Virgin TransAtlantic: January 2017

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Fast water

This is a small video Antoine shot from the stern step.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

We are successfully tied up in the Careenage in downtown Bridgetown Barbados. It was quite the adventure getting in. I managed to elicit a round of applause from passers by as I successfully transited a 8.3 meter wide bridge canal in a 7.3 meter wide boat (without touching) in a fairly fierce headwind. Quite the end to a great adventure. We celebrated at a local restaurant/bar. The crew all crashed afterward but I'm still a little too hyped up for a nap.

We have arrived!!!

We arrived at the same time as Ariel and Tantrum. They are tied up on either side of us. Currently waiting on Customs to arrive then we will move to another berth in the Careenage when the bridge opens at noon.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

close

19 miles to our waypoint
30 miles to the finish line

chart

Barbados is on the right on the big chart, a zoomed view of the island, and under a lighted magnifier.

Barbados, is that you?

It's a beautiful night, clear dark skies and all the stars are out. We are currently 35 miles from our waypoint that we are steering to off the south coast of Barbados. We remain running with the wind under the gennaker alone at about 8 knots. We were a bit concerned that we would have to take the gennaker down due to excessive wind but it has abated some and we remain sailing comfortably.
The only cloud I can see is ahead just to starboard. I believe this may be directly over the island as islands tend to cause clouds to form over them. Also, I believe this cloud may have the tiniest bit of backlighting which may be from lights on the island which would still be below the horizon.
Next up, there is a lighthouse on the southernmost point that we should start to see when we are 17 miles off.

Priceless

A graphic artist with amazing talent? Check
A helluva sailor? Check
An absolutely fantastic cook (chef)? Check

A Frenchman that can play great improvisational blues guitar? ...Priceless

life at sea

Showers on the stern steps were a daily occurrence.

world's largest flying fish

(Please ignore the fingertips at the top of the picture)

life at sea

Ben and Paddy working on taking a noon sight. Ben's spent many hours on celestial nav on this trip and has become quite proficient and accurate and has even successfully taken some sights of Venus and a few stars.

life at sea

Our wake as we're surfing.

near the end

We are now 100 miles from Barbados. 100 miles seems like nothing at all now; just a walk in the park. We expect to arrive around 6 am but customs doesn't open until 8 so we'll have to park offshore for a bit if it works out that way. We hoisted the gennaker about an hour ago after the wind dropped off to an acceptable level and dropped the mainsail. In this configuration we can point directly where we want to go without tacking. Ought to make for an easy evening.

too much wind?

The wind reached the design limit of the gennaker (18knots apparent) so we made the decision to take it down before it tore or worse. With a coordinated effort of Paddy, Antoine & I we successfully furled it in short order. We now are sailing under 2nd reef mainsail and full genoa making a little over 9 knots on average with 7.5 VMG. Sailing too much faster than this would have us arrive in Bridgetown at dark which we can't do due to customs restrictions, so the extra speed would have no real net benefit in the end.
The boat's riding more smoothly under this sailplan and it's a gorgeous sunny/windy day. The waves were quite exceptional to watch when the sun was coming up behind them this morning as you could see through the top couple of feet of the crests of the waves which were a brilliant turquoise color. I had never seen that effect before other than at a beach, but those waves typically reflect the brown and green colors from the sand instead of turquoise.

breezy

Our wind has remained with us through to morning; currently blowing 20-25knots. The seas are also still the same at 2.5-3 meters. We saw our highest surfing speed yet just a bit ago of over 17 knots.
As of 8am (noon UTC) we have 188NM to go. That's the same distance we covered in the last 24 hours as our average speed was 8.4knots so our ETA has moved up to sometime before noon local time tomorrow (conservatively).
As I was (slowly) writing this, I noticed that since we reset our average speed for the day about a half hour ago, our new average speed is 9.7 knots. We're flying!

Friday, January 27, 2017

Night watch

I just finished my 1-3am watch. What an exhilarating night. The wind has stayed with us through the night tonight unlike most past nights. The wind speed is 18-22knots with swell heights of about 3 meters. We are really moving fast tonight seeing common speeds of 8,9 & 10 knots and speeds of 14-16 knots at times as we surf down waves. We currently have two reefs in the main and the gennaker up. Our course is 275M. If the wind gets too much higher we'll have to pull the gennaker down but I suspect the winds will stay within the same range as they have been.
Initially on my watch just a halo of stars could be seen overhead due to cloud cover but now almost all the stars are on display. I read a clever trick in the book "How to Read Water" today. If you want to know your latitude just locate the North Star (Polaris) and measure its height (angle) above the horizon and that's your latitude. To get a rough measure make a fist and sight down your extend arm; your fist width should be about 10 degrees.
We changed our ships time today for the last time on this crossing; we are now GMT -4.
We are currently 220 miles from Barbados.

Name that tune-afish

We just checked another item of Anthony's transatlantic bucket list. He caught a tuna. We're not sure what type it is; maybe a skipjack?
As I sat here typing this a flying fish just came flying over the side and landed in the cockpit. We helped him along back over the side. By the way, I want to officially change my estimate that I made earlier in this trip of the distance a flying fish is able to fly. I believe the larger ones can fly for over 100 ft. They are quite amazing to watch. They almost always take off into the wind and typically fly just a few feet above the waves until eventually torpedoing into the side of a wave with hardly a splash. We've seen hundreds, probably thousands of these displays.
I believe there are at least two types that we've seen, a smaller one about 4 inches long with "gossamer" wings that resemble the structure of a dragonfly - soft and very thin. And then a much larger type about 12-16 inches long with a bony structure to its much more substantial wings. This is the type that hit me while I was in the cockpit at night earlier in the trip. It made a loud racket as it could beat its wings at a pace that reminded me of a hummingbird's rate. Quite impressive.

wind!

We finally found some real wind and it looks as though it will stay with us until the end. We have been running dead downwind all day today. The average swell height has increased to about 2.25 meters (according to the weather man, not my estimate). So the larger waves are about 3 meters high which pick up our stern and rush us forward; we occasionally surf down these waves and see momentary speeds of 11-12knots. Our average speed for the day so far is 7.9knots and as the wind is expected to increase some yet, I suspect we will have an average speed over 8 knots for the day.
ETA is sometime Sunday afternoon. Hopefully we'll arrive before sundown as we are not allowed to enter port when customs is not opened; if that happens we will need to sit offshore until the next morning. None of us would welcome that but "it's gonna be what it's gonna be".

Breakfast at Pouplier's

I wasn't sure what to label this post, "Breakfast at Pouplier's " (Pouplier II is the name of the boat), or Are those Lucky Charms?

Of course the latter would have won out if it were Paddy in the picture :-)

a whale of a tail

Anthony happened to get a couple of partial pictures of the whale. It's pretty hard to do since we didn't know where he would pop up again and he swam in a circle around the boat.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Thar she blows!!

Had a whale showing off to us at sunrise this morning. It breached completely out of the water about 5 times approximately 2-300 yards from the boat, one time with a pirouette. I awarded style points for that. Quite an awesome sight and a welcome answer to our discussion for the last few days of our disappointment of not seeing any whales. My guess would be about 15 tons in size based on seeing humpback whales before that run in excess of 30 tons (as I recall).

Next week

So hopefully thinking forward to post-landfall doesn't jinx us in some way but I was talking to Sal a bit ago and she mentioned that Jean was surprised I wouldn't be on a plane and home the day after I arrive in Barbados. Unfortunately I'm just a bit too cheap (frugal?) to buy an international ticket on short notice so I had made my best guess as to an arrival date and padded it by a few days when I bought my return ticket a few months ago. I also have some boat maintenance to do. I need to change the oil and filters in both the engines; resolve the wind indicator problem; and install the steaming light which I didn't get around to before we left as I was so intent on resolving the alternator problem.
The boat also needs a really thorough cleaning both inside and out.
My other big task is to find a berth for the boat where it will be safe and secure until I return. Supposedly there is an inner harbor called the Careenage that I can get into but it requires going under a bridge that only opens once a day at 11 or noon. The width of the bridge opening is supposedly just 8 meters wide while the beam on this boat is 7.3 meters; oh joy!
But most important of all, I need to kiss the ground and find some ice cream! :-)

on watch

As I relieved Paddy from watch we were in a course of 310M and had good speed, roughly 8.5 knots, about 7 VMG. But 30 minutes later the wind had shifted to force us on a bearing of 320. That's quite a ways off our bearing to Barbados of 283 and VMG was rapidly declining as we swung north of 310 so I decided to gybe the gennaker and try running wing-on-wing.
We've had trouble gybing our gennaker smoothly. It always seems to require someone to go forward and help clear a line or help encourage all that sailcloth to go through the 5ft wide slot between the furled genoa and the gennaker forestay. So earlier today we tried what is called an outside gybe where the gennaker doesn't pass through the slot but goes in front of the forestay instead. We made an attempt but a line got hung up so I'd say it was mostly successful this afternoon.
So anyway, I decided to try to do that myself instead of waking someone up to assist. It started out ok but then went horribly wrong as the top half of the gennaker wrapped itself around the forestay one way and the bottom half the other way. Ugh. I've heard of this problem with spinnakers and their like but never experienced it. I went to the foredeck (yes, PFD/harness on and tether attached to the jack lines - these are boat rules at night) and tried to pull on the clew to help it around. No joy. Then tried changing course, adding a bit of sheet tension and hoping (very hard) that it would miraculously work itself out. No luck. I then changed course again and grabbed the clew and pulled down and aft (while making sure my safety tether wasn't in the way if the sail suddenly filled) and eventually coaxed it to untwist and then pop!; it filled and all was well once again. Chalk up a new experience for me. Back to a quiet peaceful tack (the other tack feels a bit like being in
a washing machine) at 7.5 knots on a course of 279Magnetic . Almost perfect.

update

We've had quite a variance today in wind intensity. This morning started very slow then at noon a small squall came along and gave us a bit of a lift for awhile but eventually died down again. After a hot afternoon and a beautiful sunset the wind has picked up to where we've been making 8 to 10 knots of speed and about 7 of that VMG. We are currently 442 miles from Barbados; hopefully we can maintain most of this speed throughout the night but it takes a fair amount of vigilance at the helm to maintain a wind angle between 90 and 120 apparent. If the wind angle gets to be less than 90, it puts a bit too much pressure on the gennaker and starts to approach its design rating and risks tearing. So we just need to adjust our heading by a few degrees to port. If the wind angle gets to be greater than 120 then the boat slows way down to about 6 knots. Adjusting our course to starboard by a few degrees jumps our speed right back up (even though we're pointing a little further away f
rom the direction we want to go, our VMG is better overall).
My watch starts in 1.5 hours so I'm going to catch a little rest first.

slow

We are still moving along at a rather slow pace due to low winds, roughly 10 knots. 24 hour average speed is 5.8knots but only because we had some better wind early in the day yesterday. Overnight we've had barely enough to keep us over 5 knots. The weather man says more wind is on the way later today so we're just in waiting mode.
We are seeing a few more types of seabirds lately so that's likely a bit of a sign that we're getting at least a little closer to land. But we were pretty amazed that even out in the middle there were a couple different types of birds out there. One looked a little like a seagull shape but with a very long slender tail; probably a tern of some kind. The other was a small dark (brown?) bird, larger than a sparrow. Maybe a swift? It darted back and forth through the troughs of the waves. It's hard to imagine flying continuously but apparently that what these birds do other than during mating/nesting season.
As of noon UTC, we had 527 miles remaining. ETA Sunday afternoon.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Polaris

The North Star, Polaris, is low in the sky off our starboard side as we are headed pretty close to due west. It's really easy to locate as the last two stars in the cup portion of the Big Dipper point directly at it. I have been hoping to get a glimpse of the southern cross which can be used to locate the South Pole but it may be obscured by some clouds on the horizon or maybe it's not visible at this time of year from this latitude. I've seen it previously from the Caribbean when I sailed to Grenada but I don't recall what time of year that was.
I was just thinking about a science fair project that Paige and I worked on when she was in grade school where we made a display of the night sky and used LED's for the stars with a set of buttons to illuminate about a dozen constellations. We had fun soldering it all together. A great bonding experience. I should have paid more attention to the end product though as I don't recall many of them now. Certainly Orion, which is so distinctive the is three inline stars that comprise Orion's belt. But I don't recall the shape of Draco, Cassiopeia, etc so can't locate those tonight. I'll need to bring a resource to assist on my next trip.

All quiet on the mid-Atlantic front

It's extremely quiet out here this evening - just coming up on midnight. The stars are out in full force as there is no moon tonight. We're ghosting along at 5 knots DDW with very little apparent wind. The sails occasionally slat (lose shape and snap a bit when they refill) due to not quite enough wind to keep them full 100% of the time. There's a bit of a quiet rush of water every five seconds or so like small waves lazily lapping a shore. It's quite serene and beautiful. Temps are mild - comfortable in a T-shirt and shorts - no shoes, with just the tiniest bit of chill in the air. It would be hard to paint it any nicer other than with a touch more wind to avoid the slatting.
As Paddy was coming off watch, he and I had a nice discussion on sailing and the many people that have shaped long-distance sailing over time: Joshua Slocum, the original and first person to sail around the world alone, Bernard Moitessier, who opted not to win the "first around alone nonstop" competition by turning around as he neared the finish line and sailing halfway around again, and my acquaintance, John Kretschmer, who has written quite a number of books and articles.
Just got a message that Sallie is available to talk via sat phone. Gotta run.

motoring?

My sister Carole commented that the two leading boats may be motoring part of the time as their tracker lines are very straight. Certainly no one can say the same about us as we're all over the place trying to maximize forward progress based on wind angles. I suspect we may be up for some kind of an award of longest path to go across the Atlantic :-)
Also of note is that we update our position on the tracker every 30 minutes, so everyone can see all our gyrations. Others may be updating just once a day so their lines would look much straighter.
Today we filled up with water using the watermaker hopefully for the last time before Barbados.
We have about 40% of fuel remaining in the port tank and 30% in the starboard tank. Should be plenty to supply our remaining power needs as we are about 4 days out. Best guess ETA by our navigator, Ben, is arrival on Sunday at 5pm.

Check out those buns!

buns

I'm making buns for the hamburgers Antoine's planning for tonight, of course using his bread recipe. They're ready for the final raising process; hopefully they turn out ok. As I've been making them (and another load of bread) I've been listening to music. Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally" just came on; gave me a flashback of being at Foxy's in the BVI's a few years ago with the Kluempke's et al. Gary, I still need a copy of that video :-) Hope all is well in McKinney.

buns

slow morning

Woke up this morning around 5:30. The wind had fallen in the night and the boat was moving slowly. That's good motivation for me to get out of bed. Paddy was on watch so we discussed what to do. We had been running wing-on-wing throughout the night which gives the helmsman very little latitude on which direction to steer and still keep wind in the sails. So we first tried to tack to the south but didn't get much speed difference and I was concerned on how far south we were headed. Then we tried dropping the main and sailing just with the gennaker. Still painfully slow but at least we could sail on the rhumb.
Then we pulled weather which said to head south-southwest. We re-hoisted the main and tacked down again. This time finding just the right balance and we were off sailing at 7 knots. I think we both had a bit of an uplift in this accomplishment as the sun crested the horizon. It's a beautiful morning. I spent a little while doing some maintenance on some ropes that needed a "haircut" as can be seen in the pictures. This is called whipping.

slow morning

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Rapheros

We ran across this boat today, Rapheros. This is the first boat we've seen in several days and the only one this close in the last ten days. We contacted them on the radio and they spoke French so Antoine chatted with them a bit. They are coming from Cape Verde and also headed to Barbados. They were going quite slow, I'd guess 4.5-5.5 knots and definitely weren't in any hurry as they only had one sail up. We slowed a bit to wave then dashed off and sunk them on the horizon an hour later.

sargasso

We are seeing more and more seaweed over the last few days. I believe this is sargasso but I'm not certain. Off the southeast coast of the US is a protected area called the Sargasso Sea (as I recall); I believe this is the same that we are seeing but only a hunch.

the brightest star

Antoine is working on his celestial navigation skills today.

Monday, January 23, 2017

mainsail outhaul

As we were sitting around watching Antoine cook dinner we heard a loud snapping sound. We went out to investigate but didn't see anything alarming. Then we heard the same noise again coming from the boom. We noticed that the mainsail clew was not pulled out to the end of the boom like it should be. The outhaul bracket had snapped its rivets, probably due to metal fatigue.
We had a fix in place within the hour. Hardly slowed us down at all as we didn't stop the boat for the repair.
The only downside was that dinner was delayed... but it was fantastic as always - fish tacos with homemade tortillas (of course)!

alternator charging problem

I've had very little help from shore support to assist with my charging problems (I believe they are still trying to sort out electrical diagrams that may be somewhat incomplete) and I'm getting close to the point that I would have to start siphoning and manually moving fuel. Not a big deal but I'm not looking forward to it.
So I ran my own test today by switching a switch into an alternate position that supposedly was in the correct position and only should be switched in an emergency situation such as if an engine starter battery fails.
Voila! It works!!
So the wiring is incorrect but it's functional and I can use the port engine to charge now; no siphoning fuel.
What a load off my mind.

And a test picture; I'm bumping up the size and quality now that the sat phone connection is better.

The Little Red Hen

Upon request from Paddy, our new bread chef Anthony needs oat flour to make a special kind of bread. Unfortunately we have no oat flour but we do have oats. As they say 'necessity is the mother of invention'. After scratching our heads a bit we came up with a manual coffee grinder attached to my latest tool purchase, a battery powered drill. Worked brilliantly!

(Does anyone remember the childhood story about the little red hen?)

Also of note: with the increased performance of the sat phone using the new antenna location, I'm attempting to increase the size of the attached photos.

soda bread

Enjoying soda bread with almonds, walnuts and dates fresh from the oven courtesy of Anthony, our latest bread chef.

Satellite phone antenna

I've been struggling a bit with communications since I got the boat. To send or receive an email I sometimes have had to attempt it 5 to 10 times before success. My weather downloads have also taken quite a long while as It retries over and over again and my voice calls to Sallie have been atrocious and constantly disconnecting, even on a short few minute call. Very frustrating. I've always questioned the placement of the antenna below the deck so I performed a test by temporarily removing it from its mount and tying it on near the solar panels. It performed much better. I spent a few hours yesterday morning moving the sat phone antenna from under the deck forward of the salon to off the stern rail by the starboard helm station. The results ain't pretty but it's much more functional.

morning bread making

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Apollo 13 sequel (part 4)

The picture is of our electrical panel. The point-in-time amp draw is in the middle at the top (19.3amps). This is marked negative since it's drawing out, not being put back in. To the left of that is the current voltage level. When it drops much below 12v it's time to charge the batteries. Since the sun has just come up, if I can delay turning the engine on, the solar panels will gradually charge the batteries through the day as they generate enough power to supply our average consumption plus a little more for battery charge. This is generally effective from about 9am to 4pm, but only if we can keep the mainsail out of the way so it doesn't cast a shadow on the panels. In my prior picture from the top of the mast you can clearly see the placement of the panels.

Apollo 13 sequel (part 3 )

A complication to this situation is that our port alternator is not providing a charge to our batteries, likely an issue with the voltage regulator. So we can only run the starboard engine to generate power. Resolving that is still a work in progress but we're waiting on shore support to respond. If we don't resolveI it we will have to manually siphon fuel from the port tank and put it in the starboard. I've already validated we can do this but I'd prefer not to.

Apollo 13 sequel (part 1)

We have been a bit challenged since my "fuel discovery" on day #3(?) with how to conserve fuel and still keep essential equipment powered on. For us, essential equipment is, in order, electronic navigation, autopilot, weather computer, sat phone, refrigeration, fresh water for cooking & washing (we have plenty of water for drinking in reserve bottles), other electronics (phones & laptops).
Our biggest power consumer by far is the autopilot at about 15-25 amps each time it corrects our course, but, boy, does it earn its keep! It corrects our course around 20 times per minute so quite a draw. We occasionally hand steer when changing course and sometimes "just because", but 99% of the time it's doing its thing day in and day out. (We also have a second autopilot on board in case this one fails).
Refrigeration is our second biggest consumer. We've discussed eating what remains in the freezer, which is a separate unit from the refrigerator, to cut back on that power draw. That draw is about 15amps when it's running but this is more sporadic. Of course, each time we open the door adds to power consumption.

Apollo 13 sequel (part 2)

We've managed to cut way back on freshwater use by taking saltwater showers on the stern steps and washing our clothes in seawater also. The biggest savings probably comes from doing the dishes in seawater - definitely a big savings there. We managed to go 5 days before hitting the 50% point on the port water tank which is what the kitchen draws from. The starboard tank was still over 75% at that same time.
To restore all this power to the batteries, we use our engine's alternator or, if the sun's high in the sky, the solar panels. Generally we have to use the alternator about 7 hours per day. This is way more than I expected.
We have two 220liter fuel tanks. The starboard tank is currently at 30% and the port tank is at 50%. During the first days of this trip on the way south toward the Cape Verde islands we used the engines for propulsion quite a bit of which we've done none of since we turned west. So having 40% of our fuel remaining after the halfway point is far from dire. Also of note is that eBay we have been referring to as the halfway point is "as the crow flies", aka on a rhumb line, from Tenerife to Barbados. We have not taken a direct path (by design) so likely are at about the two-thirds point in our journey.