Waving to Club Med
05 November 2009 | Turks and Caicos
Finally, the chiropractor gave us the thumbs for Dana to return to
sea. We had gotten all the repairs we deemed important. We had
recertified our liferaft and EPIRB. The boat was stocked with all
sorts of food. We were ready to go. This was going to be our first
trip really far out at sea in thousands of feet of water and days
from land. This was a big challenge for us, but we felt we had the
necessary preparation (at least as much as was reasonable), after all
the classes we had taken, books read, and -- most importantly --
spending 6 months sailing and living aboard the Northfork.
At this point Marty agreed to join us. Prior to this the plan was
just to stay until we left. Perhaps he felt that after helping with
all the repairs he should go ahead an enjoy the fruits of his labors.
Mark reiterated several times that, while we felt we were reasonably
prepared for the trip, there were no guarantees. Marty insisted he
was up for it all. So, Marty went and dropped off his car with a
friend in Norfolk and we headed out the next day.
The first day was easy going. We had the engines running most of the
time as there wasn't enough wind and we wanted to get out ahead of a
storm that was coming toward Hampton.
As we neared Cape Hatteras, we turned away from the coast to cross
the Gulf Stream. Getting across the Gulf Stream was important
because the current is northward and we had a long way to go south.
Also, the area around the stream can often be the location of adverse
weather patterns, especially when north winds run against the
current. The sea started getting bouncy but we made good progress,
having the sails up part of the time and the engine running other
times.
When we saw the next day that we were outside the current, we all
celebrated achieving the first big milestone. Unfortunately, this
also marked the beginning of the hardest part of the trip. The wave
action had been pretty bad and Dana and Marty got very seasick. They
had split a scopalamine patch but apparently that had not been enough
for them. For the next several days, each of them repeatedly
vommitted and were generally miserable. Mark got a touch of
seasickness as well and wasn't in the best of condition either.
This is probably where we started making the most serious of our
mistakes during the crossing and is the area we need to work on most
for large crossings in the future. The problem is that with everyone
seasick to one degree or another, crew and captain let their diets
go. What's more, people were not drinking as much as they should.
In my view, letting this happen ended up exacerbating the situation
as people continued to feel worse and even weakened to some degree.
Going forward, we need to be much more alert to this and disciplined
about requiring that people adhere to a certain consumption of water
and a balanced diet.
Some other areas where we feel we were sloppy were in keeping the
boat in order, dishes clean, etc. Things were not being put away as
they should and we would have disturbances whenever the boat tacked.
The last area we were weak in was in scheduling of watches. The two
of us had grown accustomed to informally figuring out when each of us
should be sleeping and adjusting the watched accordingly. This works
pretty well for the two of us. However, it didn't work as well when
a 3rd person was added into the mix. People didn't know ahead of
time what their watches were going to be and so they weren't aware of
how much sleep they were going to need off-hours. The amount of time
on watch then tended to fall unevenly, with most of it on Dana and
less so on Mark and Marty. When it isn't just the two of us, we need
to put together formal watch schedules so that this doesn't happen
again.
One interesting aspect of the trip was in how much of the challenge
and the areas for improvement is mental and organizational. We
really didn't have any serious technical issues or failures during
the trip, though there were some significant problems that arose.
For the next couple of days we enduring fairly rough seas with
unfavorable winds out of the southwest, which is where we were trying
to go. We kept most on a southerly tack, with the continuing concern
that we did need to get further west if we were going to get to the
BVI, our intended landfall. This meant that a good deal of attention
had to be maintained to the sails and our course so that we were
making as good of progress south and to the west as we could, without
stalling Northfork.
On days 4 and 5 we experienced a number problems that caused us to
reconsider the BVI. We were still over 800 miles out and had at
least 5 more days to go, when in a series of rough waves, the rotary
drive for the autopilot died in a loud grinding noise. We
immediately switched to the backup linear drive and Mark and Marty
investigated the problem. There was no external problem with the
unit (other than it making loud grinding noises when it ran. So we
disconnected the chain from the unit (Marty pointed out how there was
a master link that I could pry open with a screwdriver to open the
chain). That night, Mark noticed the bilge pump was staying on all
the time. When he checked what was going on, he found there was a
pipe dripping water above the pump switch. The particular angle of
heel the boat had was causing the drip to land on the pump switch and
short it out. The switch was smoking and fizzing with the water.
Mark wrapped and taped a plastic bag around the pipe to direct water
around the switch and into the bilge (later this was replaced with a
proper piece of pipe). Shortly afterwards, the switch started
working again. We made a practice of regularly checking the bilge
level to make sure it wasn't overflowing. While the autopilot and
bilge pump failures could grow into serious issues, at that time we
understood that we were still in fine condition, as we could turn the
electric bilge pump on manually and we also had a hand operated bilge
pump. Also, we had an operational autopilot drive and furthermore we
had a spare linear drive unit we could install if necessary. Still,
the combination of problems while fairly far at sea was not ideal.
Later that night, Mark careless lost control of the traveller winch
when the wind caught control of the main sail. The winch handle
whipped around and jammed his thumb very hard. So hard, Mark thought
perhaps the thumb might have been broken. The combination of boat
failures (albeit non-critical ones), Dana and Marty's continued
seasickness, and now Mark's thumb served as a catalyst for opening
discussion about whether we should continue to BVI or head to the
Bahamas closer by. The BVI's were still an optimistic 4 days out and
very likely 5 days if the winds did not hold up, which our SailMail
reports indicated they would not.
The decision was made to head to change course to the Bahamas or
Turks and Caicos, depending on the wind. As it turned out, the next
day the winds caused us to take the more southerly course to Turks
and Caicos. Over the next several days, the sea conditions eased up
considerably as we neared our revised destination, Mark's thumb
swelling eased up, and in general problems on the boat diminished.