GRAN CANARIA to AZORES


Having spent almost two months at home we arrived back at the boat at around 8 p.m. on Monday 7 June and the following day began preparations for our trip to the Azores. In the berth beside us was an Irish boat Periwinkle, a 26 foot timber yacht with a junk rig. Her skipper is Joe Kane from Dublin, among other places; he is also heading to the Azores en route to Ireland where he intends to leave Periwinkle in Hegarty's boatyard in Baltimore. Joe is well advanced in his preparations for the trip and was scraping the bottom of the boat with a paint scraper that was screwed to a piece of timber about a metre long, he kindly offered me the use of this implement as we have quite a considerable growth as the last time we dried out was in Morocco last November. I immediately donned the wetsuit and went overboard with face mask and snorkel to try this device out. I should point out to you that the wet suit is not because the water is cold, it is about 23 degrees (warmer than the air temperature on a summers day back home). But the buoyancy in it helps to keep me afloat and I don't have to expend energy staying up while doing this work. Such was the effect of this primitive tool in relieving the barnacles of their hold on Noble Warrior's hull, that in my enthusiasm and murderous intent, I broke the damn thing. Now while Joe was cool about this as he was finished using it for the present, I did not want him to leave without it being repaired, so I hopped onto my bike and went to the hardware store to purchase a new one for him and one for us also, (a bit like the Late Late Show, one for every one in the audience). I quickly drilled both handles and repaired Joe's and made a new one for Noble Warrior.
We hoped we would see him on the passage if we managed to get away in the next day or two. Joe was reckoning on 80 miles a day and we usually manage 100, so in a 10 day trip we should close the gap. Over the next 2 days I got into the water for a few hours each day to clean the hull while Maura worked on the list of things to do to prepare for sea. We will give those details in another article. The only unquantifiable thing on the list was getting the computer to communicate with the Pactor modem and the high frequency radio. Now my dear friends, most of you know that pewters and me do not get along very well together, the problem is they are cantankerous things and they don't understand me! However, on this occasion I managed to press all the right buttons and comms were established, (though the blasted thing changed its mind a few days later and point blank refused to recognise the com port that it had been working with, further reinforcing my opinion on their dubious use and premature release to the general public. Bring back the Abacus and slide rule I say.) Anyway, I digress, back to the story, so under the false impression that we had communications sorted we set our departure for the next day; Saturday at 1400 hrs.
The trip we planned was to head for the island of Terceira, which is about 900 miles to the North West of Las Palmas, as the prevailing winds are North West to North East, this was going to be a long beat. The rhumb line of 900 could easily increase by half again or more, so we told all at home that we could be 10 to 15 days out of contact, so as not to cause concern if the winds did not behave. The first two days confirmed our fears for a long slow haul; it took us about 4 hours of tacking just to do about 8 miles to clear the north end of Gran Canaria. From there it is about 50 miles to Tenerife and on the second night I was off watch when Maura called me at about 0630 as we were getting too close to the North coast of that island. It was a menacing sight in the dim light of a quarter moon that showed the outline of the jagged rocks and the white of the seas breaking on them that contrasted with the dark outline of the high volcanic cliffs rising from the blackness of the sea. We tacked and set her on a new course that would clear the dangers off the coast, by the time this was done it was pointless in me going off watch as there was less than an hour of my watch that was left, so Maura got an early break. The picture was taken later that afternoon as we tacked past it again, this time in daylight and a few miles further north.
On our second day out I was updating the log when I noted that in the previous 32 hours we had managed to sail a mere 60 miles toward our destination, less than 2 miles per hour. During that time also we had tacked eight times and adjusted the main sail from single to double reef and back out to full again along with the jib being half furled to fully, then also fully set, to match the main, this pattern was to be repeated many times for the rest of the trip. Noble Warrior has a cutter rig and this combination comes into its own when beating to windward, the staysail gives great lift and balance when the jib is reduced or fully furled in stronger winds, and in lighter winds the extra slot give that little extra lift. Though the wind did stay in the north East for the next 5 days leaving us close hauled for that time on a starboard tack, and more or less on our rhumb line, with speed going from 2.5 to 7.5 knots, this helped us achieve an average of 100 miles per day.
Our watch system has 4, four hour watches as follows:-Maura, 20.00 to 2400 - Paul, 2400 to 0400 -Maura, 0400 to0800 and Paul, 0800 to 1200. The remainder of the day is in 4 two hour watches. We don't rotate the watches as that is upsetting the body clock, and we find that by the fourth day we are sometimes waking automatically for our trick. The first few days of a trip are very unsettling as the body accustoms itself to the assault on its system and this is especially so on a beat. The boat is going from being up straight, which is of course her natural state and the state that she is constantly trying to attain, to an angle of 30 degrees or more as the wind fills the sails and heels her over, the waves accentuate this as they roll through causing a further roll, and at the same time cause the boat to pitch and toss as she rides over them. This motion is very upsetting and tiring on the body, apart from the balance issue which causes queasiness and a general feeling of malaise. There is the additional constant danger of being thrown against something and injured. To avoid this as much as possible we move around the boat using the mountain climbers' principle of three points of contact at all times. However, this rule like all others has to be broken at times, such as when dressing for your watch (which is done four times a day) or cooking or using the heads, and it is at these times that falls usually occur. I should point out that all of the above relates to moving around in the cockpit or down below, moving out of the cockpit on to the deck requires many more precautions, such as life jacket and safety harness to be worn. Crawling along is more the norm, being constantly aware of the boom (the widow maker) as even though it may be sheeted in, a failure of some component can change that in a fraction of a second, as happened us on this trip and I refer to this later in the text.
After around three days of this routine the body seems to accept this state and starts to return to normal, the cautions regarding holding on still apply, but the tiredness and malaise ease away and a more settled routine sets in. Normal, or nearly normal eating patterns resume, and so it was for us on this passage, on the third day we had a normal evening meal of Spaghetti Bolognaise, and this continued for the rest of the trip as we enjoyed a different dinner each evening which becomes a feature of each day. As we enjoy cooking and eating good food we plan for normal eating as much as possible on a passage. Our menu for this trip was the above plus roast chicken with roast potatoes and cabbage, a pot roast, chicken curry, and a cheesy fish pie, the latter is Maura's speciality and was her first time to cook a full meal at sea. While on passage I believe in keeping as much as possible to a normal routine, though the body clock is upset with the unusual sleep patterns, we try to keep the eating patterns as normal as possible. Consequentially we do not snack too heavily through the night and though we may have a cup of soup and some crackers during the night watch, or a tea or coffee and biscuit, we do not have high energy food such as mars bars or similar. I also employ the technique of 'heaving to' to eat if it is rough, going to windward the motion is much more violent than when off the wind, so for the sake of losing a few miles while 'hove to', it is worth having the comfort of eating off the table and cleaning up after dinner instead of eating from a bowl with a spoon, or worse having your dinner land in your lap or on the cabin or cockpit sole.
The winds for the trip ranged from force two to four and the seas were no more than three metres, though occasionally the odd large one rolled us hard and sent a large amount of water into the cockpit. From a weather point of view the most disappointing thing was the lack of sunshine, most days were cloudy all day. The sun is a great morale booster, but it was lacking for almost the entire trip except for a few hours on two or three days. We used the engine for about two hours when we left Las Palmas to set the sails and clear the busy shipping area of the port, and did not have to switch it on again for the next seven days until we needed it to motor sail the last few hours to get in before nightfall. The solar panel and wind charger met all our energy needs for fridge, navigation lights and electronics. The hydrovane steering system worked really well and saved a great amount of power, apart from the additional advantage of automatically adjusting the course to stay close hauled through the slight wind shifts that we had. The electric auto pilot would have required constant course changes to take advantage of these lifts that we got. Apart from the traffic encountered on the first day after leaving the Canaries we saw no ships for the duration of the trip.
On the Wednesday morning, I had just come on watch and was down below making a coffee when there was a loud bang from above, I quickly ran up to see what had caused this thinking the worst, that a stay wire had broken, but was relieved to see that it was not that drastic. The eye bolt that holds one of the mainsheet blocks had sheared off; the boom had run out but stopped when the loose block chocked up on the other one. I went back down to tell Maura that there was no major problem as she had heard the bang and was not sure if she would be needed on deck. I hove to thus relieving the strain on the system and allowing me to jury rig lines to carry out a temporary repair until I get a new eyebolt, (the picture below shows the set up).
I have mentioned the tactic of heaving to previously and I must say that I use it a lot, it is a simple manoeuvre and can immediately take the pressure off boat and crew in any emergency situation, or even when a task on deck has to be carried out, such as the above or when taking in a reef. It is much safer to take in a reef when the motion is taken out of the boat and the deck is steady, the only slight problem is to get her back on course, the easy way is to simply jibe her, but if the winds are up the safest thing to do is haul the jib around to the opposite side, then sail up wind and tack back on to course.
While perusing the pilot book for the Azores we began to read up on the islands, we had previously ignored Santa Maria which is a small Island at the South East end of the archipelago, but we had a rethink of this and decided we would stop off there, as we don't know when the opportunity would arise again. One of the reasons that we had not considered stopping here is that we had assumed our course would bring us more to the west or centre of the group, but now it lay on our track. This decision also brought the additional bonus of shortening our trip by around 150 miles.
Shortly after making this decision we spotted a sail a few miles ahead of us, looking at it through the binoculars it looked like a junk rig, and then the VHF radio that had been silent for almost five days came to life with the sweet airs of Molly Malone. It had to be Joe on Periwinkle , we spoke on the radio for a while as at this time Joe had been out for ten days without conversation with anyone, and we had been out for seven days. When we got closer we both got our cameras ready and took pictures of these two Irish boats meeting in almost mid Atlantic. As I mentioned previously, Joe was heading to Terceira as a stopover on his way to Ireland, but I have since heard from his brother that he decided to stay at sea and head straight for Ireland.

A few hours after this encounter the wind picked up and we went our separate ways, we look forward to meeting Joe again wherever that may be.
At 0800 hrs the following morning just after the change of watch, the feint outline of Santa Maria revealed itself on the horizon, the ancient call of 'land ho' rang out, the joy of seeing land after eight days of nothing but sea apart from the brief interlude with Joe and the accompanying Cory's shearwaters that entertained us during our watches as they skimmed the waves, raised our spirits and we began preparing the boat for harbour living again. We still had forty miles to go and in order to arrive before dark we started the engine to assist us in maintaining around five knots. This gave us the added bonus of hot water to clean up ourselves and the boat, where possible I try to arrive in harbour not looking like Robinson Crusoe. So, if time and circumstances permit I shave and shower before arrival, I must admit that this also allows me to have a celebratory drink quicker. As we closed the distance we could see what a beautiful lush green island it is, a great change from the mostly harsh barren coastline of the Canary Islands. At 1700 Hrs we were tied up in Villa Do Porto, Santa Maria. 850 miles, eight days and three hours, 10 books , and 20 litres of diesel later.

Paul Doody