made it in yeasterday in time for happy hour on palapa with vagabond and crew. i even managed to pick up the mooring on my own in 15 kts of wind, took two tries, not quite as easy as catalina with the wand.

the margaritas where a huge hit and finally out of tequila completely! crisa made perfect brazilian bbq, i will not every be doing the grilling with him on board again. he brought an amazing piece of meat as well, stu quality and very cheep!

the ipad worked like a champ, even waterproof. i dont see raymarine lasting more than a few more years!

more later, still a bit hungover.

cheers, roger

well the last 12 hours have been more in line with the actual pacific passage than how i wanted the pacific passage to be. i put a reef in the main and took down the jib shortly before sunset last night and with 20 to 25 kts of wind now straight behind me and a good current have been making at least 6 kts. along with this i am getting the standard rolling back and forth with various objects making irritating noises that i slowly have to track down. it was so rolly at one point i got catapulted off the main saloon (romper room) berth while i was trying to watch house. i had to go ahead and break out the lee "strap". this is a poor mans version of the lee board or lee cloth.

in spite of this i feel amazingly well rested with my series of naps last night. i pushed the timer out to 30 min and i am pretty sure i rarely slept longer than that even with crew. of course this only works in the open ocean where you are not dodging fishing traffic that does not show up on radar with non standard lights!

i had a beautiful sunrise this morning but its a bit over cast and now and COLD. i think i am going to be trying to get south to the cape verde islands as soon as i can get crew organized and the boat ready. in another 8 hours i should be meeting up with vagabond in time for happy hour. cirsa suggested margaritas and i made extra ice last night so it should be a good event.

cheers, roger

winds where a little light starting out today so i had to motor sail for most of today but this afternoon they finally picked up and clocked around so i could do a broad reach. i must say this has been a really pleasant passage almost makes me start thinking of doing the pacific again! today it was finally warm and sunny enough to not have to wear warm clothing in the cockpit. it took me a while to line up me with not a totally dorky look on my face the drink and the boat speed all together (7.3 kts in this photo). in reality this is not yet happy hour and i am indulging in soda water with ice total ice abuse but i can only use so much myself!

i finished off a lethal weapon movie marathon this morning. over the last 2 days and seen all 4 versions, a bit violent but sure keeps you awake! i thought about working on some minor projects today but decided to take a nap this afternoon instead perhaps i will be more motivated tomorrow. i only have one more over night to go to meet up with crisa if he is still where he was last email but i almost would rather just keep going another day and get to grand canary while it is nice like this!

and caston i have been using a version of the egg timer, i put the iphone i vibrate and loud with a timer and lie it on my chest whenever i wake up i check things out and reset the timer for 20 min, it hardly ever goes off this way. what would be even better would be like a chess timer that you have to hit with in a specific time or it goes off. kind of like a hardware watchdog timer on micro processors to protect from code hang ups, but i digress!

i also have been playing with the ipad. the canaries are going to be a test of ipad only navigation as i only have detailed charts on the ipad. yesterday i got the laptop pushing all the nave data to the ipad over the bgan wifi, this gets all the ais targets on the ipad as well as all the boat info, very cool. i also have the cruising guide on the ipad. interestingly the ipad charts cost 60$ but if i had bought the same charts for the laptop or raymarine it would have been $350.

cheers, roger

i was enjoying a nice relaxing broad reach this afternoon getting ready for happy hour when something off to port on the horizon got my attention. i grabbed the binos and saw an open boat with what looked like 2 or 3 guys in it. the boat was initially heading towards me then seemed to arc around and fall in behind me probably a mile or two in trail. this was the first boat other than tanker traffic i had seen and i had purposely put a waypoint 50nm off africa to avoid any small fishing boats (hostile or otherwise). not feeling comfortable out here by my self at all i went ahead and accelerated to max speed 7kts and broke out the flare box. i fired off one flare pistol and one red parachute flare directly astern just to make sure these guys new i had seen them. i could not see anything on the flare gun but it made a nice bang. the parachute flare made more like a woosh and in the flare looked more like a slow tracer round with no obvious parachute. after this i got out the binos again and the craft seemed to be disappearing in the swell astern me.

when the sun set i went ahead and took the sails in and altered course 40 deg out to sea and blacked out palapa. fortunately i had experience with the BBB aka bosy boy boat aka imagine back in the gulf of aden who where light Nazi's so i knew all the light sources. after about 6 hours i resumed nav lights when i was passing a freighter and now i am back sailing again about 70nm sw of where i was at 3am local here.

ironically this was the first time i had fired either on of these "devices" they are both out of date but went off with no problem. i am sure i was being paranoid here but after the gulf of aden transit i really dont like to see other boats. i still don't know what these guys would be doing 40nm off the coast heading out to sea at sunset in an open boat cant imagine the fish are that much better this far of shore but who knows. it is really disappointing the somali pirates have generated this type of fear and hatred, before that experience i would have happily waved at them probably traded beer for fish.

cheers, roger

well i must say i am getting a bit more concerned about the systematic fatigue that dave mentioned. this afternoon while pulling the main out i observed the bolt holding the bottom of the boom vang to the boom vang goose neck had sheared off. i am not sure if this was the result or the cause of the sail being hard to unfurl but the conditions where very light, less than 10 kts of wind, and as always i only had two wraps on the winch so i should not be breaking anything regardless!

the good news is i had several spare bolts and i was able to make the fix in less than 15 minutes including locating the parts. the other good news is the bolt that sheared was under sized. i replaced it in the south pacific when the whole asm ripped out of the mast and i am thinking i replaced it with a smaller titanium bolt before i got the correct size spare or because i could not find titanium in the corrrect size. the bigger one i had was stainless. it looks like i will need to send an email off to the spar guys again.

in the photo you can see the sheared bolt in my and and don and right from that you see the head of the replacement bolt already installed.

i should probably ask for a photo of the whole setup rather than one part at a time. the replacement goose neck they are sending me is massive compared to mine. perhaps this part has been upgraded as well.

at least i am not bored and stuff is breaking before leaving to cross the atlantic and before larry comes out! and the batteries are working great and i have plenty of ice!

cheers, roger

well the atlantic is turning out to be the way i expected the pacific to be way back when! the swells in the actual ocean are soo much better than the ones in the med with their longer period, amazing what a difference it makes. its still plenty rolly when the wind is on the stern but most of today had 10 kts winds on the beam. this was great as i was able to do close to 6 kts with this. there must be a south bound current of at least a knot on my track to make this possible.

i broke out a new book today some sort of cold war espionage thing i got at the book swap in Gibraltar not bad and have only made it though about half. all systems seem to be running at 100% including the genset and boom. i have been able to talk to heartsong and imagine on out baby ssb net at 7am the last two days. they have finally got out of ibiza and are in mainland spain. hopefully they will get to the cannaries before i decide to head further south.

i got another great sunset although i had to put on my puffy coat to sit up on the rail to watch. i even had salmon pate on ritz while i watched it. my only regret was not having any one to share it with! i have finished just about all the leftovers so tomorrow may actually have to cook some thing with the limited propane.

the night watch thing by myself is really not that bad. the ais and radar are great but after the first night there have been very few contacts. i did appreciate it at one point last night when we had 4 tankers converging within a few miles of me. it would have been very hard with just visual to sort thing out. the good news is i am making such good time if things hold i should be able to make landfall at lanzarote just before sunset. crisa on vagabond emailed a good anchorage there so i am looking fwd to catching up with him as well.

cheers, roger

getting the last 15nm out of the med turned out to be harder than it looked. the current never "switched" and the best i could get was 4.5 kts. i did make it into the atlantic in time for happy hour and a beutiful sunset. the camera filled up just before the sun set completely so i was forced to just enjoy the final few seconds with no camera. i was rewarded with a green "flash" (for those of you who have not yet seen one of these it is more like a green wink when the last bit of the sun turns green, no actual flash evolved but very nice.

to make things better the winds came up for a nice beam reach just before the sunset and i was able to enjoy a microwaved pasta cabonara left over from a few days ago. even better i was able to run the microwave on the inverter without killing the batteries. the wind continued to build and i was going 6 to 7 kts most of the night. eventually i had to start the genset to charge and after a few minutes of running the intermittent oil light fixed its self so i did not even have to fix this (this is separate from the low oil cutoff switch).

eventually the wind died around 5am and i am now motoring but all and all a pretty decent night. finished my book watched a few house episodes and i seem to have gotten enough 20 minute naps to keep me going.

cheers, roger

well my plan was going to be go spend another night at anchor today so i could leave bright and early and optimize the tide/current leaving the straight of gibraltar. i was not able to get much sleep last night and woke up earlier than planned so i decided why not just get under way. i was not looking forward to a night along on anchor and had finished all the house episodes last night in my insomnia. i also finished a bottle of rum, a pizza and a left over gyro so i was not feeling supper great either.

i got up to the marina office and checked out by 9 and final got out of the slip by 10. of course the whole boat was a mess and it took the first hour to get everything stowed but i wanted as much of the favorable tide as i could get before it turned. the book was quite confusing and i am not sure correct. for a while i was down to only 2 kts. i am back up to almost 4 now but supposedly in 1 45 minutes i will be in the slack zone and then it will build in the good direction for the rest of the day.

here is a photo of this ass clown who tried to run me over. we where converging with him gaining on me and after a half dozon calls on the radio and when i could see the whites in his eyes i can starboard to avoid collision. so much for rules of the road. i do not mind altering course if i have the right of way just dont like doing it without confirming with the other vessel first. this guys was clearly clueless.

had some more leftovers for breakfast/lunch along with a beer and chips and was feeling much better. only another 12 hour until i am declaring i am in the north atlantic and then only a 560nm to go to the first cannarie. at least it is warm and i am not board yet just a bit lonely..

cheers, roger