Zephyr's Travels

January 2023
DRYM
The start of our journey is here at Drym. From early January we have packed and decluttered 30 years of life into boxes, cupboard, drawers and barns.

quite a number of small canvas sewing jobs completed

Lists stretching the length of Cornwall, well not quite! Colin's attention to detail for this adventure is incredible. Every inch of Zephyr from the stern to the bow has been checked and double checked, including ourselves. Medicals, vaccinations, dentists and opticians. From hot climates to cold climates and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, nothing has been forgotten in detail.
Having Zephyr in Ponsharden Falmouth has made life much easier in getting her ready. Our launch date was fixed for 5th April 2023.

Early morning launch 5th April 2023

This deadline has pushed us to doing as much as we possibly can to getting everything on board. Probably way too much but we can always take items off again if not needed. Hopefully my little stash of craft and nic-nacs won't be spotted and can stay on board,
We are hoping living on board at anchor for a few months will test us and Zephyr trouble shooting problems as they occur. Already our first issues were rigging related with a stranded shroud and a failing furling top swivel on the genoa. ...........Mel Sharpe A2 Rigging resolved these efficiently and smoothly.
Helford has become our main anchoring spot. Sheltered peaceful incredibly beautiful.

Always something to see on the Helford

This spring has been unusually cold. This has been a great opportunity to test our thermals. With hats, woolly jumpers gloves and hot water bottles we have decided we can cope to 6 deg C, any colder then we might need to double up. Patagonia is a cold climate and something we have to prepare for.
'TIDE WAITS FOR NO MAN'
The logistics of living on board is something I hadn't prepared myself for.
Being dyslexic, I struggle with instructions. I learn by making mistakes, watching and repeating methods. This system can work well if you have the time and Colin has patience. Although the tide is no great mystery, it goes out and it comes in. Trying to calculate the amount of beach I will need to get across without wadding or sometimes swimming is a mystery. Then there are springs and neaps to add into the calculation. But over the last month I have got this all sussed. Now hopefully avoiding running at great speed across the beach on an incoming tide loaded down with bags of groceries.
Having cycled a round trip to Helston and back along unbelievably hilly back roads with our weekly shop we were pretty tired. But the tide was coming in and our dinghy was going to be afloat and we would be unable to get to it. Run!! Loaded down tired legs in sand. Although we made it this time rather then risk it again we have arranged a running line with a ketch anchor and a bag full of sand , this will hopefully be the way forward.
I under-estimated the strength of an ebbing tide, once again I needed to watch the speed of this to judge it better. But watching Colin accidently let go of the tender from our stern has helped me grasp this! It flew away at great speed towards the moorings and given the chance out to sea. Colin managing to jump into my trusted kayak chasing to fetch the tender back. With no engine working on the tender, Colin had to row towing the kayak against the tide back to Zephyr. Exhausting to watch!
My kayak has been up for debate for some time now. Is it one thing too much to take on our travels? I would like to think it has earned its space on Zephyr now.

Bec's daily commute to rowing training

ROWING
Rowing has been a big part of my life. It's where I met Colin. I learnt to row on St Martins in The Isles Of Scilly over 35 years ago.
I have been lucky enough to join Helford River Gig Club. Over the past few months, I've been rowing with a wonderful group of ladies who are now good friends and teammates. We managed to get selected to row at the Scilly World Championships and representing Helford we won the famous St. Agnes race and won Silver overall in the Super Vets.

Bec's supervet crew finishing 1st in the St Agnes race

This was one of my favourite World Champs to date. It was a fantastic achievement and great fun. Many thanks Helford River Gig Club.
WILDLIFE AND WEATHER
Storm Noa hit us hard.

Storm Noa at its peak

12th April, high winds and heavy rain and it was a great opportunity to test our new Rocna anchor. It worked well, holding in 50knts of wind. Meanwhile an unfortunate situation occurred with a nearby boat dragging its anchor through the moorings. After failing to get a radio call response we decided to inform the coastguard. They put us in touch with the Helford moorings officer, after further attempts to make contact with the boat the Coastguard called the RNLI lifeboat. They arrived only to find the chap on board was well and unaware of the situation apart from his dinghy had parted company and was heading out to sea. The patient RNLI crew dealt with the situation and went on their way.
M0rGAWR [Cornish for sea monster]
The wildlife is wonderful on the Helford with owls in the woods lining the river and Kingfishers fishing off the low branches. Egrets abound with their laboured flying motion going from one spot to another. We even have a seal who pops up to investigate our neighbour's dog Mrs Nibbles who visited us. she was whining. and up he popped to see what the noise was. Mrs Nibble's soon stopped. I think she thought she might be lunch.
One day we noticed a strong bow wave crossing infront of the boat, we couldn't see what it was so Colin decided to investigate further and followed in the dinghy On closer inspection it turned out to be a Stoat. I had no idea they were such strong swimmers. Why would it need to cross such a large stretch of water?
Our next encounter with swimming wildlife was a Deer. Also, a very competent swimmer. It casually swam past heading across the river. Maybe its true when they say 'The grass is always greener on the other side', incredible to watch. My sister was on board that day. she was so excited to see this for herself. Hopefully a memory to treasure

3 girls in a boat


Homemade dinghy chaps to keep the tropical sun off

32nd year of this annual event. My first being in the Dolphin crew St Martins IOS 32 years ago. Today I'm rowing with Helford super Vets A crew. The weather is drizzly but a calm sea . Should make for some good racing. Lovely to be on Zephyr with Colin at hand for morel support and cooking supper in the slow cooker. And apple juice from Drym orchard. A great way to start the day!

We finally arrived in Ponta Delgado, Azores on Sunday 29th after a generally event free passage and with just a day to spare before a nasty depression was forecast to cross the island.

We'd been watching the weather for some time before departure after seeing endless north easterlies too early in the spring for our cruising plan. We finally slipped the mooring in Falmouth on 19th May with a favourable forecast involving a circuitous route to avoid the calm spots.
The passage started off in glorious weather beating westwards skirting north of Scilly out to a point 70 miles west of the Bishop to catch the promised westerlies before two fairly nauseous food free days beating south in a fresh WNW'ly.
No pain-no gain they say, and so it turned out with the pain followed by three solid days of boisterous beam reaching across the rhumb line to catch the next and final conveyor belt well out to the north-east of the Azores to dodge light conditions down the rhumb line and take advantage of settled NE'lies as we got closer to our destination. It didn't go totally to plan with one 24-hour period of calms but still managed to keep a birthday party appointment on arrival!
The boat went well with only a couple of problems, one being an earth fault tracked down to the SSB DSC aerial (earth faults on an aluminium boat are always a worry). The second was a failed ball joint on the autopilot ram. I'd felt very smug after finding the problem knowing I'd just taken delivery of a spare joint before we left, only then to find the system has two slightly different threaded joints. Yes, my spare was the joint on the opposite side of the quadrant. Fortunately a bodge kept the show going.
On the wildlife front, there wasn't anything particularly unusual apart from perhaps the huge numbers of small Portuguese Men of War in floats as far as the eye could see. I can see a sensationalist tabloid press headline now if any of them make it to Newquay this summer.
We had a pit stop from a couple of bees off Scilly who were replenished with honey before heading on their way.
Whale sightings were in short supply although one of the 3 was possibly a Sperm Whale by the shape of the spout. Closer to the Azores we had a visit from a couple of passing Rissos Dolphins and a spectacular feeding display from some pretty big Tuna but again no whales.
The first signs of land approaching Sao Miguel were a moth at 300 miles, a pod of dolphins at 250 mile (who appeared within about a minute of starting the engine for the calm patch) and then the island Shearwaters at around 200 miles. Sadly, various flotsam also started to appear with increasing frequency at about the same time.
On the stats front:
Rhumb line distance Falmouth to Ponta Delgada 1225'
Distance sailed 1425'
Sailing time 10.4 days
Engine run for charging 1 hour (the wind genny and elderly solar panels did a great job)
Engine run for motoring 24 hours
Fish caught nil (3 bites)
We are now in Ponta Delgada for a couple of weeks cycling before heading on to Santa Maria and then the central island group later in June.

We lost the first versions of these posts somewhere in the technical world of satellite comms but here's the gist of it from memory (we'll add some more when we get a chance):

June 1st & 2nd AZAB 2019
Its been a bit of a roller-coaster ride beating out of the western approaches with today the third day of sailing hard on the wind. Finally, the forecast is indicating a few days of more favourable winds. We hear there have been a number of retirements due to boat and gear damage which is not surprising given the testing few days so far.

At the time of writing we can hear approaching dolphins through the aluminium hull which seems to make a good underwater microphone. We've also had a couple of pods of Pilot Whales lazing about watching us go by this morning. We passed the edge of the continental shelf this morning so now properly in the deep blue Atlantic.

Bec has been logging positions of floating plastic debris for the University plastic free Falmouth project and research study. So far, the sightings have been depressingly regular.

3rd & 4th June AZAB 2019
Still getting bounced around with quite fresh conditions still not much in a favourable direction but we continue to make reasonable progress. Appetites are still not 100% so no gourmet meals to report on yet although I did 'cook' a frozen Rowes pasty last night (Bec declined the offering but did manage half a pizza).
We still have visual company with Arethusa (Mervyn Wheatly) just a few miles off our starboard side after we've overtaken each other a couple of times so far.
The boat is holding together well although it looks like the bouncing around has stirred the fuel tank up as the engine died after 45 mins charging batteries yesterday so looks like filter changing when the weather improves. The wind generator is producing all the power we need at the moment including the fridge.
First sighting of a whale spout yesterday evening on the horizon.
The noise of the aluminum hull falling off big waves is quite something at times and is taking a bit of getting used to.

Bec : At last we have a beautiful day of deep blue seas ,sun and wind. First proper day of not feeling seasick or being rolled around in a washing machine! Zephyr carries on irrespective of what ever is thrown at her. We now need to get our heads down and make some headway in our class ranking.
I'm mostly on Whale watch today.

June 5th-7th
The last three days have rolled into one, with big seas and endless squalls meaning we are both feeling pretty shattered. Thank goodness we are getting our appetite back and can eat some hot food.
We decided to start sleeping one hour on and one off through the night. It's funny how your body soon accepts this is the way its going to be. We stay fully dressed in our sailing gear and life jackets ready for action sleeping on the floor of the saloon. This seems to work quite well, allowing us to just wake up and get on watch. Colin probably does a few more watches then me but I make up for it by cooking bacon sandwiches and coffee for him at sunrise.
We have had a small amount of wildlife, Terns, Cory's Shearwaters and a pretty gull, not sure what it was.
The most exciting sighting was a pair of Killer Whales they were just off our stern. They looked like they were up to no good and going to upset some poor pod of Dolphins or some unaware edible marine creature! Still quite something to see them out here.
Colin shouts out "water spout" every now and again sounding like he's spotted Moby Dick. The spout is so far away its hardly worth looking at, I'm not even sure there is a spout of water to be fair.

June 8th
After what seems endless days of beating to windward we are finally on a beam reach creaming along at 8.5 knots. We are roughly 2 days out from Ponta Delgada now and its looking like the Azores High is building right on our track meaning a light-winds finish which should be interesting. We've made the decision to make an approach from the east as that looks to have marginally more favourable winds although it could almost be a toss of a coin.
We've been racing in sight of Arethusa (Mervyn Wheatley's Bowman 40) pretty much since leaving Falmouth and both headed off on different tacks last night so it will be interesting to see who comes in to Ponta Delgada ahead of the other.
The boat is performing brilliantly and we're still finding out how to get the best speeds out of her.
At one point during some boisterous weather we hit some good speeds downwind with the centreboard up and ended up bursting the weak link disc in the rudder hydraulics. The fail-safe design results in the rudder lifting as with a dinghy rudder. Fortunately, it was a quick job to remove the burst disc and replace it.

Day 9 Approach to Ponta Delgada
As it always seems to be the case, the approach to Ponta Delgada was somewhat of a lottery. We chose an approach from the east and stayed well offshore to avoid any wind shadows. This turned out to be no great advantage as we spent a torturous day creeping west in next to no wind.
Once in mobile phone signal range, we were able to pick up the rest of the fleet on AIS and figure out where we were in the pecking order. The biggest surprise was to see one of the Rustler 42s stuck in a hole off the north-west point of the island and the other perhaps a mile from the finish line. As we crept ever closer to Ponta Delgada it was evident that the Rustlers weren’t making much progress. 12 hours later still at no more than 1-2kts we crossed the finish line after a night of tacking backwards and forwards in the bay being denied a finish by the current pushing us away every time we got within spitting distance of the harbour entrance. The Rustler 42 Aliana fared slightly better in the end just sneaking in a few minutes ahead of us.
Homeward Leg
The homeward leg started with light winds that got lighter and lighter resulting in San Miguel and quite a number of the fleet remaining in sight for a couple of days. Once we did find some favourable winds we ended up around day 5 heading into a bit of a hole after which various factors started to conspire against us. The batteries were proving to be in poor condition meaning we were having to run the engine more and more frequently. This wouldn’t normally have been a problem but for the fuel filters needing regular changes due to clogging. Things took a turn for the worse on day 7 when in calm conditions, lightning everywhere and a lot of sail slatting, something managed to dislodge the radar scanner from its mount which hung from the cable for a few minutes before dropping to the deck and saved from going overboard by Bec.
The following day now in thick fog with no radar and in the company of fishing boats just off the continental shelf we decided to call it a day, retire from the race and motor on our way. In all a disappointing end to the venture but a great experience!

Its early on a sunny Saturday morning at Port Pendennis Marina and the final preps are underway with lots of activity.
After light winds for the start at midday, the forecast is looking quite lively for the first few days so its unlikely we'll get the chance to ease ourselves into the race gently.
We'll try to post most days but no guarantees!
Bec's post
On the domestic front we are all ship shape and ready to embark! We have enough cake to sink a battle ship. Many thanks.

A week to go to the start of the AZAB 2019 race and the last minute job list is under control (mostly).
We dried out on the lighthouse beach on the Roseland yesterday for a final scrub although the hull was pretty clean.
The main job left to do now is bleeding the steering hydraulics after replacing the ram seals after finding a small leak and then having a last minute panic after finding the replacement seals kit was the wrong one. Thanks to Armada Marine for the speedy service sorting that one out at short notice.
Then it's getting all the non essential cruising gear off and getting the race provisions on before heading over to Port Pendennis next week for the pre-race preps and socials.