After four not so nice days blundering through the doldrums I re-crossed the equator just about 4:00 this afternoon, a little more than two years (and a lot of water over the dam--or under the keel) since the south-bound crossing in February of '07 as we approached the Galapagos. I celebrated with a rum and coke and a hoarded little bag of cashews. I have been running the engine a fair amount, maybe half the time or more, to get across this belt of showers and fitful winds that separates the northern from the southern tradewinds. This makes for a hot, noisy and worrisome experience: will the fuel hold out, will the engine burn out, will there be enough Grey Poupon? As voyaging guru Jimmy Cornell had suggested, the belt turned out to be about 150 miles wide at this longitude (as narrow as it gets). It began quite distinctly around 3 degrees south and ended, even more distinctly, right at the equator. I was actually motoring to reach and cross the equator this afternoon, but before I even finished my grog ration a solid wind filled in from the northeast and BS has been flying on a fast beam reach ever since (It's after midnight now). Nothing is certain out here, but right now it looks like fairly smooth sailing the next 1600 miles to my planned landfall in the Caribbean, Barbados. If the winds hold and the boat and I hold together, that should be just over two more weeks. The northeast trades will likely last as I sail north almost to Bermuda. Seems like that's pretty much it for downwind sailing with a poled out jib, for this voyage at least. Hard to believe.
Hats off to the many sailors before me who have crossed this grim segment of the sea without benefit of mechanical propulsion. I can easily see how my slightly anxious 3 or 4 days of heck could have been weeks of hell for a vessel entirely dependent on more or less favorable breezes for its progress. "Water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink." Samuel Coleridge, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
Fred has been sending along the "comments" on the blog that have appeared during this leg. Thanks to all for your good wishes. And, Sally, concerning fallibility, there's no lack of it on BS! Better to be lucky than good, I always say.
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Comments [2]
All I can say is, so far so good. Conditions have been very consistent: winds varying from the south to the east but usually just about southeast--right on my transom. True wind rarely above 10 knots, so I am seeing 4 to 7 over the deck. For a week or so I was in a showery zone and there were frequent windshifts and sometimes the speed got up a little, but not over 20 apparent. Enough to send me scurrying, though. But I haven't seen showers like that in almost a week now. I see a ship every two or three days now, and sometimes talk to whoever's on the bridge on the VHF.
The irony is that in light wind I really can't carry the mainsail most of the time because it "slats" so severely as the boat rolls. But with the mizzen and the poled-out working jib I've continued to squeeze out 100 miles a day. Sure enough, after about 31 days I am within 200 miles of Fernando Naronha, 3300 nautical miles (a nautical mile is a land mile with an old-fashioned 15% tip.) from Cape Town. I've been seeing a lot more birdlife as I have approached land, but other than that I have found the South Atlantic pretty quiet in terms of sealife. Even the flying fish are rarer (and a lot smaller) than in the Indian and the Pacific.
The usual few little mechanical problems have cropped up--the automatic antenna tuner doesn't seem to work so I have been using the backup manual one. It is slower, of course, but actually often seems to get a better result. The fresh food is gone, except for some onions (and that's nice because I do love onions) and some bacon (what we call Canadian bacon) and cheese in the fridge. It has been gradually warming up as it empties and as it gets warmer outside, so I may not eat all that before it goes bad--it was bought assuming several crew on board. I disconnected the saltwater cooling on the fridge a while back (I read that the cooling systems tend to fail in saltwater which destroys the whole--expensive--compressor. I have it in mind to develop some kind of heat exchanger for it so I can run fresh water in it, but for now it is air cooled and it is hot as hell in the engine room, so it doesn't cool that well. I may get ambitious and re-hook-up the SW cooling for the next few months. People tend to run a little less efficiently in tropical conditions too, so I might not get ambitious. All I have to lose at this point is a pound or two of bacon and cheese. Warm beer has never troubled me. Anyway, it's still fairly cool--maybe 40 degrees F. I had to track down an egregious odor the other day and was discouraged to find that my remaining 2 dozen eggs were suspect and one of them was...well, you can imagine. Very sorry to see those go over the side.
But lack of eggs is no reason to stop at this point. I have not changed my intention to keep sailing to the Caribbean, which means about three to four more weeks at sea. I think I will make landfall at Barbados. It's off to the east a little so US cruisers tend not to go there (there is no charter fleet there either, I understand). But it sounds like a nice enough place to rest for a week or two before heading north to St. Martin to pick up son Fred (your editor for this and recent posts) who will be joining the boat for the final legs to Bermuda and Cape Cod. I had considered Grenada and St. Vincents, but the tradewinds in the Caribbean often have an northerly component, so the farther east I stay (and Barbados is as far east as you can get and still be in the Caribbean) the easier the trip north will be.
I promised more impressions of single-handing. As far as basic boat-operations go, it really hasn't been a problem at all. For example, the other day I started to get worried about chafe on the jib halyard (it's a roller-furler, so basically is permanent, except for maintenance). I had found a fair bit of chafe--worn about half through--in New Zealand and had meant to check it (but neglected to) in South Africa. If it breaks it might be a disaster, since it is an "internal" halyard. The part inside the mast can be nearly impossible to extract since there is so much hardware inside the mast for it to get fouled on. This happened with the main halyard in the Pacific and it was a miracle I was able to get the old one out from the bottom. I don't plan on miracles. So on a calmish day I dropped the sail on deck. Sure enough the halyard was definitely ready for repair (you just have to cut off the bad end and re-attach to the roller furler) and it was also a good opportunity to do the same for the jib sheets which get a lot of wear from the whisker pole. I am not sure I have ever raised the jib alone--the system for attachment of the front edge of the sail to the forestay is tricky and needs a careful eye and guiding, but the halyard must be hauled from the mast--fifteen feet away. I knew there was a "pre-feeder" aboard, a clever little piece of hardware designed just for this purpose, but I had never used it. I did however know where it was. Worked like a charm. In general my (home-built) sails have a lot of miles and hours on them and they are pretty fragile. So a maneuver like this was naturally a pretty anxious one. But, I figured, a ripped jib is a lot easier problem to face than a fouled internal halyard. I did a little math the other day and estimated that my sails have had from 4000 to 6000 hours in use on this voyage. Fred races in a Cape Cod Knockabout, as I did as a youth. A keen sailor in his fleet might be on the water for twelve hours a week, I'd say, and there's about a 12 week season. The competitive racers in that fleet (very laid back in dinghy racing terms) might buy a new mainsail every three to five years. My sails have had the equivalent of forty seasons worth of use over three years! So I will forgive them for being a bit fragile and thank them for making it this far! Gotta love that Dacron. But the single-handing aspect: yes it took a bit longer and I had to be a bit more planful. But I didn't have to spend the time required to smooth ruffled crew-feathers after a stressful "evolution" either. No prob. Watchkeeping: I say a little prayer every time I go to sleep. The radar alarm, it turns out, is pretty hit-or-miss. If I were to do a lot more single-handing, I would want some additional technology--a C.A.R.D. and an AIS system for the afficianados among you. There's no doubt the additional collision risk is the downside of single-handing, but, what the hey, can't live forever!
I certainly do have a lot of time to manage. My routine of reading, eating, cooking, doing physics problems, maintenance, sail changes, sleeping, cleaning, writing, and playing with the radio and computer is keeping me sane (I think--the patient is always the last to know). I would have most of this same excessive-time management problem with crew on board although crew issues would take up some of the time in both positive and negative ways. But as to the solitude itself (and how many of us have really experienced a month of solitude--I certainly hadn't) I actually kind of like it. (And, in fairness, with several conscientious and greatly appreciated email correspondents, this isn't exactly "Castaway" solitude, but, still..)In particular, the issue of mood seems basically to disappear, probably because there's no mood-related feedback from "other people" [My all time favorite line from a play--I actually got to deliver it on stage: "Hell is other people" Sartre, "No Exit." Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.] Anyway, for me, it has been, pretty much, serenity. I'll have to see if it can be packaged for later use.
But there is still a long way to go and the frustratingly light South Atlantic tradewinds may seem delightful in comparison with calms and headwinds and thunderboomers in the Doldrums (Inter-tropical convergence zone, for the technically-minded.) So I may be singing a different tune in three weeks if I still have a thousand miles to go and the fuel is running out. I'll keep you informed assuming the delicate communication chain continues to hold together.
Thanks for listening. Thanks in particular for the nice comments on the blog. It actually gets several thousand hits a month (can you believe it?) so the handful of people who express their appreciation and interest by commenting are real heroes in my book (or blog.) Keep 'em coming--time's running out!
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I'm at 8-57, 23-41, with consistent light winds continuing. Time passes easily, but I am certainly aware of it with such an unvaried life. Unlikely I'll ever do such a long passage alone again, so I am trying to savor it. If I had the last few seasons of the Sopranos on board, my life would be complete.
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