Posts in category: Passage Making

Tuesday June 24, 2014

It’s only 48 hours late, but I stayed true to my word to Matt’s mom and was finally feeling well enough to give Matt the birthday celebration he deserved but never received.  Still slightly getting over the effects of the waves that are still dying down, it took me two hours of sitting in the cockpit before my head stopped pounding enough to the point I could begin blowing balloons.  I think dehydration might be a part of my recent headaches, so I’ve been trying to down plenty of water in the past 24 hours.

Sitting at the entrance to the companionway with my butt in the cockpit and feet on the steps, I spent the next 30 minutes blowing up about 10 balloons, tossing them on to the floor of the cabin while Georgie looked on with curiosity, and simultaneously making myself lightheaded by depriving myself of oxygen for each balloon that was blown.  Once the ground was littered with them I brought out the Gorilla Tape and tore up a few pieces and set about with my ninja like skills to get them on the grab-rail above Matt’s head so he’d wake up to a colorful concoction of balloons and shiny streamers.  I was two balloons down when my cover was blown for this hopefully unexpected birthday surprise.  Matt’s eyes started to flutter open, and even though I tried the cliche line of ‘This is all a dream…just go back to sleep’, he knew what I was up to.

As I mentioned in the last post, he’s not into celebrating birthdays at all, so all I got out of him was a grunt and “Did my mom put you up to this?”, as he rolled back over and fell asleep once again.  Even though the surprise was ruined, I continued with my work until every balloon and streamer that was mailed to me was now decorating the cabin.  Just like two years ago when Matt woke up and wandered into the bathroom of his mom’s house (of which we were living at that time to save a little $ for the kitty), to find most surfaces covered in balloons and traditional crepe paper, it wasn’t so much for Matt as it was for us.  We like putting forth the effort and giving the surprise, even if he isn’t all that enthusiastic to receive it.  It does always bring at least one smile though.  And hey, I didn’t hear any complaints about the meatloaf dinner I made tonight, just in celebration for his birthday.

Wednesday June 25, 2014

There is nothing I wanted more when I woke up this morning than to be able to relax in the cockpit with a cup of coffee while I whittled away the hours until Matt was awake again and I could either nap or just have the company. It’s all I’ve wanted for the past few days now. But just like the past few days, I’ve been on cloud watch upon waking up. Towering clouds off in the distance that I have to keep a close eye on in case they come our way, in which case sail has to be reduced right away as this new squall passes over us. It’s like the coast of Florida all over again.  At least this shift lets me watch them in the light though.  Ever since Florida we’ve both been able to enjoy lightning shows on our night shifts, every night.  Luckily none of them seem to make their way over to us, but instead just leave us squirming in our seat as we watch the flashes of light illuminate the clouds in the distance, checking the radar every 30 minutes to make sure the pink blobs aren’t getting any nearer.

I expected this morning to be like every other day, and night, where I’d watch the towering cloud while we kept our canvas to a minimum, and then it would pass 2-5 miles away from us where we never even got a gust.  This morning though I wanted to keep full headsail out unless I knew we were going to get hit, because our lack of progress is starting to get ri-goddamn-diculous.  So I sit there for the next two hours, watching this monstrous thing actually coming our way, and then I see it.  S%*t.  It’s forming into a shelf cloud.  The kind that, when they’ve blown over us before, usually bring 50 knot winds with them.  And we were finally starting to make 4 knots!

It didn’t look like the whole thing was going to hit us, just one of it’s outer edges, so I waited until it was two miles away before bringing in the headsail.  It looked like things were about to get ugly though, it took less than two minutes for winds to jump up 10-15 knots.  Realizing how close we actually were to the edge I threw on the engine, while all the noise that was being made roused Matt from his bed, and he came to put down the mainsail as well, just in case.  We were able to skirt most of it, avoided the rain, and had an increase of winds up to 25 knots for a total of about 20 minutes.  Nothing we couldn’t have handled.  But, better safe than sorry.  I just wish we could have kept those winds, although local weather had different plans for us.  Back to 6-10 knots for the rest of the day.  The way things are looking, our passage is going to be 45 days long before we get to the Azores.  Think they give out awards for slowest passage ever?

Thursday June 26, 2014

I can’t think of any new or exciting news to report for today. You know why? Because nothing interesting is happening here. Unless you care to hear about how Georgie is starting to go a little bezerk. Tearing about the boat in a feverish dash, trying to hunt down imaginary insects. At least, I hope they’re imaginary.

This really shouldn’t be much of a change for her though, the only thing that’s different is that she’s not allowed to go up on deck. So for the most part she’s been sleeping,…sleeping,…sleeping some more, and then throwing us glares with her eyes that question ‘Why are you doing this to me?’. Apparently someone who’s everyday living space has only been cut down by 25%, compared to ours of a much greater amount, is taking this trip much harder than we are. That’s ok though, her peanut sized brain will forget all about it once we’re at anchor again. She’s reliable like that.

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 32^nd 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.

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.  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.  Well, they’re still here with us.  

With no wind again today we decided to try our hand one more time at fishing.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  What the what?  It’s actually on the lure?  We were not actually expecting this and were fully unprepared.  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.  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.  Giving itself a few shakes it managed to release itself from from our line.  Huh….there goes our dinner.  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.  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.  I think it has to do with the scopolamine patch I’ve been wearing for seasickness.  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.  These things are seriously messing with my head, so I decided to rip it off, possible seasickness be damned.  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.  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?  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.  Not knowing how much longer we’ll have flat seas though, I went through and made one of my favorite meals, tacos.  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.  You’d think I was making my own tortillas or something.  I guess I’m just really slow at chopping vegetables.  When I finally had dinner on the table it was only 30 minutes before my bedtime.  Guess who went to bed an extra 30 minutes late because they wanted to make sure they had a clean sink?  This girl.  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.  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.