Day 12. Welcomed Matt’s 32nd birthday in with a depression hanging over us. 36 hours of rain, storms, high winds & waves. Weather is calming, all is OK. 819 nm. 31.21n 71.03w
Atlantic Crossing Days 10-12: Birthday Celebrations on the High Seas
Saturday June 21, 2014
Some of you might be wondering how we’ve been getting our weather so far on this trip, probably actually feeling bad for us because we can’t seem to find winds to move us anywhere. The sad part is, we know exactly where they are. We just happen to not want to travel to those areas, mainly which are in the northern parts of the Atlantic, and you can refer back to my little freak out here to see why we’re so adamant about staying in the land of drifting versus following the route with more wind. As I said, we do know where the winds are, everyday, and that’s because we’ve been able to download forecast with Weather Fax, using our Single Sideband receiver. Similar to the single sideband radio, but we can only receive instead of transmit as well.
Every morning at 0800 UTC, Matt hooks up the SSB to my computer and fiddles with the dials until he can fine tune a station from Boston that transmits a fax audio signal to us for the next 24 and 48 hours*. The app on my computer deciphers the tone and turns it in into files that we can read, giving us a surface analysis of the entire Atlantic, as well as a separate wind and wave forecast. Each morning we read these forecast through the images, much the same way we’d look at the GRIB files through Passage Weather, to find out what the winds in our neck of the woods are going to be, and also tracking low pressure systems to make sure that we can stay out of their way. Here’s an example of both a surface analysis and a wind & wave forecast from our Weather Fax.** ***
While keeping an eye on these images for the past few days we’ve noticed that a cold front is heading our way, which is going to bring us some stronger winds and unfortunately, probably some bigger waves with it too. We’re trying not to be near the center of it, but our file is telling us that we can expect 15-20 knot winds and waves at 2 meters. Treating it just like we always have our Passage Weather forecast, we’re interpreting that to mean the winds will actually be anywhere in the 20-30 knot range. To be fair to our Weather Fax though, it was showing data spread all the way across the Atlantic, and what we were experiencing was local weather which is very hard to pinpoint down to a few degrees of latitude and longitude when you’re looking at an entire ocean. But why is it that winds always seem to be higher than forecast when they’re stronger than we want them, but never when they’re forecast for 5-10?
We’ve started to see an increase a little bit tonight in both wind and waves, already reaching those predicted 15-20 knots, and seas going from less than 1 meter, up to the 1-2 range. The pressure is starting to drop on our electronic barometer, and although I am enjoying logging these miles while we finally push along at 4.5 knots, I have to wonder what the next day or two will bring. Hold on to your hats, it looks like it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
*There’s also a 96 hour forecast that we can receive and sometimes go through the trouble of getting later in the afternoon.
** If you’re interested in learning more about using Weather Fax, tips and tricks, or a schedule of broadcast frequencies and times, check out a great post that our friends Brian and Stephanie wrote while they were making their own Atlantic crossing last year, here.
*** We’re also very lucky to have my dad, who’s the best for helping us out with this, send us reports from Passage Weather via a text message on our Sat phone, so we have multiple sources to confirm forecasts.
Sunday June 22, 2014
I had one goal this morning when I woke up. Something that’s been in the works for weeks now, and that was supposed to be decorating the cabin with balloons and streamers for Matt’s 32nd birthday while he slept. All the necessary items were shipped to me weeks ago by Matt mom and all I had to do was display them. Waking up and looking around though, I realized it was going to be a lot easier said than done.
The low pressure system and cold front that we had been watching on our Weather Fax for the past few days and were beginning to feel the effects of last night, was now in full swing. When Matt woke me up at 8 am I stumbled out of bed and poked my head out the companionway to see gray skies and building seas. Winds were now steady at 25-30 knots and waves appeared to be in the 8-10 ft range. Carrying on at 3.5 knots under a triple reefed main alone, we were looking at a long and uncomfortable day ahead. Even though I was planning on spending most of my shift in the horizontal position on the open settee below, I was still strapped into my harness in case I had to run out into the cockpit for any reason. To make matters worse, I didn’t have a seasickness patch on. After doing two straight runs of them I was not willing to become cross-eyed and I was weary about putting another one on. That’s ok, this is now 10 days at sea, by body should be able to handle a little motion, right? Wrong.
This is how my four hour morning shift passed: Lay on the settee where I had a wrist-watch next to me, and after dreading each time the clock hit the quarter of the hour, I would roll myself off the settee and onto the floor. Slowly standing up I’d walk the few steps to the companionway and rest for a moment while my dizzy head gained itself and I could trust my body to walk again. I’d go up 2-3 steps while still keeping myself in the companionway, check the wind speed, check the sail, check for boats, and then rush back down the stairs and throw myself back on the settee for the next 12 minutes until I had to do it again. It looks like the balloons were going to have to wait another day.
The rest of the afternoon and evening followed the same suit. When Matt woke up I took a short nap. When I woke up we cuddled together on the settee and I kept apologizing about what a horrible birthday he must be having, as if I had any control over the situation. Matt, not being one to care about birthdays, laughed it off. His grand birthday dinner which was supposed to be meatloaf ended up being a can of Progresso soup that he had to heat up himself because I couldn’t be bothered to move. Happy birthday my love, I’m glad you were able to spend it taking care of me.
Monday June 23, 2014
Today is day 13, and the madness is beginning to set in. Not because of our time at sea. Not because I have been almost two weeks from land. It is the damn sails and their consistent flapping. 10 knots of shifty wind behind us and they are flogging all over the place. Slamming in and slamming out. Every 5 damn seconds. I could even handle the snails pace of 2 knots we’re currently moving at if it weren’t for the racket going on above my head. It makes any kind of concentration impossible. Adding to the madness are the low but rolling swells that are passing through. Our limited speed is keeping us from riding on top of them, so we are left to bob between the crest and trough, constantly wallowing back and forth. My body can’t handle it. I can’t even take up the simple task of reading at the moment. You’d think that after 12 full days at sea it would be a non issue for me now. That any seasickness would be long gone due to the length of time we’ve already been out here. Granted though, the first 8-9 days were ‘at anchor’. How could my body grow accustomed to a bobbing sea that was never bobbing? Since the real motion hasn’t started until two or so days ago, I’m praying that I only have two more days left before we can be violently thrown about and I won’t even shrug a shoulder. I’m starting to miss being becalmed.
On a different note, a fun story that I forgot to mention yesterday on Matt’s birthday, and why we’re moving at just over 2 knots even though the wind hasn’t dwindled all the way out yet, is that we were hit with another surprise squall. Just when we were beginning to think that we were safe from them. It was late in the afternoon, and since it’s been cloudy for a few days now, we had to run the engine for an hour or so to charge the battery. Just as the winds were beginning to die down again and our speed was dropping, so it seemed like a win/win. I was hoping to be able to pencil in a 100 mile day, and the extra power from the engine was looking like it was going to get us there.
Just like our first night out from Miami, Matt was in the cockpit and I was down below when it came. It took me about 2.5 seconds to realize that something seemed wrong, and then about 10 more seconds to put my harness on and race up to the cockpit to see what it was. Once again Matt had the sheet for the headsail in his hands, which he was desperately trying to release slight tension on while trying to roll it in at the same time. Unlike last time though, between the two of us, we were able to gain control of the situation before I was going to spend another week making repairs to our genoa. With daylight on our side this time it wasn’t hard to see how many degrees we needed to fall off to put ourselves downwind and take pressure off the sails. The sheet to the headsail was passed to me, and still having it wrapped around the winch, without the full pressure on it now I was able to ease it little bits at a time while Matt furled it in from the other side of the cockpit.
Phew, crisis averted. But now, just as we were starting to let our guard down about squalls and thunderstorms, we don’t trust that we won’t be hit with one out of nowhere and have gone back to keeping minimal sail up, even in these 8-12 knot winds we’re now getting after the front.
Atlantic Crossing – Day 8
1 week in, 500 MN down. Progress is slow but spirits are high. Caught our first Mahi. All is OK. 32.00 n 76.58 w.
Atlantic Crossing Days 7-9: Catch & Relase
Wednesday June 18, 2012
We’re not alone out here! No, we didn’t find a buddy boat out on the water to enjoy sundowners with as we both sit and drift (although how cool would that be), but we’ve been joined by a family of fish that have taken to following us and using us as some sort of floating reef. Â We’re not really sure what kind if fish they are, although we did see them on Monday, little babies or adolescents with what looked like two mahis occasionally swimming by as too. Â Well, they’re still here with us. Â
With no wind again today we decided to try our hand one more time at fishing. Â According to our Cruiser’s Handbook of Fishing, drifting is almost as good as doing 5-6 knots when you’re trying to catch a mahi, so at least we’ve got that going for us. Â Pulling out all of our tackle we had a bunch of new lures to try out, thank to one of our readers, Ben, so we’d spend about 20 minutes with each one at the end of our hand real. Â All of the tiny fish that I’m now basically adopting and considering part of our family, would scurry to check out the lure each time it was plopped down in the water, but luckily had the good sense not to bite at it. Â It could be because the lures were about 2/3rds the size of their bodies, but that’s not here or there.
All afternoon we’d toss the lure out and reel it back in, as the peels to our oranges floated within eyesight of us since we’ve been cursed with no wind again today and have gone back to locking the wheel and drifting. Â There had been a few times that a larger mahi would swim by the boat but seemed to have no interest in the multiple lures we were tossing out, covering every color of the rainbow as we tried to attract him in, all to no avail. Â Then as evening fell and I was getting ready to prepare dinner, the mahi was back and we decided to take one last shot, wrapping sliced ham on the end of the lure to see if it was any more appealing to him.
The ham did help us to catch a trigger fish that was also hanging around the boat, but the mahi was impervious to it. Â And then…I threw some tomato scraps from my dinner prep out into the water and a second mahi came shooting out of nowhere to eat it up. Â I threw tomato slice after tomato slice into the water, and once that was what the mahi was expecting to hit the water in front of it, we threw the lure and it clamped right on. Â What the what? Â It’s actually on the lure? Â We were not actually expecting this and were fully unprepared. Â As Matt pulled the huge fish in, who was surprisingly not putting up any kind of fight, I scrambled around the cockpit trying to find our gaff hook. Â After Matt had been holding the fish on the side of the boat for a minute I ran back up to him with the gaff, and just as he was about to pass me the line to hold while he gaffed this golden meal in front of us, it was gone. Â Giving itself a few shakes it managed to release itself from from our line. Â Huh….there goes our dinner. Â I guess we’ll have to be quicker with the gaff hook next time.
 (sorry for the bad quality of photos, these were transferred from video)
Thursday June 19, 2012
worked on headsail, patch made me sick. Watched Law Abid Citz & Dex. Made chx tacos, winds 15-20 after 7 pm.
As much as I keep trying to put this task off, and without any good reason, since really, what am I doing anyway?, today was the day to hunker down and get as much work done as possible on the headsail so we can finally get it flying again. Â After about an hour of work though, just as I was about to stick it away for the rest of the day, just like I’ve been doing every day so far, I realized the reason I can’t work on it is that it’s hurting my eyes. Â I think it has to do with the scopolamine patch I’ve been wearing for seasickness. Â Usually I only have one on for 1-3 days and get to tear it off before any kind of side effects begin to mess with me, but I had a plan of keeping one on 24/7 for this trip so that no matter what kind of weather arose, I would be covered.
Nope, not going to work out anymore. Â These things are seriously messing with my head, so I decided to rip it off, possible seasickness be damned. Â Since the relief isn’t immediate though I was able to talk Matt into letting us use up our full battery banks to plug in the tv and watch a movie while we just kind of drift around out here. Â And I figured since we were lounging around watching a movie, what better time to break into my 64 oz bag of Skittles than now? Â I’m actually surprised I’ve lasted this long without tearing into them yet.
Tonight we’ve finally run out of already prepped meals, so I decided to try my hand at cooking again since conditions are so calm. Â Not knowing how much longer we’ll have flat seas though, I went through and made one of my favorite meals, tacos. Â I have no idea what it about me when I set out to make a meal, but I swear, each time I do it takes about 60-90 minutes. Â You’d think I was making my own tortillas or something. Â I guess I’m just really slow at chopping vegetables. Â When I finally had dinner on the table it was only 30 minutes before my bedtime. Â Guess who went to bed an extra 30 minutes late because they wanted to make sure they had a clean sink? Â This girl. Â Normally I’d let them sit until morning but winds have actually picked up into the 15-20 knot range, and for once I’m hoping that because we’re going so fast I won’t be able to get them down tomorrow. Â I think we could use a little speed in our lives right now.
Friday June 20, 2014
It’s taken me a week worth of work, with nothing but time on my hands, but I’ve finally gotten the headsail finished. I’m still amazed at my personal level of laziness and keep thinking to myself that faced with the same project back at anchor, I would have completed it in two days max. With taking plenty of breaks in between. I really do blame the scopolamine patch for messing with my head and my vision. Things were getting to the point that even though I haven’t touched my contact lenses and have been wearing my glasses since the day we left, I was starting to do ALL my tasks with my glasses resting on top of my hair, a makeshift headband, since putting them on made my eyes almost cross, as if my horrible prescription was non-existent and I was trying to view the world through Mr. Magoo’s goggles.
Through an hour here and an hour there though, we are back with our genoa, and holy crap, I tell tell an immediate change. Our speed went from it’s usual 2.5 knots up to 3.5. There is hope after all. Now if only one of us had the guts to jump in for an mid-ocean bottom cleaning, we could probably gain that other half knot of speed and begin traveling at our conservative estimate of 4 knots. At least our ride is still as comfortable as ever. Even with the extra knot we still feel like we’re in a fairly protected anchorage. Which means I might still be able to cook a few decent meals on this trip before resorting to cans of Progresso, or worse, Chef Boyardee.
Atlantic Crossing – Day 6
Stuck becalmed/running from t-storms & 60KT wind. Tore headsail but can
fix. Very few miles made(397 miles). 31.11N 78.42W. We are A ok
Atlantic Crossing Days 4-6: Roads? Where We’re Going, We don’t Need Roads.
Sunday June 15, 2014
There aren’t many milestones on a trip like this (are there?), so I was very excited this morning when we hit one of them. Time to turn east. No more following the coast of the US, but time to break off and venture into the open ocean, further than we’ve ever gone before. At least, that was the plan. Based on our trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Bimini two months ago I knew that just ‘pointing east’ would not be that easy. Not when you’re fighting against one of the world’s strongest currents. I knew that even with our bow pointed at 90 degrees we’d probably only hold a course of 45. I had the idea last night of telling Matt that we should do just that, slowly making our way NE out of the stream until we could break free of it, but worries about the weather seemed more important and I wanted to wait until our 4 am download of the Weatherfax report before making any decisions to get ourselves further from land.
So just as predicted, at 8:15 this morning when we turned east, our course was between 55-60 degrees. Considering that we were actually moving more east than north I was satisfied with it. Â Speed was still minimal at just over 3 knots, but I was ready to sacrifice about a day of getting anywhere for meandering, and pick it back up once we were in current free waters. I had no idea how lucky we were the first few hours of the morning to be making that kind of speed and that kind of heading. When Matt woke up at noon we were down to 2.5 knots. By three o’clock we were down to 2 knots, and barely holding a course of 35 degrees. So maybe this day of pitiful speed was about to turn into a day and a half. That’s ok. With so many miles and weeks ahead of us, the loss of a half day doesn’t seem quite as dire as it used to, back in the days when we could calculate down to within an hour or two of when we should be arriving to a place.
Trying to take my mind off our pathetic pace and do something I little productive I moved myself below deck for a few hours in the afternoon to work on the headsail. We finally took it down yesterday and found out there is some mending needed, but it’s only on the leech of the sail, and that’s good. Even if it is the entire leech, where the colored fabric needs to be reattached to the sail.
If I have one thing to be lucky about with these light winds it’s that it’s also making the seas quite calm and therefore not giving me issues for trying to concentrate on things like sewing. No motion sickness for this girl. Boredom though?, big problem. For some reason I can’t hold my attention to anything for long while we’re traveling. I don’t know what the difference is from being at anchor, but my attention span for any single project lately seems to be about one hour. Looks like this sail is going to take just a few days to repair.
For the third night in a row tonight I haven’t been able to go to bed at my scheduled time of 8:00 and stay there. Once more there were thunderstorms off in the distance and we wanted to be prepared if they suddenly came up on us. Which meant that instead of wrapping myself up in a blanket in my bunk I was instead wrapped up in fowl weather gear out in the cockpit. Other than being awake when I should have been sleeping though, the night was beautiful. Where we were sitting the weather was calm and we bobbed around on glassy waters while the stars and moon reflected in them. Sprawling out in the cockpit and kicking our feet up while we gazed at the stars above us, it was actually a nice chance to enjoy each other’s company and actually have a real conversation that had nothing to do with speed or sail changes. An hour later we realized the storm was moving behind us and it was safe for me to go back to bed. Turning the conversation back to speed, we decided this 2 knots just wasn’t doing it for us and it would be worth it to turn on the engine and try and motor the rest of the way out of the stream. Here’s to better sailing and pointing in the days to come.
Monday June 16, 2014
I shouldn’t have spoken too soon. Why did I speak too soon??!! Oh, what I wouldn’t give right now to be able to maintain 2.5 knots. The forward momentum! The breeze(ish) in my hair! No, there is no longer any of that. When I woke up this morning at 8 and made my way to the cockpit I found out we were not moving at all. Alright, that might not be completely true. We were drifting. Honest to God, autopilot had to be turned off because we couldn’t hold a course, drifting. Do you know what boat speed our autopilot stops working at? 1.5 knots. Yes, we couldn’t even hold 1.5 knots. A little worse than we’d be doing with the genoa since we’re just working with our staysail forward now, but I mean, come on!
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning the wind had dwindled out to 3-5 knots. I’m honestly not sure I’ve ever even seen it that low while out on the water. Those truly windless days actually exist? I kind of wanted to cry. Here I was hoping for a 30 day passage to the Azores and now on day 5, after having already only made 300 miles in the past 4, we were d-r-i-f-t-i-n-g. At this rate, we’ll never get there. To say that I wanted to gain speed in anyway possible was a little bit of an understatement. When Matt woke up from his afternoon shift I begged him to put the spinnaker up, which he normally gets very excited to do anyway, so we ran it up the hatch and 15 minutes later had it’s bright colors flying above us and moving us along at those 2.5 knots I had been craving earlier. With only 5-6 knots of wind behind us I was quite content to take what I could get. Until the storm clouds started coming in. Again.
Through the next few hours we raised the spinnaker, lowered the spinnaker, raised it again, lowered it again, and tried our our stormsail just for fun while a myriad of different storms swept over us, sometimes bringing the wind up to 20-25 knots while they lasted, but ultimately leaving us with nothing in their wake. At some point in the afternoon we became lazy with the constant sail changes and just went back to drifting, while both the main and staysail flogged in the lack of wind.
While having dinner tonight out in the cockpit while I seriously contemplated motoring up to Charleston to refuel and wait for a window that actually has wind to propel us across the ocean, I saw a group of dark bumps surfacing out of the water. Getting super excited, because we’ve never spotted any before, I yelled out “Whales!!†as my bowl of food almost clattered into my lap. Down to the cabin and back to the cockpit in a flash, I had the binnoculars in my hands and was quickly searching the water for the same spot I had seen movement. Hmmmm, were these wales? We were still some distance away, and they don’t quite looks as massive as I thought they might be, but dolphins don’t just hang out at the surface not doing anything, right? Matt and I passed the binoculars back and forth between each other for the next twenty minutes but had to shrug our shoulders in defeat. I guess we’ll never know for sure what was out there or if we can add a whale sighting to our list of creatures from the sea.
**Editors note: After looking up a few different types of whales online once arriving to land, I’m pretty sure they were Minke whales. So yes, we did actually have our first whale sighting!
Tuesday June 17, 2014
I will fully admit it. After 1 month of sitting at anchor in Miami and then spending the last four or so days traveling with winds under 10 knots, when they jumped up to 12 today my stomach started to clench. What if they get…higher? What if they get up to 20? Ugh, I hate what I’ve become. We’ve spent the past 18 months cruising in nothing but 20-30 knot winds, constantly, and here I was frightened that we might top out in the high teens. Dios mio!, what might become of us in those kind of conditions? I blame all these sudden and forceful storms that we’ve been getting. Already my brain is beginning to associate any kind of gust with a gale that’s going to take the boat down. Or maybe in the recesses of my mind I know that my comfortable passage complete with moving about the boat as if we are at anchor will be disturbed, and it can’t stand the thought. But the gales make me sound much tougher, so I’ll go with that.
This afternoon Matt and I found ourselves participating in our new favorite pastime of this crossing so far. Trying to decipher the clouds. I may have mentioned in a earlier post how much I’d been studying weather and weather patterns before we left Miami, and I’ve found that clouds can be big indicators of current conditions and what’s to come. I had been so sure of my new skill that two evenings ago I saw a string of mares tales coming from the west and proudly pointed out to Matt that we should see deteriorating weather, coming from that direction, in the next 12-24 hours. Most likely that a front was headed our way. So we waited, prepared, kept an eye on the sky, but other than a few passing showers it never changed from it’s brilliant blue. What the…? Not that I’m sad we never got the bad weather supposedly heading our way, but I had been so sure, according to all the books and articles I had read.
Time to break out the big guns. If I couldn’t figure it out just by looking up and guessing, I was going to match them to a cloud chart I had on board. A large sheet of paper that had photographs of just about every type of cloud along with a quick description of it. Couple that with a notebook full of information I had complied way back in Michigan of what kind of weather each of these clouds brings, and it would be a foolproof plan to see what we could expect in the next day or two.
You know what I found out? That while sitting on your boat and looking up to the sky, Altocumulus and Cirrocumulus clouds can look very similar. According to my guides, Altocumulus will usually precede a cold front, bringing crappy weather your way, and Cirrocumulus usually means fair weather. So we were still completely confounded.
Then I realized I’ve been doing this all wrong. I don’t need to try and read the clouds based on how they appear to me in the sky. I need to make a proposal to the great minds of the universe to come up with the best invention ever. Are you ready for it?: AIS For Clouds. Imagine being able to select a cloud on your chart and be able to see it’s speed, it’s direction, and if it’s actually going to pass over you. To know what kind of winds are coming your way, and to be able to exactly identify it to see what kind of weather is on the way.
Yes, I know that this will never happen, or if it could, it would be years and years and years away. But a sailor can dream……
Atlantic Crossing Days 2 & 3: Be Careful what You Wish For
Friday 6/13/14
It turns out Matt was right when he said a few hours sleep would bring about a bit of perspective. Not only were last night’s events more distant and a little less terrifying in my mind when I woke up, but it also came with the realization of how much I do want to get to Europe and what comforts I’m willing to sacrifice to get there. It did not mean that my wishes would give us an expedient arrival though. Even though I told him to turn the bow north again as I went to bed (Europe if I changed my mind or New York if I still felt the same) we should have been getting pushed along by the Gulf Stream all night, we somehow must have wandered out if it for we had only gone a distance of about 12 miles in the 4 hours I had been sleeping. The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent pointing the bow NE and and trying to find our ticket back into a speedy ride north.
Later in the afternoon we were convinced that we may have found the outer edges of it as our speed jumped to a whopping 4.5 knots as a gentle breeze of 7 knots came from behind. When both of us were actually up for the afternoon after trading hours of sleep shifts and naps, we turned to something that’s hopefully going to keep us entertained every few days for the remainder of the trip. Back in Miami I had drafted Matt’s mom to put together a series of small gifts to be opened by us during the passage. She had come through with flying colors and sent us a bag full of wrapped presents to be opened every five days, beginning on day two, for the next thirty-seven days. Just as excited as if it were Christmas morning, I tore open the first gift to find two books of puzzles and a little bag of treats containing things like mini candy bars, gumballs, and single serve instant coffee. I set about right away on the puzzles while Matt decided that he had been awake entirely too long and needed another nap.
Compared to what our other passages had been, and with the exception of the storm last night, we’ve had nothing but light winds and calm waters. By late afternoon I was praying for some kind of wind to pick up and speed us along, but as the saying goes, ‘Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true’. No sooner had I started to lament our lack of wind power when a set of dark clouds formed off to our northeast. Winds were still steady out of the south and I assumed this dark mass would be coming nowhere near us, until 20 minutes later when the winds shifted to the north. Again.
Now these are the kind of situations I hate. Everything was still calm…for the moment. Do I bother waking Matt and telling him that something might be coming our way?, or wait until that ‘oh shit’ moment where it’s too late and I can no longer handle it on my own? Luckily I didn’t have to worry, for two reasons. Matt had just roused himself out of bed as I was contemplating what actions I should take, and the dark mass of clouds moved just enough to our east that we only caught the very tail of the storm, winds only jumping into the high teens and nothing more.
The late afternoon and evening remained calm, and once again we were able to enjoy a nice dinner out in the cockpit. Â One I would have been fully capable of making from scratch since the water around us was so calm that it was like being at anchor and my seasickness would have in no way been aggravated, but since we now had six days of meals already prepared I just threw a few slices of our remaining Domino’s pizza in the over and filled our glasses with Coke. Â Everything was pointing toward us continuing to have a calm night where I could actually sleep through my entire shift without storms blowing our way, but once again, that was not the case. Â Just as the sky was growing dark and I was finishing up the dishes before I hopped into bed, the sky in front of us was alight with lightning. Â F*@k. Â Just after that, our VHF began it’s loud siren alerting us to bad weather, and after last night’s episode we were glued to each word, listening to the county names and trying to find them on our charts to see what was coming our way.
Since I was caught so off guard last night with our storm which left me scrambling into the cockpit in the midst of all hell breaking loose without any clothes or a harness attached to me, I decided tonight would not be a repeat performance. Â Putting on my foul weather gear and a harness, I arranged a group of cushions and pillows on the floor as a makeshift bed and tried my best to go to sleep. Â Every time I heard the wind gust up I would whisk up the companionway steps to see what was happening. Â Both of our nerves were on terror alert high. Â But…since we were prepared this time, nothing came of it. Â By the time my shift began at midnight all the dark clouds had disappeared and I was able to enjoy my shift in relative peace, where my only worry was the speed and direction of the dozens of tankers out on the water with us.
 It’s a party out here on the Gulf Stream!
Saturday June 14, 2014
We were comfortably sitting in the cockpit enjoying our afternoon and trying to make our way north when that now dreadful and heart thumping siren went off from our VHF, signaling more severe weather in the listening area. Being 30 miles off shore now we were starting to lose the signal just a little bit and had the volume all the way up as we strained to hear the forecast. Beginning to catch the words, I wish we hadn’t, although ingnorance isn’t always bliss. ‘Destructive winds, 50-60 knots, 52 knots recorded over land, seek shelter inside a sound structure’. These were the words broadcasting themselves into our little cockpit. Did they just say destructive winds? Seek shelter inside a building? If they were giving those kind of instructions on land, what the hell was to become of us in our little 34 ft boat, out to sea with nothing to protect us?
Catching the names of towns that were being listed we figured out that yes, we were just east of these areas, and yes, this storm was headed right our way. Again, I looked around and noticed that if we were to get hit, our saving grace would be the fact that we were once more starting with clam seas. The oncoming storm might build them up, but not much, so luckily the winds would be our only concern. Over the next hour we watched the sky turn from bright blue to partially overcast on the horizon. At first it didn’t look like much, more of a haze than anything, but as it came within 10 miles, the menacing traits came along with it. Up close and personal, we could now well make out that this was a shelf cloud, and it spanned the horizon for as far as we could see. Even the power boats had no way of racing around this one. If you check the image of the shelf cloud we were just able to skirt around yesterday, this one extended even further out, with the rolling clouds on top appearing as if they were extending out miles to us. I took a spot behind the wheel and clipped my harness in while refusing Matt’s offers for a jacket, or even to take my spot while he sat next to the companionway and listened to Georgie’s meows while she was locked down below. It is the best to see the website for the best jackets and vests.
Turning on the radar to judge when it would hit us along with how long it would last, we brought down all sails when it was within just a few miles of us and decided the best course of action would be to motor right into it. The winds hit us before the rain, a sudden and angry gust causing our guages to jump from 13 knots to 58 in one swift blow. The intent had been to point the bow directly into the wind, but once the winds started in, even with the wheel hard over I was struggling to keep us within 45 degrees of it. Small whitecaps started to roll on the water, and, shortly after, the rain set in, pelting me with a ferocious force as the winds subsided into the mid 40’s and stayed there. Based on how much rain was showing on our radar, and the broadcast’s stated speed of which the storm was moving at, I figured it would all blow over in 30 minutes, and as uncomfortable as it was I could handle that.
Keeping the wheel hard over, I fought to keep our spot 45 degrees into the wind instead of being pushed beam into it. That work wasn’t so hard, but as the rain battered down on me at well above gale forces, I began to regret turning down the jacket from Matt. My body wasn’t too bad though, it was mostly my face that was stinging from the drops, my eyes luckily protected by the glasses that were now fogging up and blinding me. It wasn’t too bad, and I counted down the minutes as the little whitecaps began to turn into small swells, all the while thinking to myself, ‘Only 20,…15,…,10 more minutes. You can do this.’ But then the original five miles of storm in front of us extended into five more. The pink blob on the radar just wouldn’t end. Jesus Christ, 30 more minutes of this? I give up. Finally relenting my position behind the wheel, I let Matt slide in as I sought shelter under the dodger from the wind and rain. Also slipping a jacket over my wet body I was immediately warmed up and begged myself to answer the question of why I always put myself through so much unnecessary torture. Oh Captain, my captain…I guess I feel I should be the one to experience the brunt of it all.
As soon as those next 30 minutes were up the storm was gone with it, and we were back to our measly ten knots of wind. Â Back to going nowhere.
Georgie’s so proud of providing her own meals when a flying fish ends up on deck.
Atlantic Crossing Day 1: Never Leave For a Passage on Thursday the 12th
Thursday June 12, 2014
They say that you should never leave on passage on a Friday. Sailor’s supersition that it’s bad luck. We were almost caught leaving for our Atlantic crossing on Friday the 13th. Does that make it doubly worse? Or do the two negatives cancel each other out and make a positive? I wasn’t sure and made SURE that we busted our butts so that we wouldn’t have to find out, leaving one day earlier on Thursday the 12th instead. I think we would have been better off taking our chances with Friday the 13th…
The morning should have started with relaxing, enjoying our last cup of coffee for the next month where we didn’t have to hold everything down on the counter to make sure it didn’t slide off, before completing last minute projects like stowing everything away and deflating the dinghy. It did not start like that. Just as we were going to bed last night we realized that the fitting on our bow water tank had broken, leaking all of it’s contents into our bilge. Since this was to be our back-up source of water for our crossing, only taking from and refilling our port water tank, this was an issue we needed to fix right away.
The new goal was to wake up first thing in the morning and walk to the local Ace Hardware to pick up the replacement part. Knowing that we were already going to get very little sleep as it was, since we had stayed up well past midnight since we had pushed off all that evening’s projects to enjoy a hot pizza and an episode of Sherlock, I was vexed, and truthfully, terrified, at the thunderstorm of epic proportions that rolled through our anchorage at 5 am, bringing with it 50 knot winds and leaving me wondering if something similar could roll through the next night while we were on passage. Letting ourselves sleep in just a little bit longer we ended up with a late start to our morning, but we were back to the boat with the issue fixed by 11 am. The other small projects took a little longer than we anticipated, as they always do, and the anchor wasn’t weighed until 1 pm. Spending another 45 minutes circling the anchorage as we calibrated our autopilot we were finally off, exiting the Government Cut at Miami just after 3 pm.
Even though the sun was shinning down on us on our way out it didn’t take long for the clouds to roll in, and we watched Miami become consumed by darkness and rain which we were soon swallowed up by as well. It wasn’t anything more than a nice rain shower though, and winds continued to stay around 10 knots and we glided up the Gulf Stream in glass waters at 5 knots under headsail alone. Based on sheer excitement about the journey ahead of us, we even frolicked out in the rain for a bit (or Matt doing whatever the manly term for that would be) while taking in a free shower during the downpour. Things cleared up a few hours later as we passed Ft. Lauderdale and we even managed to catch a decent sunset while enjoying left over pizza in the cockpit.
Before I even knew it my eight o’clock bedtime was before me and I was more than ready for it. I’ve learned that the key to a good first night on passage for myself is collecting no sleep the night before we leave so I am more than ready to conk out at such an early hour. Sliding in behind the lee cloth that we’d set up on the starboard bunk in the salon, I slid easily into sleep. Something that normally takes me three hours to do our first night out.
I had been lying in my bunk for just over an hour when I heard a loud ruckus on deck. I knew it was Matt messing with the headsail, and even though all sounds are amplified below deck, this seemed much louder and as if something were wrong. Jumping out of bed I raced over the companionway boards and into the cockpit. It was immediately evident to me that we were in trouble. I looked at the chartplotter to find winds nearing 60 knots and we were being pushed so far over that our rail was in the water. Matt was feverently working to get the headsail rolled in, but had enough good sense to yell at me to get back in the boat and get a harness on before I could topple out the boat and into the Gulf Stream.
Rushing back below deck I tore through the cabinet to search for our second harness. Usually we never have both out at the same time unless we know bad weather is coming, normally just trading off the one harness between ourselves, but this storm came upon us so suddenly that we barely had time to react.
Finding the second harness I raced once more into the companionway where the headsail was still being overpowered by winds that were now sustained in the upper 40’s. With the furling sheet in hand, Matt was still trying to save the sail by bringing it in, asking me to gently release the sheet for the headsail still wrapped around the winch. The strain on the line was so heavy that I couldn’t even loosen it from the teeth that hold it in place, all the while trying my best to work it free while we’re still heeled all the way over in Force 9-10 winds. Finally Matt realized this was not going to work and it was very likely we’d tear the sail in half while working to winch it in. Looking up through the dark and thinking that we’d already blown it out he slid over to my spot he released the sheet from the winch and let it flap in the wind while he quickly grabbed the furling sheet back to get it in. Eventually the sail was rolled in, though the lines were a knotted and tangled mess that would have to be saved for another day.
Now at hand we had to deal with winds that were still blowing in the 45-50 knot range and showed no signs of relenting. Not wanting to keep any of the sails up we turned ourselves downwind and began to ride the storm out with bare poles as we were pushed along at two knots of speed. Â The winds were coming directly out of the north which meant that we were now moving south, working against the current of the Gulf Stream, had absolutely no sail up, no engine on, and were still making that kind of forward progress. Â Bolts of white and pink lightning were crashing down on each side of us as buckets of rain began to pour down. Â The whole experience was miserable and I think both of us began to start rethinking this whole ocean crossing. Â As I stood behind the wheel to hand steer us, Matt sat clipped in under the dodger and confessed, “This just isn’t for me. Â I can’t do this anymore.” Â Can’t do an ocean crossing? Â Or can’t do cruising?
Seeing that we were only 12 miles north of Ft. Lauderdale we tried to start setting a course there to ease our nerves and see what steps we wanted to take next. Â As I tried to keep us ass to the waves, I was going just by feel for the wind direction and slipped up a few times where we took the building waves on at a bad angle and they’d crash over the stern and into the cockpit, soaking me in the process. Â Yes, a break from cruising sounds pretty good right now. Â Immediately my mind went to us leaving the boat in Ft. Lauderdale while we hopped a plane to Guatemala to backpack for a few weeks while visiting friends, and then returning to Michigan for the rest of summer to spend it with friends and family. Â It all sounded so tantalizing that it was probably one of the only things keeping me from breaking down while we continued to fight this monstrous storm which was showing no signs of letting up.
For another hour I stood behind the wheel, knees growing weak and teeth chattering until the winds finally let up into the mid 30’s and the autopilot was able to go back into use. Â Somehow I was still wired even though I’d only gathered about 5 hours of sleep in the last 30 hours, and sent Matt to bed while we pushed on toward Ft. Lauderdale with the engine on, still fighting the Gulf Stream and moving at 2 knots. Â Two hours later, while he was resting his nerves and gaining a little perspective while I stood awake and continued to daydream of a life back on land, he came to relieve me and discuss our rash decision. Â By this point I was beyond exhausted and finally started to break down.
I complained about how it seems like everything for the past six months has been working against us and maybe this is a sign that we should stop before something really awful happened. Â He told me to grab a few hours of sleep, but for him, removing himself from the situation for a little bit made him realize that it was just frazzled nerves that made him want to quit before, but he thought that moving forward and continuing our crossing was still the right decision and what we really do want. Â He made the comment that it was extremely unlikely that we’d go through anything like that again and the worst of it was probably out of the way. Â We might hit the random storm here or there in the future, but none of it would likely be worse that what we’ve already seen in our cruising history. Â Hmmm. Â Guatemala, Lake Michigan, friends, family…….or 3,000 miles of open ocean and uncertainty ahead. Â I think a few hours of sleep might be necessary to make that decision.
Getting Rid of those Leaks….Hopefully?
Friday June 6, 2014
*I wish I could write more about this project, and I’ll probably go back later and add more to it, but here I sit on the eve of our departure for the Azores and I had to get something down so that you don’t just wonder why we’ve disappeared out of the blue.
Last Thursday and Friday we tackled the project of rebedding one of our starboard side ports, and the forward hatch. Â Who would have thought that getting all of the old caulk out would be the easy part? Â That only took about two hours, we each took on one area, and then after a visit to the post office to find out that yet another package (filled with fuel filters) has now gone missing, we came back in the late afternoon to finish the job of getting our new 3M 4000 on there. Â That should stop any leaks we previously had coming in! Â Turns out though, that clean up with that stuff is a total b*tch.
Only smearing it around at first we found out that if left alone for an hour or so it gets a little tacky and is then easier to remove. Â Waiting for the second port to dry, our one hour break turned into a two hour nap (yeah, we were a little tired after our day of finally working on something), and when we woke up the sun was already going down. Â Which means that I got to spend a good portion of Friday trying to remove it once it had fully hardened. Â A lot more work when you have to be extra mindful of what you’re scraping off.
Let’s just hope that if our previous leaks did happen to be coming from one of those two areas, we didn’t just make the problem worse while trying to fix it. Â Looks like we’ll have the chance to find out soon enough.
When Everything Works Against You, it Sometimes all Works Out
Wednesday June 4, 2014
It’s suffice to say we should have been gone by now. Â In the cruising world it’s almost impossible to adhere to a schedule, but we still like to when we can. Â You can see that by the way we rushed ourselves through the Bahamas this year. Â We’re also the kind of people that would rather show up early than late. Â So the fact that we’re still sitting in Miami 4 days after our intended departure date, and still have about 5 days minimum before we can think of leaving, is a bit of an oddity for us. Â That’s because we seem to have everything working against us right now. Â Almost every aspect that depends on us being able to get out is being held up.
At the moment, we have a multitude of things preventing us from leaving. Â I’ve just spend my whole afternoon getting to know the Miami transit system once more so I could swing by the USDA yet again (let’s see, that would be my third visit to their office) to pick up the notarized forms that the vet signed on Monday. If you’re wondering, it was a five hour round trip to go from the boat to their office about 10 miles away, and come back. Â That’s one item checked off our list, but it’s by no means the only thing keeping us here.
We also have a number of projects that need to be done to Serendipity before we drag her across 3,000 miles of ocean without rest. Â Projects that were supposed to have been completed well over a week ago, but our shipment of odds and ends was lost in the postal system and we didn’t get a chance to purchase them again until just a few days ago. Â So even if a weather window came up tomorrow, we still have about three good hard days of work on our hand now that we have a few tubes of 3M 4000 in our possession. Â
Another thing keeping us in this spot is waiting for just the right weather window. Â This one is a biggie, because, well, weather windows are key.
Ah yes, and the last minute project that just came up..  Even though we’ve had three weeks now to deal with it, we just thought to ourselves, ‘Hmmmm, we should replace the backstay’.  The one we currently have up there right now is original to the boat, and we don’t know if we want to trust it to 30 straight days of pressure.  Better safe than sorry, right?  As you can tell we’re taking this crossing very seriously.  You’d think we’re making ourselves out to be the first people to ever accomplish this feat. Â
We just placed an order for a new one today, and even with expedited shipping, we won’t get it until Friday evening.  The real kicker on this is we had a new backstay lying around.  Right in our aft cabin!  Truth be told, we should probably get a stupidity award for this one. The only reason we didn’t install it with the rest of our rigging after exiting the Erie Canal is that we didn’t have the right fitting. So we kept cruising with the old one. Then when we just came to Miami now and we wanted to run an inner forestay, we thought, ‘There’s some rigging lying around in the aft cabin we can use. Brilliant!’. And so we thought we were. Not realizing that, duh, that piece could still go up as a new backstay once we ordered the proper fitting. Now we’re left to ordering new fittings as well as the rigging for our blunder.
So as you can see, we seem to have just about everything working against us right now.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another.  Paperwork, projects, weather….the list goes on.  You think we’d be cursing the fates, wondering why everything had to fall on us at once.  Can’t we just get a break, somewhere?  But here’s the thing.  When everything works against you, it actually all works out.  We’re not sitting here just cursing one single thing.  We’re not pounding our fists saying ‘If only the weather would change’, or ‘If only that package would come in’.  When there’s only one thing working against you, when there’s only one thing holding you back, it’s easy to become angry and think of all that could be working in your favor had that one thing been different.  But when everything works against you, you just sit back with a smile and say ‘Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it’. And then you make the best of what you have.