Passage Luderitz to St Helena
29 February 2016 | Jamestown, St Helena
Steve
Luderitz gave me that old small town feeling where all folks generally knew eachother and were quite friendly, always saying hello, smiling and easy to take up a conversation with. We only spent three days here with a visit/tour to the old diamond ghost town of Kolmannkop a few miles out of town, walks around town, enjoyed the Oyster Bar and the Waterfront coffee shops. It was nice to catch up with cruiser friends from SV Yolo and Saul Ele. And just as we did before leaving Simons Town, we checked all the safety setups on the boat, to mention a few, jacklines, ditch bags, R10 MOB alarm checks, EPRIB checks, flares, etc.
Coffee! I was starting to feel depresso as my Senseo coffee bag stocks were getting dangerously low and weren’t available in South Africa. But voila, just before resorting to having to make my own little sachets, I found them on a shelf in the Spar in Luderitz. Very relieved, I scooped up their entire stock.
We pulled up the anchor in the late afternoon of 17 Feb after and outward clearance. The anchor took a bit of work to dislodge as it was well embedded in the thick black mud after a few afternoons of 35kts+ winds yanking on it (also blowing half the Namibian desert onto the boat!). After a bit manoeuvring and gentle nudging it eventually came up along with cakes of thick black mud. We have a pressurised water hose on the foredeck that was put to good use before we let this muddy chain run through the windlass.
Just as we were escorted into the port of Luderitz with Striped dolphins, we were escorted out as well – hundreds of them, jumping, enjoying boat fun and after about 30min we pooped them out – outrun by the wind! Large Cape Gannets flew around us thinking we may be a fishing boat. I know now we will have a great sail to St Helena. Our first 24hrs was getting used to shift work again after a short break, trying to get some sleep and for Rose, get reacquainted with the ocean swells. There was plenty of traffic on the AIS during the first day along the coast with passing commercial and fishing vessels. At one time we were on a collision course with a tanker and after calling them up on the VHF, asking their intentions, they gladly changed course to avoid us (sail boats, under sail, have right of way over motor vessels, in most cases). We only saw a few AIS targets thereafter on the way to St Helena.
The south-easterly trade winds blew reliably from the outset of leaving Luderitz and took us all the way to St Helena. The winds initially averaged force 4-5 with the occasional 6 and long period swells of 1-2m pushing Emerald along on a beam/broad reach (90-150 degrees), which is a favoured position, getting average speeds of 7.5kts and periods >10kts. During the second half of the passage the winds dampened to force 3-4 and we slowed to a leisurely crawl – also with smoothed seas which made quite pleasant sailing. Fortunately the circa 0.5kt current was also taking us in the right direction. And I have not used the engines for more speed. It was nice to have a full moon out, and her quarters either side of it, for the duration of the nights providing its bright glimmer over the oceans surface. There were times you could read a book at 1am.
Given that the SE trades would provide us effectively downwind sailing to St Helena I planned a rhumb line for the 1300Nm passage. A rhumb line is where you lay out a mercator projection chart (also the same projection as on our chartplotter), pick two points, and draw a straight line between them, that is the rhumb line. It's very easy to navigate using the rhumb line because you simply take the heading from the chart and sail in that direction. However, the earth is not flat and straight lines aren't generally the shortest distance between two points on a sphere. The shortest distance is what's known as the Great Circle route, and on long ocean trips, as on intercontinental flights, it can make a considerable difference in the travelled distance. Well that’s the theory … but in reality it’s slightly different. The winds shift in magnitude and direction a bit each day (or hours sometimes), the current affects boat speed and direction, therefore we adjust our course to optimize the boats speed (and comfort). This is known as Velocity Made Good (VMG), which is the velocity you make towards your actual direction. As most of this passage was dead down wind (DDW) on a plotted rhumb line and catamarans don’t perform that well on this configuration, I typically let the wind fall off our stern about 20-25 degrees to achieve an increase in speed and thus VMG. We would gybe back and forth using the rhumb line as a guide toward our destination. I'm guessing a bit, but I figure 20-25 degree off DDW would provide us with 5-10% of improved speed. And I used to think that Velocity Made Good was Usain Bolt’s rise from poverty to fame!
I've conceded to be a cruiser of Safety, Comfort and Pleasure – yes, it’s taken me a while to get there. While sitting at the helm contemplating our boats performance and reliability today, I decided that from now onwards that we would passage with the 1st reef in as a standard operating procedure. Besides the reduced stress on the rigging, when the winds increase to 20 knots, we’ll already have a reef in the main. Should those winds increase further, we can then reef the headsail, which is very easy to do. And its not very often we get winds >30kts at which time I would need to put in the next reef (we have three). This just makes life a lot easier on-board and for Emerald. With our large roachy main, the decrease in performance is marginal and outweighed by the reduction in system and human stress. Lately, I've been in damage control mode!
Today I re-engineered our boom preventer line. Not sure this is the optimal method but here goes…. The preventer line is used to stop the boom/sail from gybing i.e. shifting from port to stbd or vs, in a rolling sea and light winds. If you don’t ‘prevent’ this hard gybing impact, something is going to break which is not acceptable. We use a 20mm rubber compensator/12mm line attached to the boom via a strop, located at the same place as the sail’s clew and mainsheet attachments. It important to locate it here as this where the opposing force is, from the sail, when the boom and/or sail tries to gybe. Placing it toward the center of the boom (effectively a beam) would place deflection loads on it that could break the boom in a sudden snatch load. Attached to the compensator line at the bottom end is a pulley block making this section of the preventer an overall 1m long. The hold back line, as I call it, is tied to the two Wichard padeye attached on the aft beam of the boat, routed thru the pulley block and then secured to the center beam cleat. I pull it reasonably tight but not excessively i.e. take the slack out. In this fashion, the force exerted from the boom trying to gybe is distributed over three points on the boat’s deck. This is important as this cyclic gybing force is creating fatigue at these deck points and one wants to reduce this load this as much as possible. Distributing over three deck attachment points, each with backing plates, affects this.
And while we were moseying along at 3-5kts I took the opportunity to replace our first reef line. Ours had chafed through, looking ratty and thus needed replacement. Our boat is setup with a single line reefing system which is as it says; a single line from the boom end, thru the mainsail’s leech padeye routed back thru the boom, up to the luff padeye, down to a block on the deck, thru an organiser and onwards to the clutch. That makes for lot of line turns, which equates to friction. Seven friction turns to be exact, all reducing the efficiency of the system an making it difficult to pull in each time we lower the sail. So after replacing the reef line, a 12mm low stretch New England Endura, I installed low friction blocks at each of the leech and luff points. This has made a significant difference in reducing the friction of paying out and in of this line. I will also do the same for the 2nd reef when I get a chance to buy some more blocks. And for the reason for the chafe? … contact of the line on the gooseneck cheek plates that contain the booms pulley wheels. Some light grinding and polishing is required here to mitigate this.
Got to give fair due to Auto Pilots! I mean, we turn ours on when we leave the port and it doesn’t get turned off until we arrive at our destination. On long passages, as this one, that’s 10 days/24/7 of non-stop effort! It’s surely the hardest working lad on this boat. And our best friend – one we can’t do without. So I do monitor it carefully, talking sweetly to her and giving her a pat on the back. And just in case…we have a service kit available from Lacombe&Schmitt, the manufacturer of the hydraulic system, in addition to a spare fluxgate compass and rudder reference arm from Raymarine (as recommended to me by the tech who use to design systems for Raymarine). The Raymarine SPX30 smart controller is robust and known to be one of the most dependable systems out there. Glad to know! Knocking on solid wood … as I haven’t a spare for this!
No tall fish stories here! With a lure in tow each day, we only caught a very small mahi-mahi, which we let go. I'm going to have to start thinking about putting out multiple lures and adding some surface action.
Two medical first aid cases! As I was retracting the Watt&Sea hydrogenerator on its articulated mount, it bounced out from its mounting frame and came crashing down on my big left toe where the sharp edge cut and crushed in just behind the nail. Ouch. Fortunately my big toe is big enough not be taken off completely! I was studying it for stitches, which it probably could of used a few, and figured I’d have to either stitch thru the nail (difficult) or remove the nail completely then stitch it. Sounds difficult and painful, so I refrained from those two scenarios and just applied sterile saline wound washes, frequent gauze cleaning and pressure. It’s got 7 days to heal before we start climbing the vertiginous Jacob's Ladder, a steep 699-step staircase in Jamestown, St Helena. And then later that day, Rose hit her head on the stbd header while going down the stairs and placing a little cut and a bigger bruise on her forehead. Brings home how vulnerable we can be out here in the event of a severe injury. And to assess your task for risks before tackling them. We maintain a fairly complete First Aid Kit with meds and Rose is a qualified 1st Aider and I've been trained as a ambulance medic as well as a 1st Aid instructor.
On 24th Feb we crossed GMT or the Zero degree longitudinal line, which took us from East to West. Another reason for a celebration – and out came a glass of fine wine.
On the 10th day, Feb 27th, following almost 10 days at sea and 1309Nm logged it was Land Ho! As we approached the large rock island of Saint Helena with its impressive cliffs and fields of green we called up Port Control on 16 and announced our arrival and requested permission for clearance. We were advised to pick up the mooring number 8 and wait for immigration and customs – to which they later called us to come to their office (it’s a leisurely Saturday for the Saints). As expected there wasn’t a painter (rope) attached to the galvanised ring on top of the mooring buoy and we had ours prepared. However, another cruiser was kind enough to support us tying up to the mooring.
Lets go visit the Saints and see the colours of Santa Helena island.