Posts in category: Atlantic Crossing

December 31, 2014

Unlike our first Atlantic Crossing, I am not going to break up the posts into 2-3 day sections and regale you with what happened on a daily basis.  I can’t, or every post would go something like this:  ‘Woke up.  Winds were heavy but steady.  Waves were heavy but steady.  I can’t go outside without getting wet.  Prepared meals, napped, and waited for the next day to come‘.

I can do that for you every day if you’d like, but the truth is I’d still like you to come back to our blog every few days and I know that’s not the best way to hook or even keep you.  So instead I will be breaking our crossing into two posts where I’ll get a little technical and give conditions plus milage, and then a little snippet of something that happened that day, just to keep your interest if even just a little bit.

Day 1 – December 18, 2014

• Winds ESE 10-15 knots; Seas 1-2 meters
• Before leaving, Matt cut his thumb with a drill. No stitches this time; We finally found the sun outside of Las Palmas; Accidentally woke up Matt with the air horn while tacking; Cuddled in the cockpit listening to UB40 while watching the sunset and watched Gran Canaria light up.

Day 2 – December 19, 2014

• Winds NE 15-20 knots; Seas 1-2 meters; 120 nm
• Still quite cold out, our gauge is showing the water is only 57. That can’t be right. Stayed below deck for most of the day.

Day 3 – December 20, 2014

• Winds ENE 20-25 knots; Seas 2-3 meters; 125 nm – 245 total
• Saw a flash in the sky, maybe a supernova? Had to hand feed Georgie her dry food. She wanted the cheese I was eating and kept nudging me, timing her nudges with the rocking of the boat.

Day 4 – December 21, 2014

• Winds ENE 15-20 knots; Seas 1-2 meters; 124 nm – 369 total
• Found a buddy boat. Well, on AIS at least. The first boat we’ve seen outside of Gran Canaria. They’re 36 ft and sailing in the same direction, only 4 nm from us.

Day 5 – December 22, 2014

• Winds NE 12-17 knots; Seas 1-2 meters; 115 nm – 484 total
• Read books and made pasta salad. Without being able to fill our propane in Gran Canaria we have about 1 week’s worth of propane left and have to portion it out.

Day 6 – December 23, 2014

• Winds E 5-10 knots; Seas 0.5-1 meters; 92 nm – 576 total
• Had a hard time getting a satellite phone signal. With the light winds, tried to lay out on deck and catch a tan. Speeds dropped down to 2 knots.

Day 7 – December 24, 2014

• Winds E 2-6 knots; Seas 0-1 meters; 41 nm – 617 total
• Drifted in the morning with no autopilot; Made guacamole and enjoyed in the cockpit with a beer; Trimmed my split ends. Not good according to sailing superstitions. I should have known better. Got a text from my dad that storms were on their way.

Day 8 – December 25, 2014

• Winds E 5-10 building to 10-15; Seas 1-2 meters; 60 nm – 676 total
• Merry Christmas! Warm and productive day. Enjoyed 2 cups of coffee, did a little laundry, and had my first shower since leaving. (Ick, I know). Made a nice chicken and potato dinner. Watched the forecast, we have a depression and front on the way.

Day 9 – December 26, 2014

• Winds E 20-25 knots; Seas 1-2 meters; 89 nm – 765 total
• Day started with lots of wind and growing waves, but it died down by the afternoon. Debated stopping at the Cape Verdes but the weather looks ok for us to continue.

Day 10 – December 27, 2014

• Winds E 20-25 knots; Seas 1-2 meters; 93 nm – 858 total
• Went into the night with the spinnaker pole up. At 3 am the winds jumped from 15 knots to 30 and stayed strong until the early afternoon when they died down to 10-15 knots.

Day 11 – December 28, 2014

• Winds E 20-25 knots; Seas 2-3 meters; 121 nm – 979 total
• Changed our course from S to WSW. Matt caught a tuna but lost it before getting it on board. Got seasick and spent the rest of the day in a foul mood, made Matt cook dinner.

Day 12 – December 29, 2014

• Winds E 15-20 knots; Seas 2-3 meters; 114 nm – 1,093 total
• Sick again. Matt left the dishes overnight for me to clean. Thanks Matt. Caught 2.5 ft mahi. Cleaned and filleted it even though I felt like I was going to throw up in the sink.

Day 13 – December 30, 2014

• Winds E 20-25 knots; Seas 2-3 meters; 115 nm – 1,208 total
• Still overcast, still feeling blah. Finally washed my hair for the first time in 5 days. Made a nice chicken, potato, carrot stew for dinner.

Day 14 – December 31, 2014

• Winds E 20-25 knots; Seas 2-3 meters; 121 nm – 1,329 total
• More of the same. Clouds, strong winds, feeling gross. Read the book Slaughterhouse V. It was…interesting.

Monday August 4, 2014

Another windless day!  And just when we were getting so close!  We’re just under 200 miles from Horta now, so I have to assume that we’ll actually be getting there sometime this week.  I’m having my heart set on Wednesday, but I have learned long long ago that getting your hopes up for a specific arrival date or time can be a very dangerous thing.  I’ll just say that if the winds swing around to the south and fill in like they’re supposed to, then just over 48 hours from now I should be sitting in a bar with a cold and well deserved beer in my hand.  In the meantime though, I have to get back to talking Georgie off a ledge.  I’m pretty sure she’s had it with this sailing crap and is about to abandon ship.

Georgie was getting ready to jump.  I had to talk her down.

At this point we’re just getting stubborn.  ‘Will..not..use..engine.’

A Zen moment for Georgie.  ‘I will never see land for the rest of my life.  I have to accept this’.

Thursday July 31, 2014

I’m not going to lie, it’s starting to get really hard (and boring, probably for all of us) for me to come up with something to put for every single day of this crossing.  So until we make landfall, I’m only going to put down things that are worth putting down.  And then hopefully, just hopefully, I can start getting pictures and stories up of what I’m assuming is amazingly beautiful Horta.

On that note though, something happened that I thought was kind of cool and noteworthy.  Today we crossed a spot on the globe where we had the exact same coordinates for latitude and longitude.  I wonder how often that happens for people?  I obviously haven’t done a lot of research on the subject, but it seems like a lot of areas covered by land (or at least the United States) are higher than 80 degrees West, meaning there is no matching latitude.  So to find numbers close enough to match pretty much means you’re going to be over water.  Maybe something random I can add to my bucket list?  Seems like a cool enough accomplishment.

Oh, and if you can tell from the photo, we’ve now passed the stationary gale (which has all dissipated now) and we can begin heading north and directly toward Horta again!

Friday August 1, 2014

There’s just something about me and night shifts and strange lights. Don’t get me wrong, that fireball I spied just a few days outside of Bermuda was probably a once in a lifetime sight that I’ll never forget and may be worth crossing the Atlantic for itself (mayb-be), but the past few nights seem to be surprising me with questionable lights amidst the dark. Yesterday morning around 2 am I was popping my head up on deck between relaxing with my podcast on the comfortable settee below to see what looked like a flashlight beam oh so briefly shine on our American flag flapping at the stern. There is nothing on the boat that could have illuminated it at that angle so brightly unless Matt decided to sneak up behind me with an actual flashlight, unnoticed by me, while I still stood on the steps. Very unlikely. As my heart quickly jumped into my throat I thought it was another boat trying to identify us, but after frantically searching the horizon and then turning to the radar, we were the only thing out there. Alien encounter? Apparently once they realized we were American it was enough to make them leave us alone.

Which brings me to this morning’s odd light. More astrological than extraterrestrial, but still startling nonetheless. It was moments into my 12-4 am shift when I was just climbing up the steps to do a cursory glance before my more in depth check that would be coming up in ten minutes (what can I say?, I like to stick to my schedule), the sky directly in front of us suddenly lit up as if the deck light had been thrown on. In the split second it took my mind to register that this shouldn’t be happening I saw a very bright greenish-white sphere fall from the sky leaving a bright trail behind it. My first thought was ‘Oh my god, it’s a flare!!’. Although from what I’ve been told, flares are red or orange and nothing else. But this was close! As in, someone must be lighting off fireworks next to our boat close. Surely it couldn’t be a meteor?

Quite startled and still not fully registering what had just happened in the two seconds it took to happen I let out an audible and nervous “Ummm….” as Matt was still settling himself into bed. Asking what was the matter I told him that I’d just seen a very bright light that looked flare-like just ahead of us, and as he raced to untangle himself from the sheets he had just slipped under, I added “But it was greenish-white”, knowing that his first thought would be that someone in a life raft was trying to alert us to their existence. By now my head was finally wrapping itself around the fact that it probably was a meteor. Just a very, very close meteor, and that there was no need to worry. Not taking any chances though, he dove into full rescue mode, not wanting to risk the possibility of missing someone out there trying to signal us. Asking me question after question of exactly where I’d seen the light, how close it was, and what kind of shape it took, he set about trying to figure out our drift and trajectory while trying to find out when and how close we’d come to the source of the light After ten minutes of more horizon scans, scrutinizing the radar, and follow up questions such as ‘If it were you, how long would you wait to set off a second flare?’, I assured him that, as amazing and unlikely as it was, I think we were just incredibly close to a meteor that happen to be falling in this vast ocean that we’re traveling. He finally relented and went back to bed as I promised to stay up there for a while longer, keeping an eye out for any more lights or loud signaling noises.

In non-astrological news, we’re continuing our path directly north as we ride the east winds before they shift east in the next day or two and force us to turn directly east instead. So close and yet so far away. I keep focusing on the miles remaining as the crow flies, wishing we could take that same direct path, trying to count down our arrival based on those numbers, but instead preparing myself for yet another day or possibly two at sea on top of my predictions because we’re forced to travel at 90 degree angles instead. The pressure is still steadily rising, now at 1022, 10 mb higher than we were 48 hours ago, and I guess I should just be grateful for having any wind at all as we make our way into yet another high pressure system.

In more exciting news, I saw another sailboat today. What??!! I honestly didn’t think that would happen until we were within 20 miles of Faial. For some reason this sight makes me extremely giddy. We’re not alone out here, the only thing under 400 ft and carrying cargo. Part of me wants to call them up on the VHF just to say hi and find out where they’re going. Possibly get a little encouragement from someone out here that’s just as crazy as us. Another voice to say, ‘Yup, we’re right there with you’. Except, knowing our luck, they’d come back with, ‘You’ve been out how long??!! We just left the states two weeks ago. You must be traveling extremely slow’. Yup, that’s a much more likely scenario. Maybe they won’t get a call after all.

Monday July 28, 2014

I have no idea how I would handle living in the real world again, because my time management is completely out the window. Even for the simplest things. For example, making dinner. This has been my task ever since Matt and I got married and moved into our new house to start our new life together. In the beginning the food was regrettably abysmal and not well thought out (Oh, you mean you wanted a side with your meat?), but over the years we lived in that house they had improved. And at the end, I knew how to clock each item I was cooking so that everything would finish at the same time and just as Matt was walking in the door from work.

You’d think that with all this spare time on my hands for the past two years I would have mastered the timing issue. I guess I could liken that part to the rising and falling tides. Sometimes I am a genius of cooking where my rice absorbs the last of the water at the same moment my chicken is just cooked and spiced enough, while warm and slightly crispy tortillas are sitting and waiting under a covered plate. Other times I forget that I need to cook rice until my chicken is already almost done, and where the hell are my tortillas, did I forget to buy them?!

The past few days have very much been the latter scenario. I begin preparing dinner way too late, forget to cook certain ingredients, or forget to check that we have certain items before we start. And there is no making a quick Publix run out here. Last night as I stood over the stove at 7:30, thirty minutes before I was supposed to be in bed, and I realized the mahi I had cooking on the stove had been sitting in the fridge, never having been frozen, for about thirteen days now and was definitely no longer safe to eat. Searching through the fridge for new meats that could be quickly cooked up I realized that all of those were safely tucked in the freezer. I threw my hands up and went for the pantry. A can of soup it was going to be.

*On a sad note, our little bird friend did not make it through the night.  Matt made sure to give him/her a nice little funeral at sea during his shift this morning.

 Maybe I shouldn’t have spent so much of my afternoon messing around on deck instead?

Tuesday July 29, 2014

So 40 days at sea is how long it takes for one to lose their mind. Or maybe it’s 22, since I guess I can’t count that stint on the way from Miami to Bermuda since we did have that sweet little interlude of rest in there. And maybe I’m not loosing my mind, maybe it’s just not functioning to it’s highest ability lately. I don’t know why or how it has not happened once until this point, but multiple times over the past few nights I’ve been comfortably sleeping in my bunk during my allotted time and all of a sudden my eyes will fly open. I’ll look over and see Matt on the settee across from me, usually reading his Kindle, and maybe it’s because he’s in the cabin with me instead of out in the cockpit, but the first thing that springs to my mind is, ‘You idiot, you’re supposed to be on watch!’. And this isn’t directed at Matt since he’s seeking the comfort of a warm and cozy seat instead of being forced out into the elements of the cockpit, but is instead directed at myself. I then fly out of my bunk, search for my glasses on the nav station, and begin bounding up the steps on the companionway to look around and make sure no boats are showing on AIS, or worse, in person.

In my feverish haste to get back to my duties, Matt will just kind of stare at me with a puzzled look on face and ask, “What the heck are you doing?”. In my embarrassment that I was ‘sleeping on the job’, I nonchalantly reply, “Um…you know…just doing one of my checks…”, to which he’ll laugh and reply, “Yeah, but you’re not on shift”. Then it will all come back to me that, yes, this is in fact my time for rest, and I slink back into my bunk until the same thing happens 90 minutes later.

Wednesday July 30, 2014

We may have made many, many miles south and out of our way to avoid that stationary gale that has been sitting directly in the path between us and Horta, but I guess we haven’t gotten quite far enough out of the way to not feel any effects from it. Things haven’t gotten incredibly bad, but there has been a noticeable increase in wind and waves in the past day or two. We’re averaging 5 knots of speed now, which is great, but my body is trying to get used to this new rocking back and forth motion that normally accompanies sailing but we’ve been lucky enough to barely experience on this crossing.

I should still consider myself lucky that I can move about the boat at all, considering that basically every passage we’ve made before this one has left me nailed down to the cockpit, incapable of doing much more than making it back and forth between my bunk for sleep shifts. So today as we got back to feeling the motion of the ocean, those past memories barely registered with me and I thought, ‘This would be a perfect time to make bread!’. Long story short, I was able to actually complete this task, but it was done with lots of difficulty and lots of grabbing on to different surfaces to keep myself from tumbling around. I’m just surprised I was able to do all of this without getting sick, which is nice because it means that my body might finally be adjusting to the sea, but I think I may have lots of new bruises to show for my efforts.

After pulling my freshly baked bread out of the oven and finally going back to resting on the settee, it suddenly hit me why my legs have been so sore the past few days even though I don’t remember doing anything besides sitting on my butt. It’s been all that time I’ve spent bracing myself in the galley while I cooked or did dishes. Right foot back; flex; wait. Step together; rotate; left leg to the side; brace. I’ve been getting a first class workout and haven’t even realized it.