To continue our narrative regarding the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean:

Marine Life
In the introduction to the previous blog update, I mentioned that we saw one whale, two turtles, birds, dolphins, and lots of flying fish.

Not all of the birds we encountered were sea birds. Sometime after leaving the Gran Caneria, a small pidgeon landed on the yacht. He stayed with us for hours, sometimes flying off, circling the yacht, then landing again. We were thinking about giving it some water and biscuit, but by early morning he was gone and did not return. Poor little fellow, he would not have survived.

We had another bird coming to rest on the yacht for a short while, a swallow, possibly a Barn Swallow. Apparently, these remarkable birds migrate from their breeding grounds in the Northern Hemisphere to their wintering grounds in the Southern Hemisphere, navigating vast distances, crossing continents and oceans. This bird certainly looked more capable of surviving an ocean crossing than our poor little pidgeon!

On Sunday 26 May we saw our one and only whale which passed quite close, about 30 metres down our port side. It was very large, much larger than Nessaru, and pale grey in colour. After consulting The Mariner's Guide to Marine Life, we think it was a sperm whale.

We saw lots of flying fish, skimming across the wave tops like miniature sea-skimming missiles. Each morning we would find a few on Nessaru's deck. One even came through a small hatch and landed in my forward cabin.

The AIS MOB Incident
At 04:45 on Tuesday 4 June, Michael noted that the AIS (Automatic Identification System) had registered a Man-Overboard (MOB) alarm, with an MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identification) but without a position (latitude and longitude). Coming off watch, I checked that the MMSI did not match Nessaru's MMSI. However sometime later, Michael noticed a red light shining through his jacket. Ah no! It was his personal AIS/MOB beacon that had accidentally activated! We immediately called Al Johnston using the Iridium satellite communication system, and asked him to notify the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) and all concerned, including Mandy and Annie, to assure them that it was a false alarm and that Michael was still onboard the yacht.

By all accounts, the system worked in as much as AMSA notified key contacts as well as other search and rescue authorities. Thankfully, it seems that we were able to inform AMSA that it was a false alarm before a full-blown search operation was undertaken.

Strange sightings
A couple of days after departing Gran Caneria, Michael told me that, while on watch at night, he saw a wall of sand ahead of the yacht, then on the following night, a forest of trees. (I have read about solo sailors having hallucinations from sheer exhaustion.) Next, Michael told me he saw strange lights, lighting up in sequence to form a shape in the sky like the letter H. Hmmm! But then the following night I saw the strange lights too, only the ones I saw, about 10 or 12, lit up sequentially in a straight, almost vertical line, then diminished. Michael thought they might have been Elon Musk's satellites, but we do not know.

Then on 8 June, at 04:45 when we handing over the watch, something even more weird happened; we were overflown by what can only be described as an unidentified flying object. I was steering at the time so my vision of the sky was obscured by the bimini (canopy) over the helm. But Michael described it as a large object, with flames coming from four burners, flying fast and very low, only a few hundred metres above us, but without making any sound. When I saw the object, the four burners had merged and I thought it looked like a very bright meteorite. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, within a few minutes it was gone. What was it? Michael did not think it looked like a commercial aircraft (see his drawing on the photo gallery), but did briefly consider the possibility that we might have been witnessing an aircraft about to crash or ditch into the ocean. But as far as we know there was no crash; it kept on going and climbed into the night sky before disappearing. And there was no noise! There are some strange things happening in the Atlantic Ocean!

Food
As mentioned earlier, to conserve battery power we adopted a practice of turning the refrigerator off at night. Our priority for meals then became the fresh food in the fridge which ran out about eight days out of Grenada. We had to ditch just a few items which had spoiled - some mince, bacon and butter - then resort to canned food, either meat balls or canned ravioli, and dried food which was either mashed potato, pasta or rice. For breakfast we had muesli, and lunches were usually noodles in a cup. We tried to add some variety to what was becoming a very boring diet. One day we had hard boiled eggs and crackers, and another day it was pickled onions and crackers for lunch. A real treat was when Michael baked bread. On the last occasion when we had Michael's fresh bread for lunch, we did not have any butter and we scraped the last of the jam out of two jars.

Spillages
With a rolling vessel in a big sea, spillages of one sort or another occurred regularly. Here are some examples: In the fridge - milk, fruit juice and peas; on the stove, bench tops and table- coffee, sugar, muesli, pasta, rice and canned food; On the deck - all of the above plus honey (Michael likes honey in his coffee; when I was making coffee, the container fell onto the deck and the lid came off. I scooped up what I could with a spoon and added it to his coffee. He said the coffee was good, and what he did not know did not do him any harm!)

Iridium GO!
In a previous blog I have mentioned Iridium GO! It was a very disappointing system. A typical log when attempting to send and/or receive am email would go like this:
- connecting to the internet
- connection type is: iridium GO! for mobile devices
- connection protocol is: maxwell
- logging into device
- status: connecting
- status: disconnected
- Failed to connect to network
- Done
The above would be repeated over and over and over again, sometimes 20 times or more, until, if I was lucky, I might get a connection. Then, if the satellite was lost and the Iridium device went into search mode, I would have to start again. Fortunately the phone connection worked reasonably well, but Iridium Mail was woeful and the internet connection did not work at all. Not good when crossing an ocean and Iridium is your only means of communication with the world!

Arrival in Grenada and the end of our yoyage
On the evening of Saturday 15 June we arrived in Grenada, navigated a narrow channel into a lovely little bay called St. David's Harbour, and secured the yacht to a buoy. It was great to be able to prepare and enjoy dinner without the boat rolling from side to side, and to look forward to a full night's sleep, We just wished we had some beer or wine to celebrate with.

The following morning we slipped from the mooring and motored around the south-east corner of Grenada to St. George's and then into Port Louis Marina. We secured alongside our allocated berth at 09:32, then cleared Customs and Immigration.

During the latter half of our Atlantic crossing, Michael and I considered our options and decided not to continue across the Pacific Ocean. We would put the yacht up for sale in either Panama or Grenada. There were a number of reasons for this decision: The adventure was taking a lot longer than we had anticipated and we were unlikely to be home before November or December; it was costing more than we had budgeted for; on arrival in Australia we would have to pay 5% stamp duty plus 10% GST on not just the purchase price of the yacht but also the cost of getting it to Australia - money we no longer had in reserve; and having crossed one big ocean, we did not feel the need or desire to spend weeks at sea crossing another. We were also concerned that due to unexpected delays, we were behind schedule, and our planned objective of being out of the Caribbean before the start of the hurricane season in June was no longer achievable.

Shortly after our arrival, we made inquiries about putting the yacht up for sale in Grenada, which seems to have become the unofficial yachting capital of the Caribbean. Subsequently, Gary Haynes from Horizon Yachts Grenada, a yacht management agency and brokerage, agreed to manage the sale of Nessaru. Gary is an Australian, from Manly in Queensland, and we got on well; we feel assured that our yacht will be in good hands until sold. However we do have to move from Port Louis Marina which would be far to expensive for us to keep the yacht here for the long term. Gary recommended a bay called Woburn, where a fellow called Dominic will lease us a mooring and keep an eye on our yacht - for a fee. So on Sunday 23 June we will leave Port Louis and sail to Woburn.

Readers may recall from earlier blogs that Gary Humphries was going to join us in Panama as third hand for the voyage to Tahiti. When I updated Gary on our change of plan, he decided to come to Grenada and from there to continue on to South America. So Gary will have a very short voyage in Nessaru when we relocate the yacht to Woburn. The day after we moor the yacht and hand it over to Dominic and Gary Haynes, we will disembark; Michael and Gary will spend a few days in a hotel in Secret Harbour, Grenada, before going their separate ways. I will fly home via Barbados, London and Singapore, departing Grenada on 24 June.

So, there you have it - the end of the Voyage of SY Nessaru. We are sorry if some of our followers will be disappointed, but we feel we have made the right decision. It has been a big adventure, we sailed over 4,000 nautical miles from Barcelona to Grenada across the Atlantic Ocean, and we have no regrets!