07/09/2009
In my last blog entry I stated that we had entered Dorado territory and hoped to catch one of these fine fish. Well, on Friday afternoon we did just that. A fine specimen took our lure and before long it was being filleted and bagged. Unfortunately it was caught too late for Friday dinner but we had a great meal of fish and salad on Saturday night. But, not only did we bag one on Friday, but another on Sunday, together with two Marlin that decided that our lure was a tasty morsel to be eaten. We kept the Dorado but released both Marlin as they are really such pretty fish, although they also make a fine meat.
We have done a lot of spinnaker sailing over the weekend as well and have had the boat moving along at a good pace in a moderate breeze. She sails extremely well under this huge sail, keeping a good track and not fish-tailing like some boats I have sailed with a spinnaker.
Our "Ship Spotting Competition" is going along well - we all have an equal score of zero ships spotted! Yep, in the last 1800 nautical miles we have not seen one other vessel. I cheat sometimes and tune my handheld radio into the AIS frequency to see if any ships are transmitting their AIS reports, but that has all been quiet with nothing heard. We are, however, getting close to our first major shipping route since St Helena and should see one or two ships in the next two days. Thereafter we will be in the shipping lane which goes up the northerly coast of South America and competition should be good - Hardy has already stated that he will win the bottle of rum, which is the prize.
We have suddenly started seeing more life around us in the form of birds. Gavin, aboard a 46' catamaran about 200 nm ahead of us has reported seeing a number of whales - we have had no whale sightings since the African coast. On Sunday night we had two "hitch-hikers", of the feathered variety, sleeping on the bows. How they did not fall off during the night baffles me as we were really bouncing along at about 7 knots!
At the moment there are six Leopard catamarans all heading in the same direction and spread over about a 1000 nm distance. Every couple days we SMS each other to get positions and weather updates. All the skippers know each other and there is a bit of competition involved to see who is catching who. It's good to know that our boat, although running behind all the others, is actually keeping pace with the 46' ahead of us. We must be doing something right.
By the next blog entry we will have reached our next waypoint off the South American north coast. We then have to try and stick to the continental shelf to pick up and make the most of the strong current that flows up towards the Caribbean. If we are successful in finding it, we should have a few days of over 200 nautical miles per day. Lets hope we find the current as soon as we hit the waypoint!
Hope you all had a great weekend - we did. Regards from the motley crew, Andries, Hardy and myself, John
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03/09/2009
Over the last few days we have been blessed with wind - from the right direction as well. We have had the gennaker up and managed to get 12.8 knots in 15 knots apparent. Not bad! When we sail with the gennaker, we make sure that it comes down when the wind reaches 16 to 17 knots apparent, as we do not want it to reach our next waypoint a day or two before the boat! Otherwise, the sea has built up a bit with the strengthening wind and we currently have a 2.5 meter swell from the east-southeast and just over 20 knots from the same direction.
One thing that we had not seen in their abundance were the large schools of flying fish. Normally we encounter them before reaching St Helena but this trip we have only started seeing them now, at latitude 10 degrees south. The water must be too cold for them so they most probably have been migrating to the warmer waters north of us. We have also not put our fishing lines out for a few days but need to do so from tomorrow as we are slowly entering Dorado territory and there is nothing better than a nice fillet of fresh Dorado baked with butter, herbs and a bit of sweet onion. Let's hope we can bag one or two over the next few days.
Before St Helena we had birds around us each day. Now we occasionally see a little storm petrel dipping in our wake, picking up the small sea life churned up in our wake. It will be another week before we get our daily dose of birds coming to have a "look-see" at us. Also, the last dolphin we saw was also before reaching St Helena. Strange that this section of the Atlantic Ocean is so devoid of sea life.
So, what do we do each day, you may ask. Well, we have a number of books with us which are slowly being read. However, there are only the three of us on board and we run a 24/7 watch system. This means that we need to try and catch up on lost sleep whenever we can. Then there is the preparation of our main evening meal. Last night we had baked macaroni cheese and tonight we are having sirloin steak with pepper sauce, baked potatoes with cream cheese and some sweet gem squash. Hopefully our meal tomorrow evening will be baked Dorado! If not, something on the chicken line will have to do.
Then Hardy and Andries have a few hundred DVD's and a portable DVD player. I must admit that I am not a movie fanatic and have not joined them watching any of the movies. But, they enjoy a movie every second evening or so and it keeps them occupied.
Now, on a subject totally different, I have been delivering yachts for a number of years and before each trip I brief the crew about having strange dreams. Each crew member has been having them on this trip as well - dreaming about subjects that are totally unrelated to sailing and sometimes quite disturbing. The other night Andries was having a really bad one and was shouting out in his sleep. He did not remember it when we spoke about it the next morning, which is quite unusual as, mostly, the crew tend to remember the dreams. Don't know if other cruisers experience this whilst undertaking long passages but I am sure some professor of sleep at some university would love to come on a delivery to monitor the crews dream patterns. It should make an interesting study.
Well, that's it from aboard Moorings A4001 for now - regards from Andries, Hardy and myself, John.
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31/08/2009
The weekend was quite interesting. The forecast was that we should have a light breeze of about 10 knots from the southeast. Well, that did not materialise and we had light variable airs from everywhere except from the southeast! However, we have 100 percent overcast sky today with 10 knots slowly developing out of the east-southeast - let's hope it continues to develop into some useful wind to sail by.
As mentioned above, the sky is overcast with thick black clouds. We could also do with a good downpour of rain to wash the Namibian desert dust off the boat that has imbedded itself into every conceivable nook and cranny - as well as the layer of salt that is slowly building up on the boat. And then, if it is a good downpour, a good wash in fresh water for ourselves would go down a treat as well.
Things are much warmer now that we are slowly getting closer to the equatorial region. When we departed Cape Town we were all freezing and went about our watches in multiple layers of clothing with heavy foul-weather gear on top of that. Now it is down to T-shirts and short pants, although there is still a chill in the air at night. However, once we reach the equator and further north, I am sure we will all be complaining that it is too hot - just can't win, can we.
Yesterday (Sunday) we had a really flat sea and Hardy ventured up the mast to inspect all the rigging and fastenings. He found that two small bolts that hold the VHF antenna had worked themselves loose and did a quick repair job, right on the top of the mast. Andries, being a young strapping lad, did the winch work whilst yours faithfully did the supervision and gave instruction - lazy sod I am!
We also managed to catch two sizable Bonito yesterday. Part of one was consumed, pan fried in lemon butter, for dinner. Pasta was on the menu tonight (Monday) and Hardy is going to try his hand at fish cakes tomorrow evening. I must add that Andries is really learning how to cook - he made flapjacks on Saturday and baked two great loaves of bread and the fish dinner on Sunday.
Until later in the week, regards from Andries, Hardy and myself, John.
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29/08/2009
Our stop in St Helena was the shortest one I have ever made. We arrived in the anchorage at 10:30 and had to wait on the boat until 15:30 for the islands Medical Officer to come out and check that we did not have Swine Flu. What a waste of time! We then had half an hour to visit immigration, port authorities and customs to clear in and out at the same time.
Whilst en-route to the island we noticed that two bolts had come out of our furling drum and disappeared overboard. One of our missions on the island was to source replacement bolts and this was sorted out even before we managed to get ashore. Bruce (ZD7VC), a local radio HAM, called me on the radio shortly after we had anchored and I asked him of the availability of the bolts. He kindly left us a packet of assorted bolts with Jose, the man who was storing our diesel for us. My great thanks to him for his assistance - the bolts will be returned to you as soon as I get back to Cape Town.
We then had a quick beer and went down to the customs shed to collect our diesel that Gavin, one of our other delivery skippers, had left for us the day before. Then back to the boat to repair our furling drum and re-hank the genoa, top-up our diesel tanks and we were ready to sail. Not a very exciting visit for Hardy and Andries, who have never been to the island before.
The weather forecast for our region is for light east-southeast winds of around 10 knots, increasing to around 15 knots tomorrow (Sunday). Well, the forecaster who predicted those winds has a lot to learn. Through the night until this morning we had flat seas with a variable maximum 4 knots of wind. This afternoon we have had a northerly breeze of maximum 5 knots and, to slow us down even more, we have had a slight counter-current. We are motoring at the moment! Let's hope that the winds do fill in and we can put up some serious sail and make this a "sailing boat", as it should be.
This leg between St Helena and the northern Brazilian coast is a pretty quiet one as far as ships are concerned. We may see one or two around until we cross one of the shipping lanes just before reaching the next waypoint, just over 1800 nautical miles away. However, I have started a competition - the person who spots the most ships between St Helena and a waypoint just south of the island of Barbados, wins a bottle of good Caribbean Rum at the end of the delivery. More on this as we progress.
Hope you folk are having a great weekend. Regards from John, Andries and Hardy.
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27/08/2009
I can talk about the albatross, night sky and other things that are really wonders of nature, but this blog report is about the "toys" I carry during deliveries.
Firstly, I have a laptop computer with a special charger that charges the laptop off a 12 volt DC cigarette lighter socket. The laptop contains all the software needed to type up reports, navigate via charts of the world (with a small GPS plugged in) do email whilst on land and do email at sea via HF radio or satellite telephone. It also contains the software for manipulating or re-sizing photographs taken with my digital SLR camera. Then it has a library of over 17000 music tracks which connects to one of my other toys, an Apple iPod - one of the most handy little gadgets that anybody can take sailing.
My digital SLR is quite a good camera and is now a number of years old. I carry two zoom lenses and have taken quite a few really remarkable photographs over the years I have been delivering yachts - on the other hand I have also take a hell of a lot of really bad ones as well! But that's the great thing about going digital - it costs nothing to view your photographs and delete the bad ones.
I am a radio HAM (amateur radio operator) and my fourth toy is an Icom 706 MkIIG ham transceiver that has been altered to be able to operate on both the HAM bands as well as the marine frequencies. As most boats I deliver have no counterpoise or earth plate, I simply trail a 13.5 metre length of heavy duty electric wire behind the boat as we are sailing. Likewise, most delivery boats do not have HF antenna, so I simply buy a length of ski rope and insert a further 13.5 metre length of electric wire into the centre of the rope and, with the one length attached to a small tuner at the stern of the boat, hoist the other end of the rope up the mast - the antenna only goes about halfway up the rope and thus is kept well away from the mast and rigging. Then, coupled with an SCS Pactor modem linked to the radio and to my laptop, I can send and receive email (and update the blog) at no cost - the Winlink email system is free to licensed HAMs and may be a good consideration to folk that intend to go long term cruising. Getting a HAM licence is also a lot easier today than it was a few years back - there is no longer a requirement to learn Morse code.
Okay, the above explains some of my "toys", but on a different subject, the delivery of this boat, we are now a day away from St Helena island. We were not going to stop there but have been told that one of the other delivery boats has left us a few drums of diesel. As all the delivery boats heading for the Caribbean have been experiencing light winds on the leg between the island and the Brazilian mainland, the company thought some extra diesel will assist us on those days where the sea looks like a mirror and headway is not being made. Nice of them.
Well, from Hardy, Andries and myself, we wish you well until the next blog report. John.
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