miles of non
stop sailing is a lot of strain on a boat and you have to keep a
constant look out for gear that's beginning to fail. I put hose on
various parts of the rig to reduce chafe but we lost a brand new
furling line because of a few hours unexpected chafe caused by the
twin headsail rig. |
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Our Autohelm
started making grinding noises only 1,000 miles out. The prospect of
nearly 2,000 miles of hand steering was daunting. I had all the
Autohelm parts I had been told I might need, but predictably the
problem was with the ram bearing, for which I had no spare. An email
to Raymarine confirmed it could not be fixed under way but
fortunately it held out. |
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Water is always a
worry on long passages. Our tank holds only 300 litres as one of the
two tanks that would normally be used for water has been converted
to diesel, since we have a watermaker. As a precaution we put 140
litres of sterilised water in different containers and topped up the
tanks every day. We made about 2,000 litres of water on the
crossing, so I'm thankful we didn't have to make do with just the one tankfull! |
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Battery management
is a big issue. The solar panels keep up with demand during the day,
but the Autohelm is working 24/7 and then there are all the
instruments to run, the freezer, the navigation lights and
occasionally radar. We ran the generator about 4 hours a day. |
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Sights
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There are other boats out there. One night I had to ring up a ship and
ask them to budge over as they were in danger of running us down.
Another day a coaster came within half a mile. We saw few of the
other dozens of yachts that were out there with us, though one
morning I woke to find two within a couple of miles. |
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We saw gulls all
the way across. They were often hard to identify as we were too far
away. Another boat had an egret stay with them for several days,
eating and drinking on board. |
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Flying fish are a
common sight and notorious for being found on deck in the morning.
That happened to us a few times but not as often we expected.
These two turned up in bad weather when we didn't feel like a
fry-up! We also saw dolphins
but no whales. |
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Lots of little
bugs like these turned up about 1,000 miles out. Well, things like
this are a big event when you've nothing but sea and sky to look at! |
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Food
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Everyone says food
is very important on long crossings and we were fortunate in having
one of the best cooks in the Atlantic on board - Leonie. Fresh bread (baked
in the pressure cooker), cakes and other goodies kept streaming out
of the galley in addition to excellent meals. Our main meal was
lunch when we could all eat together. |
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Donald did his bit
to contribute to the larder, with a lovely tuna, this 36" 16lb
dorado (delicious)... |
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...and this 34"
wahoo/kingfish. Donald could have caught more, but we were only fishing for the
pot. |
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The wahoo has
savage teeth, so you have to be careful how you handle it. |
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Recreation
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When you are on
watch 8 hours a day and trying to sleep for 8 hours the others soon
go in tending sails, sending emails, telling tales and doing odd
jobs. We always lunched together and normally found time for a sundowner together,
while
reading was an ever-popular pastime, as well as doing crosswords. |
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Not sure if this
counts as recreation, but Donald was keen to learn how to use a
sextant and spent many (happy?) hours struggling with sights, tables
and calculations. Watching him tear his hair out did not encourage
the rest of us to have a go! |
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Landfall
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After 20 days at
sea (just under 19 full days in fact) we made landfall at Port St.
Charles on the North West Coast of Barbados. Health, Immigration and
Customs officers all wanted to come on board. They were perfectly
charming but one was wearing a skirt which made it difficult for her
to climb over the lifelines, so I had to disconnect them to
preserve her dignity! |
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Each day we kept a
log of our distance run. Our worst day we made good just 60 miles
towards our destination and our best was 192m. Our highest wind was
56kts and our maximum speed 15kts (though we think the log was
overestimating a little then). We regularly touched 13kts when we
had winds at the high end of Force 5. Our average speed for the run
was 6.0kts, not bad considering we had some days of very slight
winds (we motored for about 30 hours). In all we ran 3,000 miles
through the water to make good our course of 2,760 miles - the
direct line would have been about 2,600 miles. |
