Welcome

These are the voyages of the sailing vessel Pétillant. Her original eight-month mission: to sail from Baltimore to France via Florida and the Bahamas, to successfully navigate the shoals of the French douane, to boldly go where few Maine Coon cats have gone before was completed in 2008. Now she is berthed in Port Medoc and sails costal Spain, France, and the UK during the summer months.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Autumn Update

Just a quick note to let you, the gentle reader, know that Petillant finally cleared customs in mid-August, and is sitting happily in Port Medoc. We did not do any sailing this summer, preferring to get re-acquainted with the house, but we are looking forward to spring sailing next year. We have visited the boat since arrival in June, and it looks like it is in amazingly good shape, after completing the traverrsee. We have decided that this is such a nice marina, and a great spot to be based here, that we will take a long-term lease on the slip. More info in upcoming posts.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Summer in France

We have loaded a number of new photos to the FLickr site, and video will becoming soon, as well. We hope to organize the photos in a day or so, showing what part of the trip they describe.

Petillant is still in Port Medoc, where she arrived on June 28. Customs clearance is still in progress, with an agent based in La Rochelle - our latest word from him is that he thinks we will be able to clear the boat through, without paying the import/VAT. We have purchased our internal cruising passeport at the douane in Bordeaux, so we have the proper internal papers. However, without the customs clearance we are hesitant to go anywhere that we could be controlle by the douane, so Petillant will likely sit in Port Medoc for the rest of the summer.

Not that we don't have other things to do - we have made major progress in working on the house, with a terrasse underway, with the architecte now under contract to give us a rennovation plan, and with continuing work to clean up the grounds. We have been busy, and will continue to be busy thru the end of August, at least. We will be going off on a canal barge cruise at the end of August/early September, for a week, with friends from the US.

Since it does not look like we will be doing much sailing this summer, we are also considering setting up a blog of life here in France. There will be a link here when it gets set up, probably some time after the middle of August. Stay tuned...

Friday, July 4, 2008

Nous Sommes Arrivee!

We have arrived in France! Landfall was on June 27, 2008, and we received a personal escort by the French government into the Gironde. Following is the log for the last leg.

June 17, 2008

The day started grey and damp, but it looked like it would eventually brighten up, so after taking a last-minute look at the weather, we decided to leave today. There was a brief discussion between the owners representative and the leader of the operational team, and it was agreed that we would try to avoid heavy weather during this leg of the trip. The original plans for this leg included heading NNE to 45N, and then along the parallel to Bordeaux, in order to have plenty of room to deal with north winds in the Bay of Biscay. However, both the Passageweather site and the NWS agreed that there will be a low right at the spot we had picked, when we had planned to be there, so we are now heading more NW, towards 43N 15E. AS cleared us out before lunch, and the FBs left around noon, so we spent an hour bringing the dinghy onboard, and disconnecting from shorepower, and then had lunch before leaving the jetty at 2 PM.

On the way out of the harbor, we noticed that the autopilot was curiously showing us moving backwards – the heading seems to be 180 degrees off. This prompted some desperate searching through user manuals to try to figure out what was going on, and we eventually discovered that the autopilot, which includes the heading compass, needed to be “swung” to determine its deviation, and then aligned with the steering compass. As we were doing this, it dawned on us that it was probably due to the reset that we applied to the depth/speed instrument to get the depth readings back. For some reason, when one instrument in a Seatalk network (the proprietary network sold by Raymarine) is reset, it evidently sends out a signal on the net to the others instruments to reset themselves, too. So all of the Seatalk instruments that were online at that time reverted back to their original factory configurations.

This caused us to have to spend some time in the harbor at Horta doing slow circles, and then when we got out into the ocean we found that the autopilot could not hold a course very well. This was caused by the autopilot being reset to the default control settings for a displacement boat (e.g., a trawler), rather than a sailboat. So we had to go thru the entire dealer configuration menu for the autopilot and reset the boat type, rudder gain, counter-rudder, sensitivity, wind-trim, and other control parameters for this boat. Later, we realized that the calibration for the speed instrument was also reset, so we did a temporary calibration against the GPS, with the hope that the current was not too strong. We will probably not be able to fix this till we get to France. We anticipate that we will find a few more settings that need to be calibrated before we are done.

Our initial heading was NNE between Faial and Pico, but we decided to head east between Graciosa and Sao Jorge islands to try to take advantage of the wind. Sao Jorge is a very high island, at least at the western tip, and it was tricky getting around the tip with strong gusty winds coming down off the top of the island. Eventually we cleared the island, and set sail at about 080M for our waypoint, sailing pretty much downwind at about 5 kts.

June 18, 2008

The wind pretty much died during the mid-watch, so we started the engine, leaving the mainsail out to try to benefit somewhat from whatever wind there is. The mid-watch saw one fishing boat, but the morning watch saw nothing, nothing, except the moon, some small swells, and gulls waking up. The morning watch saw a large pod of porpoises, and then we had eggs and chili for brunch. With our watch schedule, we have more “brunch” than breakfast, because the mid and 3-6 watch-standers usually sleep till about 10, and even the morning watch tries to take a nap before noon. So chili and eggs make a good menu for this meal. We also started to make some water, even though we filled up in Horta, because we are already down by about 125l. We took farewell showers before leaving Horta, and since we are running the engine, it is a good idea to top off the tanks. We also made a gal of water to a jug, to use for making coffee and tea, because some were able to detect a “metallic” taste in the watermaker water from the tanks. One gallon made in 9 minutes – 6.5 gal/hr, which is close to the spec for the watermaker. It will be pickled once we get to France, and that should restore it to its original efficiency (7 gal/hr).

Started sailing again at 2 PM, downwind at about 4 kts. Winds are ~10kts, dead astern, but skies are sunny with cumulus clouds, and the sea-state is quite tame, with swells less than about one foot. We saw a nice turtle about 4. It was hanging over a school of small fish. We circled it for a while, and it didn’t seem to mind us, as long as we stayed far enough away and didn’t appear to threaten it. The top of its shell had some brilliant red patches, which was surprising, because I had thought that they were green or brown.

We have altered course to the north to try to get some better speed, and maybe some better winds to the north. But the afternoon WEFAX says there is a low moving to the east, NW of us, so we will not try to go too far north. Better to take it slow down here – we have lots of food on board.

After seeing the WEFAXes, we decided to go back to the rhumb line, and started motoring towards 43N15E. Not enough wind to sail.

June 19, 2008

The winds started to pick up during the mid-watch, so we let out the sail, and it turned into a glorious night. The winds kept building, and at the end of the mid-watch we were doing a steady 6.5 kts straight for Bordeaux. The morning watch noted a slight windshift and took in a small reef on the jib, but we otherwise stayed on the stbd tack, at speeds between 5-7 kts over the ground, and thru the water, all day. The sunny morning eventually clouded up, and a few sprinkles hit us, but nothing serious. Seas built up to about 2-3 feet of gentle swells.

About 9 AM, however, we had a serious plumbing problem. The main head did not want to empty. It would suck in water, but not expel it. This was a serious problem, and it required about 4 hours of work to fix, involving removal of most of the hoses from the toilet, unbolting it from the deck, and removal of the macerator unit from the bottom of the bowl. Inspection of the macerator unit revealed some plastic-like material around the chopper blade, and on the pump impeller behind that. Re-installation of the macerator unit, however, did not solve the problem, so we proceeded to the really ugly part of the job, involving the discharge hoses. The heads on this boat have a joker valve on the toilet itself, but Jeanneau also decided to install an additional, separate one in the line to the holding tank. Luckily, the hose is not too elevated from the toilet to the tank, but it sure was nasty when we took the valve out of the line. We found that the discharge line was blocked significantly with salt deposits, and the separate joker valve was completely clogged. This is likely due to the chemical reaction between urea and seawater, which is known to create such deposits. We had been treating for this with vinegar, but evidently not frequently enough. We had to clean the joker valve by hand, and try to scrape out as much salt as possible with a screwdriver. The toilet then went back together and it works fine.

We had seen a precursor for this problem about 4 weeks ago, and we dealt with it by throttling the inlet valve, but this, in hindsight, was exactly the wrong thing to do, because it cut down on the flushing of the lines, allowing the urea/SW mix to stand in them and crystallize. In the future, we will flush vigorously and long, to try to get the urea out of the line into the holding tank. It looks like the hoses will need to be removed in Bordeaux and mechanically cleaned, or alternatively chemically cleaned, if that is possible. We treated the both heads with the remainder of the vinegar that we had on board, in the hope that it will prevent this problem from showing up in the next 10 days. More research will also be needed to figure out how to prevent this in the future. Crossing our fingers…

Needless-to-say, the head got a thorough cleaning after this event, with fresh water and bleach, and the engineer who took it all apart got a nice hot shower.

The winds died around 4 PM, so we started the engine again, and motored till about 7:30, when the winds picked back up, so that we are making about 5 kts to the NE. The WEFAXs say that we should be avoiding the low to the NW, if we stay on this course, and we should see winds pick up to ~10 kts in a day or so. The forecast for the weekend is not so pleasant, but involves a high passing overhead and taking all the wind, so we may have to motor for a while on Sunday into Monday. Not pleasant, but mush preferable to slogging into the 35 kts E winds to the north of us.

Evening meal was ratatouille with rice, using fresh veggies from Horta. We also opened one of the cans of chipotle peppers, and they added an additional element of complexity to the dish. We are also eating salads each day, for lunch, so we are getting plenty of veggies, and have little risk of scurvy.

The winds continued to increase thru the evening, and by the mid-watch they were up to 20 kts, with seas rising to about 3-5 ft (1-2m). The boat speed picked up to 6.5-7.5 kts, with occasional bursts to 8 kts.

June 20, 2008

The morning watch reefed-down the mainsail, because we were humping along at hull-speed, and didn’t need the additional drive that just caused us to yaw around. The boat sat up better and still went fast. The 6-10 watch saw the sun come up and the day begin with sunshine and clear skies, but the clouds eventually appeared. Rain started to come down on the 10-2 watch, and the jib was reefed down when the winds reached a steady 25 kts. Boat speed is still at 6.5-7.5 kts, with bursts to 9.3 surfing down some waves, but the boat is in good control, and the motion is not bad. The daily run was 160 miles, a record for this trip, and it looks like we will continue like this for at least 2 more days. We are down to less than 850 miles to go to the sea-buoy in Bordeaux, and have advanced the waypoint from 43N15W, to the waypoint at the mouth of the Gironde. The original waypoint was close enough to the direct rhumb line to Bordeaux that we decided to just go for it. We will come about 75 miles close to the NW coast of Spain, and there are plenty of harbors there to run into, if we need to, because of weather or to pick up fuel. If we keep up this pace, we will arrive in Bordeaux on the 27th…

The first WEFAXes of the day, from the UK and NOAA, seem to show that the low to the NW will continue to track to the NE, in parallel to our course, which means that we should see this weather continue, which is a good thing. SW winds continuing at 15-25 kts would be just about perfect for us. It is interesting that we have been essentially on a stbd tack for nearly 6 weeks straight. It has caused some of the interior joinery in the boat to become distorted – doors do not quite close, and the top for the fridge has been displaced so that it is really tight to close. Hopefully the boat will eventually re-arrange itself and the doors will close properly. The hatch for the fridge will probably need some help…

The wind started to die during the start of the 6-9 watch, so we shook out the reefs in both the main and the jib, but the wind also shifted more to the west, so the jib is flogging a bit. Still managing 6 kts, but just barely.

June 21, 2008

Reefed down the main and job on mid-watch, but then wind started to drop off again, so morning watch let out reef in main, and speed went back to 6 kts. 6-10 watch let out reef in jib, and speed went back to 6.5-7.5 kts, with little flogging of jib. Just a little bit better angle on the jib produces some very nice speed and boat motion, even in these seas, which are now running 3-6 feet. If we can get the speed up, we have a grand sail down the front of the swells, and everyone can sleep well.

The radar started to act up again on the mid-watch, and was put to sleep on the 3-6 watch. At 11, we noticed that the batteries are down quite a bit, so we decided to run the engine to charge batteries. Even a good solar system struggles when the winds are not consistently above 20 kts, and the sun don’t shine. Today, we have bright sun, and winds of 15-20, but that is still barely enough to keep up with our demand, much less recharge deeply charged batteries, and make water. Once we started the engine and brought the voltage up above 12.5, the radar lit off without a hitch, and works fine, even staying on when we flush the toilet. It seems that it doesn’t like low voltage, and may be a good precursor signal that the batteries need to be recharged. We also started the watermaker while we are charging batteries.

The 1200 UK WEFAX shows a large low way to the north that is trailing a front behind it. Our position is just behind the front, which should be giving us NW winds, but we are consistently seeing WSW, so we wonder what this is all about. Maybe the front has not yet passed over, but it looks like really nice weather astern. Oh, well. Che sera, sera.

5 PM winds still west at 10-15, and we are still motoring, making water and charging batteries, doing about 6.5 kts.

June 22, 2008

Kept motoring thru the night, but the wind shifted just before midnight, when a front came thru, to the north. We kept the main up for a while, and then about 1 AM the mid-watch thought we could motor-sail, so the jib came out a bit and the boat speed increased significantly. So, the motor was throttled down a bit, and we motor-sailed thru the night at about 6 kts. It was tricky, though, because we could just barely head directly towards Bordeaux, losing a tiny bit of ground to leeward. The wind shifted a bit more to the north during the 6-10 watch, which caused the jib to flap, so it was rolled in and we continued to motor-sail with just the main.

We shifted 5 jerry cans of fuel into the main engine tank around noon, because the gage showed us down to 1/3 tank. 5 tanks is about 25 gal, and we should have been able to put in another 1 or 2 cans, but the gage read full after 5, so we stopped. We now have a barely full tank, and 8 full jerry cans on deck. If we can sail for a few days, we will eventually get to the point where we have enough fuel to motor the rest of the way, if necessary.

In reaction/response to our refueling, the weather gods started to smile on us, with some shifting of the winds towards the north, so that around 1 PM we let out the reefs in both the main and jib, and started to sail close-hauled directly towards Bordeaux at about 5-6 kts over the ground. We also turned off the engine. The winds are holding around 10-15 kts true, and the seas are running less than 3 feet, so the motion is not bad. The constant heel is an irritant, but much preferred to corkscrewing and slamming off the tops of 12 foot waves. We also appreciate the quiet of not having the engine running.

Lunch was tomato, onion, and artichoke salad, with several different cheeses and cold cuts from Horta. A nice meal, well appreciated. NL is trying to get AS ready for France, with the plethora of cheeses. He is quite adventurous about this…

We are starting to have a hard time picking up the US WEFAX transmissions now, because of the poor propagation conditions. Normally, there should be lots of sunspots right now, causing good ionization in the ionosphere, which should give good reflections of radio waves, but this year the sun is silent. So, the SW radio propagation is bad. We heard Herb talk about this a lot, when he was trying to communicate with boats east of the Azores. But at least we have the UK WEFAX to fall back on. They are closer, but we have noticed that they use pretty fine lines in their weather charts, and these have a tendency to get lost in the noise. We will post a few sample WEFAX charts on the photo page so that you can see what we are depending on for weather out here.

Pasta carbonara for dinner with some smoked ham that we purchased in Horta. Just right.
The evening watches went well, with the wind reasonably steady in the NNE, at about 10-12 kts. We reefed down for the evening meal, and then let it all out again once things were cleaned up. Boat speed rose to about 5.5-6 kts after dinner and stayed there for the nite. The wind wandered about a little bit, around about midnite, but the mid-watch and the morning watch had quiet night. We are starting to see more ship traffic, as we get close to the coast. The moon was quite gorgeous when it rose tonight, big and bright (but past full).

June 23, 2008

Bright sunshiney day today, at least at the beginning. There is a bank of clouds off towards Spain and Portugal, about 150 miles away, and we are wondering whether there is some rain over there in Spain, maybe on a plain somewhere. The winds freshened during the 6-10 watch, and the boat speed go up to 7 kts over ground, 8 thru the water (this value cannot be relied on too much, because the knotmeter lost calibration in Horta, and was only very roughly re-calibrated). If we can keep up a 5 kt averge, which is very reasonable, we should arrive at the Bordeaux entrance bouy on Friday. If we can do 6 kts, we will get there in the evening on Thursday, which would probably not be a good idea. Low tide is in the early AM on both days, which gives a good flood tide to enter during the morning.

We are probably at the point now that we could motor the rest of the way to Bordeaux, just using the fuel on-board. This is a relief, in that we don’t have to worry about ducking into somewhere in Spain to refuel. We were a little bit concerned at the end of last week, after we had spent so much time motoring, early in this leg, but the wind gods have smiled on us, and we are doing well with sail-power.

Sailed most of the day till about 5, when we realized that we needed to charge batteries, so we started the engine and motor-sailed till about 8 PM, when we had Chinese stir-fry for dinner. We stopped the engine to make the motion easier for dinner. The seas are down quite small, but the swells do tend to make eating a bit harder, especially when we are running faster and occasionally fall off of one.

The evening watch sailed at a nice pace, but the wind eventually came on the nose, so we started the engine again on the 9-12 watch.

June 24, 2008

This night was the first to see significant amounts of shipping, and they were truly significant tonite, because we were passing right through the N-S route from the Channel down to the Med, and to Africa. LOTS of ships, moving in both directions, LOTS of LARGE ships, and even some fishermen running in circles, causing everyone to wonder where they were going to head next. We also saw a large pod of dolphins swimming around the boat as the sun broke the horizon, and the boat was barely making way under sail – it was quite amazing.

The wind eventually came back on to the beam around 5, so we tried to sail, but could only make 3 knots, which may have been acceptable in the past, but now everyone has fixed it in their mind that we will arrive on Friday morning. This means that we have to maintain about 5.5 kts between now and then, so we will do some motor-sailing to get the speed up, if necessary. Also, thinking about tales we have heard about the douane, it would be a good idea to have all of the fuel in the jerry cans down in the tanks, so that they don’t decide to tax us on it, because it is the red/untaxed variety, mostly still from Stuart. So we will do some more motor-sailing to get there in a reasonable amount of time, and to remove temptation from the French officials. We still don’t know what is going to happen when we get there, from the point of view of the douane. Hopefully jlm will be there with all the info.

Moved clocks ahead one hour today.

We also figured out how to receive NAVTEX messages, now that we are in the land of NAVTEX, which is not very common in the US. After fiddling around a while, and waiting, we finally made contact with the NAVTEX station at Coruna, Spain, and received 4 messages warning about NATO naval exercises, hydrological studies, and power line work off the north coast of Spain. No weather. We will listen to the French station when we get closer, and also keep an eye out for weather info. We also noted that we can pick up BBC Radio 4 on long wave with the SSB receiver. The AM-FM-LW receiver can’t pick it up yet, but there is still hope. Radio 4 will be good for receiving the Shipping Forecast(e.g., “There are gales in the Hebrides and NE Iceland tonight.”).

Changed engine oil, filter, and transmission oil this afternoon, and shifted 3 more jerry-cans of fuel to the main tank. Making water while motoring towards Bordeaux.
Land Ho! At about 3 PM, we sighted land – the NW tip of Spain. So, we can officially declare that we have crossed the Atlantic from one continent to another. Now we just have to make it up Biscay Bay to the Gironde.

Received another set of NAVEX messages at 5:30 local time, including many that were not broadcast at 1:30 PM. Messages about fishing limits, more NATO exercises, and one about firing exercises in France, south of the Gironde. This is a military training area for the French, and they are evidently doing some training this week. You would think that with the summer holidays coming up they would be winding down, but I guess not – you never know when Nelson may come back, or the Germans…

We also heard a Spanish weather forecast for the north coast – force 3-4 winds today and tonite, with calm seas. They put out a warning message on channel 16, and then read the weather forecast, in English and Spanish, on channel 10, every four hours. We think there are similar announcements in Portugal and further east along the Spanish coast. We looked for something similar in France, and we eventually found it. The Europeans seem to broadcast weather info about 3-4 times/day, at fixed times, unlike in the US, where it is sent out continuously on its own set of frequencies. Weather is also supposed to be included in NAVTEX broadcasts, but we have yet to find any such messages. It also appears that the French also provide marine weather info to people who pay for it, by some sort of subscription. You can then get the info by cell phone or internet connection. It is interesting that the most socialistic country in Europe has a very capitalistic setup for weather info. I had heard that the current US administration wanted to go a similar route in the US, to have the govt weather people gather the data, but then let private organizations “analyze it”, and then disseminate it to the public, for a fee, but that seems to have died. Probably a LOT of farmers complained about having to pay to find out whether it was going to rain, and other people complained about the need to pay for warnings for events like tornadoes or hurricanes. The administration probably figured that it would be enough to publish such warnings in the Federal Register…

With the NAVTEX capability, it is clear that it really is essential these days to cruise with a computer that can do all the sort of chores that would otherwise be provided by dedicated pieces of equipment, printing out piles of paper – the WEFAX, NAVTEX messages, logs, email messages, documentation of all sorts for the stuff on the boat, inventories of the boat supplies. I wonder if anyone has put this all together into one package, at a reasonable price, for the cruiser. I think there might be a market for it, if it was priced correctly. It might be a good idea to include some way to carry the computer, and protect it from all the water, from whatever sources, on board.

The first WEFAXes of the day seem to indicate more of the same weather – 10-15 kts from the W-NW-N, with nothing interesting to provide us with a good shove. Not bad, we will NOT complain, and we will plan to get into the Gironde early Friday morning.
One last item. We had been hearing a low rumbling sound when the steering wheel turned, and investigation revealed that the sound was coming out of the linear actuator for the autopilot. It appears to be a noise coming out of the gear train in the actuator itself. AS commented that he had learned (when his unit failed) that these units need to be serviced every 2 years, and upon looking in the manual, we found exactly that advice. So, we have another item to fix when we get in. Hopefully it will last 3 more days – we don’t want to hand-steer for even one day.
Dinner was paella again, with some baccala thrown in. NL will be making brandade de morue tomorrow, but she decided to throw some into the paella. Tasty, but salty. Some of us drank a LOT of water, and used the head quite a bit.

June 25, 2008

Night watches were quite pleasant. Motored till about 2:30 AM, when the wind shifted to the beam, so we put out all sails and sailed on a beam reach, at 5-6 kts, for rest of night. Wind gradually shifted again to NE, so 10-2 watch had to harden up, sailing closehauled, till about 1:00 PM, when we decided we were making too much easting, and started to motor-sail towards Bordeaux.

Saw one sailboat on the 10-2 watch that was headed in the opposite direction, and it was interesting how poor a radar target it presented. Sometimes there, sometimes not, until it was within 2 miles. A fisherman that followed presented a similar radar target.

From about 11:30 am to 12:30 PM we took on another passenger – a homing pigeon that landed on deck, and proceeded to gradually make his way into the cockpit. He was quite tame, and had bands on both legs, so he was obviously on a mission. But the sight of a good resting place was too much, so he decided to stop and chat. When he started to make motions in the direction of taking a berth down below, however, we drew the line. He was tame enough to allow himself to be picked up, and launched on the next leg of his journey. Bon voyage!

Thar she blows! At 1:30 ch spotted two whales spouting off the beam. We could not see the whales themselves, but their spouts were quite distinctive.

Brandade de morue for lunch, with mashed potatoes on the side and green beans – French comfort food!

We finally raised the French NAVTEX site, and received their messages in both English and French. It looks like we will not be near the area where they are conducting live-fire exercises, but we will listen to the voice broadcast this evening to make sure.

Could not receive the voice messages for the firing range. Don’t know why, but we won’t be anywhere near them, so we won’t worry about it.

Pasta with tomato sauce for dinner. We also used the last of the parmegian cheese.

June 26, 2008

Motored thru the night, with the wind dead on the nose, at about 10-15 kts true. We are on track to arrive at the mouth of the Gironde around 4 AM, just when the tide starts to change. The seas have grown quite lumpy overnite. The large swell from the NW is still with us, but there is also a bit of cross-swell, with a short period, from the NE, probably driven by this headwind. It is not large, but it is short, so the motion has gotten bad again. It is a lot like the sort of waves we saw on the Chesapeake – short and square, and unpleasant. The UK weather FAXes are still showing us with N-NW winds, at about 10, but we are seeing NE. We heard a weather forecast in French on Ch 79 at 7:45 French time, but it was a bit crackly, and we could not really understand it. We will have to get closer to be able to make out the French forecasts.
We have a list of stuff to do on the way into the marina, and then in the marina, to put the boat away once we arrive. At the top of the list is pickling the watermaker, which we will do later today. We will also transfer the rest of the fuel from the jerry cans into the main tank – finally all of the Stuart fuel will be in the tanks.

Productive and entertaining day so far. We did transfer the fuel from the cans, so we are pretty well topped up. We motored till about 5:30, when the wind backed, so we are now sailing nicely, and it looks like we may sail thru the night. We have a deeply reefed main and a slightly reefed job out, and are making 5.5-6 kts SOG, and 7 thru the water, which is plenty to get us to our waypoint in the Gironde early tomorrow AM. We don’t want to be too early, and have to fight the current, and in any case, we don’t need to heel over any more to make more speed, so this is much more comfortable.

The watermaker was successfully pickled. We all took showers so as to be more presentable on arrival, thereby using up all of the Stuart water, and starting to consume the Horta water, as well. We should be fine for another day, at least.

We were mightily entertained by a large pod of porpoises that came alongside and played with us for nearly 2 hours. They jumped out of the water all around the boat, under the boat, and alongside the bow. Supposedly, they like to play in the bow wave that the boat generates. We got a number of video clips, which will be put up on the FLIKR site.

June 27, 2008

Last night at sea. The wind backed, and we headed east towards the mouth of the Gironde, trying not to arrive too early in the AM, so that we could catch the tide. As we got closer, the VHF traffic increased, and we started to hear call from the French coastal guard (CROSS) about boats in distress, SE of us. It sounded like they were having breakdown troubles, not life-endangering type of troubles, so we pressed on. About 5:45 AM, while we were looking for the Bordeaux sea-buoy, we spotted something that, with the sunlight behind it, looked like it might be the light, but it seemed to be placed on some sort of rock-pile. Checking the charts showed that the buoy should be floating, not fixed, and just as we were starting to digest this, the “buoy” turned on a set of running lights and headed straight for us.(!)

A few minutes of observations confirmed that this vessel was going to intercept us, and it did, coming up astern, shining a spotlight into the cockpit, and just sitting there for several minutes while they checked us out. They were the French Douane(!), guarding the coast from potential intruders. We held up the microphone for the VHF, so that they could see that we wanted to make contact, but nothing was heard on Channel 16. By now, AS and NL were up, and on deck, along with ch, and we decided to call them up. NL was a bit shy, so rxc called them (in English), and they responded (in English(!!)), that they were the Douane, and they wanted us to slow down so that they could board and inspect.

So, the sailing stopped, we started the engine, and we rolled in both sails. The revenue boat, probably about 100 ft long (30 m), lowered an inflatable and sent a crew of four agents over to see us. They came aboard easily, and we started to talk. We explained that we were on a delivery trip to France, that rxc was the owner, and AS was the captain. We provided them with the boat’s papers, our passports, the papers from the shipment of the household goods to France, the inventory that we had provided to the shippers and French customs, and the papers that certified that we had changed residence to France in September.

They then asked if they could search the boat, to which we said of course, so two agents descended into the cabin with rxc, where they searched the forward cabin, looked into some lockers in the middle cabin, and also looked into lockers and personal effects in the aft cabin. All the while, the agents on deck were talking to their boat, and to shore-side people about our situation. Given that this was happening at 6 AM, everyone realized that it would not be possible to contact our shipping agent till they opened, so they decided at about 7 AM that we would be going into Royan instead of Port Medoc, and they would accompany us. One agent went back to the boat while three others stayed on-board, and we had a formal escort into the Gironde.

The winds were blowing as we passed the Banc de Mauvaise, and the surf was up, so it was nice to have local knowledge to help us into the estuary. It was also lucky for us that the tide was coming in, so that we had plenty of water into the harbor at Royan, which is just across the Gironde from Port Medoc. As we came up the channel we chatted with the agents, who at one point asked us how we were going to pay the TVa on the boat. rxc then pulled out his printouts of the Douane web pages that explicitly state that personal effects are exempt from TVA when they accompany a move into France, and explicitly list “bateau de plaisance” (pleasure craft) as an exempt item. This pulled them up short, and prompted additional discussions over the radio, while they considered it.

About 10:30 AM we arrived in Royan, and tied up alongside the customs vessel that had preceded us. They told us that we could go ashore while they contacted our agents and their main offices to figure out what to do, so AS and NL went off to check emails, while rxc and ch stayed on-board to answer any questions. We also started to get the boat ready for moving over to Port Medoc. Soon after AS and NL went ashore, the head of the local customs office came aboard and explained that they had gotten into contact with our agent, and they were satisfied that we were not trying to do anything “creative”. However, they explained that they did not normally do “demenagements de bateaux”, and were not experts in this process, so they were going to document their boarding and inspection, and the discussions with our agent, and let us go if we promised to get the proper paperwork and send it to them. They wrote this down in a long document (in French), which rxc signed, and which was then signed by all 4 (!) of the agents who participated in the boarding and inspection, and their management.

AS and NL came back to the boat, and we talked about what to do next, and since they had planned to take the ferry to Royan from Port Medoc, it seemed best to say au revoir to them there, and let rxc and ch take the boat over to Port Medoc. So, they packed their bags and headed off for some nice meals up the coast, and eventually in Paris.

At about 1:30 PM, rxc and ch cast off from the douane boat and headed SW towards Port Medoc. The tidal currents in the Gironde were fierce, but our powerful motor propelled us to the entrance to the marina, where two lovely ladies stood on the pier waving us in. We docked the boat in our slip, the ladies helped with the lines, and the good ship Pétillant finally made its arrival in its new home port in France. We celebrated our arrival with a quite tasty lunch at the restaurant in the marina, where rxc and ch finally got to drink some nice red wine again, and ch became acquainted with andouilette.

Then it was back to the boat for the afternoon, and the process of unloading the “stuff” started. The four of us took as much as would fit onto the pickup off of the boat, and this was enough to open it up so that it could dry out a bit after 7 weeks at sea. Everything was damp, and lots of places were wet. It seems that we need to do some serious waterproofing in the bow, and the port chain-plate needs to be re-bedded. We did not get to wash the boat, though, because we did not have a hose connector. Then, it was off to the house in the truck, looking like a maritime version of the Beverly Hillbillies.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

On to France!

We are all set now to leave. After looking at the weather forecast for the next week, it appears to be more prudent to head ENE towards 43N 15W, rather than NNE to 45N 25W, which was the original waypoint. There is supposed to be a low swirling around 45N 25W in about 4 days, when we would expect to be there, so we plan to be somewhere else. We may have to motor a bit when we get to the tip of Spain, but we will see what the weather gods do to us and adjust accordingly. Everyone on board has agreed - NO MORE GALES!!!

We will make one last run to the market for lettuce and bread, while AS is clearing us out, and then once the FBs leave we will hoist the dinghy on-board, and shove off.

Sorry we haven't loaded photos of Horta. The connection here was not solid/fast enough to support the needed bandwidth. They will get loaded when we get to France.

See you in Bordeaux!!

Monday, June 16, 2008

Long Productive Weekend in Horta

Well, the weekend here has turned out to be quite successful. We arrived on Friday afternoon with a number of issues to be resolved, and discovered a serious new one, but it looks like everything is now “go” for departure on Tuesday, June 17. The issues involved the wind instrument, the depth instrument, the GPS sensor for the chartplotter, a need for propane, a loose radome, and rig tuning issues.

After dropping off the propane bottle on Saturday, we went around to the harbormaster’s office to see about coming in from the anchorage, and they told us to go to the jetty and raft up there. We up-anchored, and got into a raft to fill up fuel tanks, and then went to the jetty to raft up for the rest of the weekend. We were originally the outermost boat of 3 in the raft, next to a Beneteau owned by a couple of fussy Brits, who fretted over the possibility that our dinghy might hit their topsides, and could we please shutdown our windmill, and take off our shoes when we crossed their boat, and go forward during the day, but aft at night, etc, etc. We acquiesced to their requests, and got ourselves nicely tucked in for the weekend.

We spent Sunday doing grocery shopping, in the very modern supermarket up the hill. We bought so much stuff we had to take a taxi back to the boat, which was quite worthwhile because the taxi was able to go out on the jetty right next to the boat. The afternoon was spent stowing groceries, and then we swapped places with the inboard FBs, who said that they were going to leave the next day, so since AS and NL were going to be gone all day, we decided to do the swap on Sunday. Rxc used the dinghy as a tugboat to move both boats out from the deep raft, and then back into place. Quite well done, and even the FBs were satisfied that we could move boats carefully and re-raft.

In discussing rafting with other boaters here it is curious that few seem to have much experience with it, like we used to do all the time in the Chesapeake. They use all sorts of really heavy lines to tie the boats together inside a very well-protected breakwater, and are all quite apprehensive about having another boat alongside. This prompted a sea-story session, relating a number of memorable raftups on the Chesapeake, and interaction of large rafts with exciting weather and changing tidal flows…

rxc then went up the mast to see about the wind instrument. It turned out that the sensor on top of the mast was not quite tightly screwed into its socket, and the tail of the vane was a bit distorted, so some judicious bending straightened it all out, and it now indicates the relative wind much better. He also aligned the Windex indicator better, so it is now symmetrical.

On the way down he took some time to look over the state of the rigging and even pulled off the cover of the radome to see if there were any loose wire connections, but all the wires were secure. Fortunately, though, he noticed that the radome itself was not securely attached to the mast. In fact, it was missing 5 of the 12 attaching screws. The mount for the dome has four feet that are screwed to the mast with 3 screws each. One foot was completely unattached, while two other had one screw missing, and all of the remaining screws were loose. The bolts that attach the radome to the mounting feet were also quite loose. This was a major discovery, as it identified the source of the some of the screws that had been dropping down out of the sky on us. Unfortunately, the screws were all metric, and we had none on board, so repair had to wait till Monday AM. It was a miracle that the dome had not come off at sea, and it was lucky that we decided to go up the mast to check out the rig here in Horta. After securing the worksite, AS and NL went off for dinner with some friends, while rxc and ch had another dinner ashore at Peter’s café sport. We also noted that the WiFi connectivity became noticeably worse after this boat swap.

On Monday we were up early. NL and AS went off for the day to an adjacent island to do some hiking and sightseeing, while rxc and ch spent the day being productive. This included (1) tuning the mast so that it is now straight and vertical, and hopefully the roller-furling main will be easier to operate; (2) re-doing the propane connections in the propane locker to try to trace a very slight propane leak that has been draining the bottles faster than expected (this was not a safety issue, because the box drains overboard); (3) pulling out one of the tool buckets and emptying it of seawater that has dripped in during the gales, so that the tools do not rust too much; (4) heading over to the marine supply place to find screws for the radome, which were available, and purchased; (5) talking to the electronics technician at the marine supply place about the depthsounder, and getting the suggestion to apply a dealer reset to the instrument; (6) finding out that they actually had a Raymarine GPS unit available for sale, if necessary, so that we could do some exploratory surgery on the installed unit; (7) coming back to the boat and performing the reset on the depthsounder, so that Voila!, it now works; (8) opening up the cable into the GPS unit and finding that it was in fine shape, and was probably only flaky because excessive twist probably got some of the individual wires too close together; (9) going up the mast and re-attaching the radome securely to the mast; (10) going further up the mast and applying some tie-wraps to some wires and antennas that needed to be better constrained; (11) going off to buy some more paper towels; (12) picking up the full propane tank and a replacement bulb for one of the flashlights;(13) thanking the technician for his idea about resetting the depthsounder (he was quite surprised, because he had tried the same thing today on another boat that was showing the same symptoms, and it had no effect); (14) stopping at a local bakery for afternoon coffee and a snack; (15) filling two water tanks in preparation for departure tomorrow.

We now have essentially one task left, and that is hoisting the dinghy onboard, before we can leave. We will also have to pay our slip fees and checkout.

It is not clear when AS and NL will be back tonite, so rxc and ch will probably be dining out again. Hopefully there will be more restaurants open, giving us a better selection than last night.

The FBs did not leave today. They said that there was not enough wind, and they hate to motor, so they would prefer to lie here against the jetty than bob around in light airs. They really seem to be purist sailors, which is nice to see, rather than sailors with goals and missions and timetables to meet. On the other hand, they are also extremely low-tech, with no radar or solar cells (but 2(!) windmills) on a 46 ft boat, and they also collect rainwater, which they manage to use 3 times before it goes overboard. Ms FB commented that when she gets back to the UK, she will never be able to take a bath again, because the idea of bathing in an amount of water equal to the contents of one water tank is too distressing. They much prefer showers out of sun-shower bags. We did not comment on the size of our water tanks, or on our watermaking ability… They are actually nice people, once you get to know them. It was too bad that the initial contact was so confrontational.

The boat inboard of us is another Brit with a Jeanneau 40 CC, and he has some significant steering problems due to a leak in his hydraulic steering system, and a failure of the autopilot (a dual failure!). Some of were quite surprised to hear that a production boat in the 40 ft range had hydraulic steering, but he explained that there is no was to run cables thru the interior of the boat, so hydraulics are the only solution. He is a second (or maybe third) owner, and laments the way the boat was “upgraded” and maintained by the previous owners. Very nice guy. We are starting to wonder if Jeanneaus as a class are prone to steering issues…

Preparations for Transatlantic Crossings

During the course of the past several weeks, we have considered the many things that other potential transatlantic sailors could do to prepare themselves for this event. Following are some of our recommendations, based on our experience to date.

1. Learn to skate in the bed of a pickup truck while driving through West Virginia.

2. For a month, wear only four changes of clothes. Note: you are allowed to wear your cleanest dirty clothes.

3. Hang a sheet outside your bedroom window to flop all day and night.

4. Sprinkle you belongings every day for a month with saltwater.

5. Change your schedule for a month so that you can only sleep at night every 3rd day, for only 5 hours.

6. For 6 weeks, sleep only 5 hours per night, and then wake up and watch a TV test pattern for 3 hours.

7. Sleep on a roller coaster for 6 weeks.

8. Turn off the TV, radio, phones, PC, and avoid all your family and friends for 6 weeks.

9. If you are male, you must sit down to tinkle for 6 weeks. This can be swapped to peeing on your shoes.

10. For 2 weeks, sleep in your garage with the car engine running to get used to odors and noises.

11. Spent 6 weeks living entirely inside your house using only the kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms, with 3 other people.

12. For your next 3 shopping trips, go only to markets with labels in languages you cannot read.

13. For 6 weeks, eat all your meals while playing on a see-saw.

14. Learn to cook using a hibachi on a swing.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Two Weeks at Sea to Horta

Well, we are finally in Horta, after a 15 day transit, which is not bad for such a distance (~1800 miles). We understand that we were evidently in a "dead spot" for SPOT, for a while, so there has been some anxiety about our whereabouts. Rest assured that we did fine, and no one was hurt, and nothing major broke. Following is the blow-by-blow, day-by day. We were anchored in Horta last night, but a lot of boats left today because the Azores high is starting to re-form, so we now have a spot on the jetty, as the third boat out in a raft, next to some fussy Brits (sorry Geoffrey and Janet). We finally got a good Wifi signal, and have now even converted the boat's electrical system to plug into 220v, so we are ready for the marina in Port Medoc. Now if we can only get some things fixed, and get one propane tank filled, and see some favorable weather that does not involve gale-force winds...

Read and enjoy the story. We will post some photos later.

May 29, 2008

We left Bermuda in bright sunshine, about 2:20 PM in the afternoon. We did some final grocery shopping, sent some final emails, and finally filled up with fuel ($1.92/liter!!) after one of the cruise ships left. We waiting a bit too long to up-anchor, and had to wait in line for the fuel – seems like lots of other boats have the same idea about leaving today.

Capt. AS thought it would be a good idea for us to sail out of the harbor, so as to not use fuel unnecessarily, so we did, and it was a ball. Underway again after 2 weeks waiting for parts. The boat handles well, everything is working again, and we were off. Winds were from the southwest, about 15 kts, so we did well the first day and evening. Hamburgers for dinner, with some initial mal-de-mer getting sea legs back.

We managed to finally find Herb Hilgenberger’s radio weather forecast, and it seems like we are in for some good, if light winds for a while. We are supposed to have a cold front come thru some time tonight, and the winds will shift to the northwest, but that is not a bad thing.


May 30, 2008

Second day at sea, with all still going well. The front came through about 8:00 PM this morning, and the wind shifted accordingly, but to the NE, and about 10-15 kts. We are now sailing closehauled, with just a bit of the jib out, but a full main. We have seen a few ships passing towards the NW, but otherwise not much interesting. The seas are down to 3-6 feet, and dropping, which is quite a change from our last leg.

The radio weather forecast is for continued NE winds like this thru Sat and into Sunday, when another front is supposed to come down. Herb is telling other boats that they need to get further north, and we are trying, but it is difficult to sail closer than about 070T, and we are being set back by an adverse current of 2-2.5 kts. This is really frustrating because the boat is really hauling along at 7-8 kts thru the water.

Dinner tonite was penne primavera with onions and zucchini and parmesan. Quite tasty and satisfying after a first day at sea. Our first day’s run was about 130 miles, which is pretty respectable, considering the light winds. We are hoping that the winds will back a bit and give us a better push.

May 31, 2008

Wind started the day holding from the NE, at about 10 kts. We had to reef during the night because we had full sail out and we were pushing 9 kts at some points, and the boat was heeling a bit much. With reduced sail, it was much more pleasant for watchstanding and sleeping. We are trying to sail to the wind, holding the boat as close-hauled as possible, on the port tack. The wind is not very constant, however, and we are wandering about 30 degrees to either side of the rhumb line to the Azones. We ran the engine last nite for about 3 hours when the winds shifted dead in our face. We tried to tack, but the stbd tack has us pointing almost directly back towards NY, which is NOT where we want to go.

After lunch, the wind pretty much died, and we started to motor-sail, and then just motor on the rhumb line, or a bit north of it. In his broadcast, Herb is starting to advise boats leaving Bermuda for the Azores to head NE, towards 35N60W, which is about 120 miles north of us. He says there is a ridge located about 34N, and the winds are good to the north of this. We are seeing no wind whatsoever, sitting just south of the ridge. We then decided to head about 060M, which will move us further north, and hopefully we will start to see some wind tonite.

Breakfast as quite calm, and NL decided to take advantage of the calm and make bacon, eggs, and grits. We also like the whole-wheat bread we bought in Bermuda – it is from a local bakery and is not as sweet as the stuff from the US. Late afternoon snacks included our first peanut butter and jeyyly sandwiches of the trip.

After lunch, we started the engine again and also made water, heated it, and took showers. We think this may become a routine, to put the engine to best use to make electricity, to make water, to heat the water, and also to help move us along. The wind and solar panels are doing a good job of keeping the batteries charged, but they can’t provide a hot shower.

The second day’s run is only 76 miles, which is a bit disappointing. We need to start whistling for some more wind. NL says that we should be careful what we wish for…


June 1, 2008

Spent the whole nite motoring towards the NE, and finally found some wind up around 34N. Most of the day was sailing at around 4 kts in light SW winds 10-12 kts. We made contact with Herb, from Southbound II, and he advised staying on this course to the NE, to find better winds. He said that the Bermuda-Azores high is building, and we don’t want to have to motor right thru the middle of it. It was quite fun to talk to someone in Canada over the SSB. We spend some time every day listening to people around the world talking on the short-wave. There are nets for the east coast cruisers, for west coast cruisers, for weather for people in the Bahamas, and for hurricanes, which have just started up, with one deep in the SW Caribbean. Hopefully, that one won’t come near us.

The evening passed with a nice gratin of some sort of tropical vegetable, called chou-chou(sp?) that NL knew from her days in the south Pacific. Quite tasty, with tabouleh and asparagus (out of a can). Because of our long voyage, we are sadly forced to eat stuff out of jars and cans, but NL does a great job with what she has – it seems like ALL of the cooks on this boat have been quite inventive and successful when faced with the limited resources of a boat.

The day ended at midnite with a few rainstorms bearing down on us. The days run was about 120 miles, which was quite respectable.

June 2, 2008

We got rained on during the mid-watch, but this was accompanied by some nice favorable winds, so we did not mind at all. Unfortunately, the winds dropped around dawn, so we started up the engine and motored for a few hours till the wind returned, and we were rewarded with a few hours of sailing at 7 kts with a 15 kt wind on the beam, on a flat sea. It doesn’t get much better than this. We have also picked up about 0.5 kts of a favorable current, which is nice considering that we have been fighting an unfavorable current of up to 2.5 kts for the past few days. Today we made about 104 miles, which seems a bit low, considering how fast we moved during the nite. But we were probably only making 2-3 kts during the day, so it all evened out at about 4 kts average for the day.

We also did a dive into the forward deep storage, under the V-berth, to try to find a bigger pot for pasta, and the muffin pan. Found the larger pot, but the lids have gone somewhere else, and the muffin pan is not here. Where-oh-where has the muffin pan gone? We also found a bit of water up forward, probably from the leg to Bermuda. We opened it all up and aired it out, to dry things, and also re-stowed a number of items.

Wind dropped a bit during the afternoon, but we are still making 5.2 kts. Decent, respectable speed. No need to motor. Quiet. Good. Talked to Herb again and he encouraged us to get north of 35N, where good wind would be. We will stay on ~081T because it edges us up there, and does not sacrifice any easting.

June 3, 2008

Finally made it to 35N, and winds have picked up to very respectable values – 15-20 kts from SSW. As a result, boat speed has gone up to 6-6.5 kts. We are still seeing current against us of ~0.5 kts. Occasionally we will get a boost from current, but it seems that more often than not, it has been agin us. We saw a few rain clouds on radar in the night, and the mid-watch had to close the hatches because one of them came and sat on us for a while, but it was welcome to have a fresh-water washdown. AS also saw a large fishing boat, all lit up like a cruise ship. We gave it a wide berth, and passed like two ships in the night. Days run was 121 miles, which is a bit disappointing, considering how fast we have been going. This is not a bad value, because it shows us making a respectable 5 kts, but hopefully our fast French boat is capable of a bit more…

AS has been trying to catch some fish, but no luck so far. He has used one of the poles, and even a hand line with a piece of heavy seine-cord on it. Fresh fish would be nice right about now. During the day we also passed a long line of floats that appeared to be attached to either a long net or a line of fishing hooks. We could not see what was below the surface, and even though we tried to avoid it, at one point we ended up sailing across the line between two floats, but we did not hit anything. We wondered what would happen if we hit one of these in the night. They are not large, but would certainly make a loud noise, and maybe even cause some damage.

The wind kept blowing at 15-20 kts all day and into the night, and we did not have to motor at all. Herb advised staying at this latitude and heading east. There is a Low forming over NY that will be heading to the north of us, and we don’t want to get too close to it.

June 4, 2008

We made a consistent 6.5 kts through the night, so our days run today should be great. Weather is holding, with bright sunshine. Batteries are down a bit, so today would be a good day to run engine to charge batteries, make water, heat it, and take showers. We will also download some wefax charts to see what has developed with the Low that herb mentioned. Started engine at 9:50 and commenced making water. Speed went up to 7.5 kts, even with the engine just ticking over at 1500 rpm,

The swells are down quite a bit today. Yesterday we noted that they seemed to rise quite a bit in the afternoon, to about 6 feet, and we also noted that we were seeing swells from the south as well as from the NW, which made the ride a bit lumpy. This morning we still have swells from the S, but the NW component is gone, and the surface between each swell is much quieter. The boat motion is a bit better, but this is still not a full-keel boat – it reacts to every wave, from whatever direction, in spite of all of the stuff that is packed on-board.

Ran engine till 2:00 PM, and then tried to transfer fuel from jerry jugs to center tank. Was only able to transfer one and a half cans before we had problems with sloshing, due to boat being on stbd tack, and fill pipe is on port side of boat. We probably could have filled the tank more, but the boat movement was throwing fuel back up the fill line and sloshing it out. We decided to hold off on this evolution till we are eight flat or on a port tack.

Everyone took advantage of engine run time to take showers, and now all feel quite a bit better. The boat speed was a steady 7.5 kts while we ran the engine, but has now dropped back to about 6.2. We made 148 miles for the day’s run, which is quite good – 6 kts average. Sea swells have come back up to about 6 feet, but they are long period and not a problem.

We have now discovered two pieces of hardware on deck for which we have no idea where they came from. One is a small 1-inch machine screw, while the other is about 1 inch long, and looks like a clevis pin without a head or hole for a cotter pin. The pin looks like it could be a center pin for a block, but all of the blocks have plates on the side to keep the pins in. The machine screw looks like it comes off of a cover, and we will have to take a close look at the radome in Horta to see if it came from there. We will also go to the top of the mast to see if anything is missing up there. We tried to look for missing parts with binoculars, but all the important stuff looks like it is still there. Nothing looks like it is missing. This is the sort of thing that will drive you nuts. AS thinks maybe the pin has been down a long time, because it was trapped under a spring that holds up one of the fairlead blocks for the mainsheet. It would have been a real fluke for a pin to have dropped and bounced to fit perfectly through this spring. The block itself is fine, and there appears to be some wear on the plate where the pin was resting, so it really does appear to have been there some time. AS thinks that maybe the rigger dropped it when he inspected the rig in Baltimore. Maybe someone in France wanted to have some fun with future owners…

We are also noticing that the mast is pumping a bit, indicating that the lower shrouds need to be tightened up a bit. If we get a period of calm we will cinch them up, or we may have to wait till Horta. The mast makes an irritating sound as the heel works in its socket on deck.
Although we are listening to Herb, we are also picking up the NWS weather faxes out of Boston, and it is interesting to see the ice reports that show icebergs as far south as 43N. We have on board one chart of the North Atlantic from Imray that shows historical icebergs, and early in the 19th century they were sighted as far south as Bermuda (32N), at this time of year. Maybe this is one thing to be grateful for, in these days of “Global Warming”.

Tonite, Herb advised people to stay south of 36N, even around 35N. We are just below 36N, and are trying to head directly east. The wind piped up during the 9-12 watch, and at midnite we reefed down both the main and the jib. Still making 6.5-7 kts over the ground, with a favorable 0.5 kt current. However, we are making strong leeway, and have to aim quite southerly to keep on a straight east course. We are now close-hauled on stbd tack, with 2-reefs in for the nite.

Great meal tonite. We are out of long-grain rice, so NL used arborio rice to make paella, and it was very much like a risotto, but without the cheese. Quite tasty. We will have to load up on staples in the Azores.

June 5, 2008

The night was lively, after reefing down at midnite. We had to shut all the hatches because we were taking some water on deck. Boat speed stayed pretty constant thru the night, at 6.5-7 kts and the winds rose to ~20kts, still from the south. The Low that we are watching is supposed to shift the wind to the SW, which would be more welcome than from the south. Boat progress for the day was 155 miles, which is a record for this trip. We are now under 1000 miles to Horta, and making very good progress.

Talked to Herb tonite, and he recommended that we move further to south, below 35N, to avoid gale conditions from the approaching low. It is supposed to be building, and unpleasant. This provoked some discussion among the different levels of management on the boat, with one faction wanting to head in a more southerly direction, to avoid the blow, while the other wanted to stay at least on this latitude, and avoid losing northing to get to Horta. In the end, it was agreed to stay on the current latitude, and hope that the low will move north, and also prepare for some more excitement…

Dinner was nachos and leftover paella/risotta. Quite good. Some of us really long for a nice glass of wine, but we will remain “dry” till the anchor goes down in Horta. Then we will be able to try some vinho tinto and vinho verde.


June 6, 2008 (An appropriate day for a group of Americans to be headed in the direction of France)

The overnite sail was quite nice, at about 5 kts with reefed sails. The favorable current comes and goes. Looking at the pilot charts, we are in a region of eddies in the north Atlantic, and sometimes we get a good current, other times it is agin us. C’est la vie. We wanted to have a pleasant nite to get some rest in advance of a future blow, so we sacrificed some speed for a calmer ride. It turns out that there is one nice sea-berth in the boat, right in the middle, next to the salon table. By organizing the salon cushions properly it is possible to set up a narrow berth that is padded on 3 sides, where one can comfortably wedge-in, and get some sleep. This spot is the one that our oldest cat (Zabelle) picked out for her time on the boat, and she evidently knew what she was doing. The aft cabin is alright if you sleep athwartship, while the forward v-berth is only tenable for one person, and then only of you are willing to relocate to one side or the other. It also moves the most vertically, and is not nice in a high seaway.

Winds are still from the SW, at 15 kts, and we started the engine to charge batteries around
11:00. We also changed clocks one hour ahead at 11. Days run was 125 miles, a decent 5 kts, under reduced sail.

1:30 pm – we are battening down for a blow, and waiting for the WEFAX to arrive. At 4:45 we reduced sail a bit more, in anticipation of even more severe conditions, possibly worse than we saw on the way to Bermuda. This engendered some more discussion about the need for more excitement this trip, and a desire to hold down the level of excitement, even if it meant having to go out of the way and take more time getting to the ultimate destination. Unfortunately, we are where we are, and we have to deal with the situation we are in, right now, so we are preparing for more excitement.

5:30 pm – the 24 hr forecast says that the big low will move north, but it has spawned secondary low that is coming down to our latitude. It will be interesting to hear what Herb has to say about this. We may have chosen the correct course, in spite of concerns about staying south. In the end, we may actually thread the needle between a couple of nasty low-pressure systems.

8:00 pm Herb was a bit taken aback that we were still up around 36N, and he encouraged us to move towards the SE. He said that we would see the front pass us tomorrow afternoon, and the wind would shift from SW to NW and N, maybe even NE. He thought we should slow down and wait for the winds to gradually return to W or SW once the front passes us. Until then, we should see SW winds at 25-30, with gusts to 35.

In response to this advice, we have decided to hold the course, and stay at 36N, in the hopes that the front will pass quickly, and we will not lose any ground towards the Azores. We have seen stronger winds and done reasonably well in them.

With this decision made, we set sail for heavy winds, with a scrap of jib and main out, and had a hearty dinner of soup. We are glad that we got out the corners of the enclosure, and they fit well, so we not have a completely enclosed helm station. We are also seeing currents going in our direction of 1-2 kts. This is a nice change from earlier in the trip.

June 7, 2008

The winds rose during the night, peaking during the 3-6 watch, with the max speed seen of about 40 kts. Generally they were in the 25-30 range, with gusts up into the 30s. Seas continued to build, to 9-12 feet, and sleeping was a challenge. During the morning watch the winds abated a bit, and the during the 10-14 watch we got our first appearance of the front on radar. A large batch of rain cells descended on us from the NW, and about 1:30 pm it hit us, with some squalls at first, and very heavy rain, which was welcome to wash down the boat. once the leading edge passed, we settled into a steady rainfall, and cooler temperatures. The winds shifted to the W, and dropped to 15-20, with gusts as high as 30. The rain also knocked down the seas a bit. All-in-all, nothing we could not handle. Days run of 134, which is quite decent considering the small amount of sail that we are carrying.

6:00 pm The NWS weather charts for tomorrow are showing a developing storm right where we are, with winds of 45 kts and seas of 21 ft. We are waiting for Herb to get to our area to see what sort of advice he can give. I expect that he will tell us to slow down and wait, but we have everything reefed down, and are still making nearly 5 kts. Looking at the charts a bit closer, it looks like we may be able to skirt this low along the south. The 500mb charts show a strange loop dipping down to our latitude, and the 48 hr prediction shows the low pushing back north. The winds on the east side of the low will be from the S-SE, so maybe we can sneak around it and then head NE to the Azores.

Herb was again surprised that we were so far north, and he urged us to move SE towards 35N-40W, to avoid serious winds/waves from the large low to the north. After some discussion, it was decided to head more towards the south, so we tried to sail SE as close to the wind as possible. This worked until about midnite, when it became apparent that we were losing the southing we had made earlier, and were in fact drifting NE. So, at midnite we started the engine and tried to motor sail towards the SE. This caused much pounding as this course was opposed to the swells, and about 5:30, we gave that up. During the nite, the mid-watch and morning watches saw winds in the 45-50 kt range, and seas building

June 8, 2008

The 6-10 watch took over and stopped the engine, to see if it was possible to still sail. It was, but only just about dead east, with a little northing. This was considered preferable to pounding, so the day began. Radar revealed pockets of cells marching up from the south, and these dumped torrential rains on the boat, as well as stimulating high-speed gusts, up to 57 kts. Seas were knocked down by the rain somewhat, but were still in the 12-18 ft range. The boat rode them quite well with just a scrap of job and main out, and the wind on the stbd quarter. We had several washover waves, that put green water over the cockpit, and once over the enclosure. We also had one of the water jugs washed loose, but managed to retrieve it before it went completely. We also had to retrieve one of the Life-Slings that lost two of its attachment points to a sideswiping wave. During this watch, there was also a quite intense exchange of views between the owners representative, and the head of the executive team, about whether this all could have been avoided. Nothing was resolved, and both parties left unsatisfied. The use of weather data to try to avoid bad weather is sure to come up again in the future…

After noon the winds seemed to subside, but gusts to 59 kts were still observed. It was very difficult to steer the boat during these gusts in any other direction but downwind, which was approximately 060T, which is exactly the direction we do NOT want to go, so we try to hand steer during the gusts, and let the autopilot take it other times. Around 1 PM the wind shifted more to the W, which may be a good sign that the low is moving north. (We hope!) We took in all sail and are trying to motor east with the winds at our back.

Normally, at this time of the year there should be an enormous stationary High Pressure system right over our heads, with no wind underneath it whatsoever. This requires most boats to go around to the north, or alternatively motor thru the high. But not this year…..

We are currently waiting for the afternoon WEFAXes, to see what the NWS is going to throw at us now…

No good reception in the afternoon, but much improved in the early evening, so we got a whole set. We did not listen to Herb tonite – it would not have made any effect on our plans…

NL decided to do some cooking and made some fresh tomato sauce, with spaghetti, which was well received as a hot meal after a cold day.

At least the winds have subsided, as the low moved north, although the swells are still pretty high. We let out more sail and are moving E at 5 kts. Will stay like this tomorrow, when winds and seas are supposed to be down a bit. But there is ANOTHER low dropping down from the maritimes, and it should be here in about 48 hours. Hopefully we will be well east by then. It is also raining quite a bit, and we are all in full foulies. The temperature has also dropped quite a bit.

The evening watch also had to deal with problems with the GPS and a thunderstorm. The GPS problem had shown up once before, on the trip south, and it appeared to be a loose connection in the GPS “mushroom”. For non-sailors, we should explain that many GPS units for boats are mounted in a small structure the size of your fist, in the shape of a mushroom. It generally mounts on the rail, aft, or up on the arch. This mushroom contains the entire GPS unit, and the wires that connect to it provide it with power and take the GPS information out. There are no other GPS boxes inside the boat for this instrument. We think it actually talks “Sea-Talk”, a proprietary format used by Raymarine, who provided our instruments. Well, the cable for this unit is potted into the bottom, and does not have any user-accessible connections, and it appears that one of the wires, not clear which one, has a break, and is making intermittently. So, we had to fiddle with this, in the rain, haning over the edge of the boat, in 25 kts of wind, to try to get the wires inside the cable to make contact. Eventually, with the application of enough tie-wraps, we were successful, so our GPS connection to the chartplotter was restored. In the Azores we will have to look for a new one, and see if the old one can be fixed. We also have 3 handheld GPS units to use for backup, if necessary.

The thunderstorm was spectacular, but luckily all the lightning was cloud-cloud. We just hung on and prayed that we would not get hit, and we did not. Ahhh the power of prayer…

June 9, 2008

A quiet night, at last. The winds dropped to 15 kts, and eventually we had to start the engine because they all went away. Finally, we have found the Azores High, but the pressure isn’t that high (1010mb). The wefaxes say that we should be in the middle of a band of clear weather, with light NW winds, and this is dead-on. We all got some good sleep in the night, and the 3-6 watch watched the sun some up through the band of clouds to the east – the remnants of the front that battered us. The swells were still about 9 feet when the sun came up, and the seas were generally very confused, on top of the swells, so the boat moved around a bit, but not like during the storm. Full foulies were used thru the night, and were appreciated for their warmth.

By about 9 AM we were able to shake out the sails and do some sailing, about 5 kts to the east.
The Azores now lie about 500 miles east. We also refueled from the jerry jugs, and now have about 85 gal left. If necessary, we could motor the entire remaining distance to Horta.
Breakfast was a treat – eggs, bacon, and grits – when the weather is nice, NL likes to make a special meal.

Now we start the afternoon watch, and we are back into bathing suits and T-shirts. The wind also died about 1 PM, so we are back to motoring. Days run of 97 miles. Good considering the conditions. Took the opportunity to make water and take showers. Clean underwear for all!

Fresh fish! At 5:45, AS hooked a large yellow-fin tuna. He fought it for over 45 minutes before rxc gaffed it and brought it aboard. It dove deep and took a lot of line, and then went in circles, so that we had to maneuver the boat to keep it from getting caught in the rudder or prop or keel. When we finally brought it up, it seemed to be followed by at least one other tuna. It was probably in the 40 pound class, and we got a LOT of meat out of it. The cleaning process was, again, quite messy, with blood all over the cockpit. One might think that we had engaged in a major sea battle to fend off attacks by those dastardly British, who have been known to board American vessels in these waters, looking for sailors to press.

Luckily, we have a SW washdown system, so we were able to give the cockpit a good washing, and we don’t think it smells too much like a fishing boat. Sauteed the first tuna steaks, and they were wonderful. One member of the crew, however, was not enthusiastic about eating a creature that had just looked him in the eye. Maybe tomorrow, after the vision has receded into the distance. BTW, fresh sushi, at body temperature, is quite good, but I think I prefer it slightly chilled.

Evening watches were quite gentle.

June 10, 2008

Midwatch was a good exercise in trying to find patterns in the radar screen. Winds were gentle (15 kts) and favorable, but rain cells kept popping up all over the place, some coming overhead and dropping gentle rains, others going their own way. No excitement. The morning watch did lose most of the wind, though, and decided to start the engine. We then motored for a while, and then began to sail again around 10 AM. This seems to be the pattern – sail when possible, but don’t hesitate to start the engine. We made 134 miles today, which is again a good run.

Breakfast was pain perdu, with sirop d’erable.

Around noon, the winds piped up again, and after an exciting round-up , we reduced sail, but are still heading east at about 6 kts. Made more water and had tuna for lunch, with boat-made mayo. Finally figured out what is screwing up the WEFAX – it is the inverter. Interesting that this just showed up. It looks like something changed in the way the wires run thru the boat, and now we must have a power wire running close to an antenna wire, or other lead into the SSB radio. I checked a few places that might have been prime suspects, such as the antenna wire back aft, which crosses the main power leads into the boat, and where we have been storing trash, so see if we moved anything, but no amount of relocating back there changes anything. We can deal with this in the interim by turning off the inverter and the fridge while receiving faxes. Since the laptop can run on batteries for about 2 hours, we will do this till we can figure out how to shield the inverter. I think we will have to buy a LOT more chokes and hang them all over the boat wiring to suppress RFI.

Dinner proved the earlier conjecture that tuna is better chilled. It turns out that we were able to actually freeze a lot of our catch by placing it against the cold plate in the fridge, and when she went to make tuna provincial tonite, NL left some out to thaw, and we tried it sliced like sashimi with some soy sauce – fabulous! We ate quite a bit raw, and it could easily turn into a regular evening aperitif.

After dinner, we reefed down, as the winds were starting to pick up. The 9-12 watch was uneventful, but some rain came over during the mid-watch, and the morning watch saw the winds pipe up considerably. We also had to talk to a container ship at 5AM, when it appeared to be headed straight for our stern.

June 11, 2008

We are now in the throes of our THIRD gale of this trip. The whole purpose of making this trip in May-June was to avoid this sort of weather, which is just not supposed to be here at this time of year. Unfortunately, the low pressure system to the north is still going strong, and it is therefore churning up some strong counter-clockwise winds that we see as gales from the S and soon the SE. There are some boats that we heard were going straight across, north of the low, but we cannot imagine how they are going to do this, in the face of 30-40kt gales. They will have to go south, and go by the Azores, like us, and we can’t imagine that they won’t stop.

jlm had expressed some concern about making this trip, citing the possibility of boredom, but it can definitely be said that this trip is NOT boring – exhausting maybe, but not boring.

We will be having survival cup-of-soup for lunch today. The winds are steady 30 kts, with gusts to 40-45. We are back to deep, deep, deep reefs, going east at 4-5 kts.

We caught another flying fish last nite, and it eventually washed down to the level of the cockpit around 11 AM. This one was bigger than usual, around 12 inches long. Photos will be posted. We have caught quite a few flying fish, and even one squid, which was found on deck just aft of the mast. How it got there is anyone’s guess – maybe washed up in a green water wave.

1545 UTC - The latest weather charts show that the front has already passed over us, and we are on the back side of the permanent low. The winds should be gradually moderating and backing to the SE, which means that we may have to either beat hard or motor into the wind to get into Horta.

Dinner was tortellini, with olive oil and parmesan. The evening watches settled in to sailing small, with quite reduced sail. No one had a good time sleeping, however, because the seas were so confused that we continually corkscrewed and fell off the edge of waves into the troughs. This can be particularly jarring when you hear it the first time, because you might very well think that the boat has run into something, but it is just the flat bottom of the boat hitting the water below it, with a big smack. Similar smacks on the side of the boat sound quite loud inside, but not up in the cockpit.

June 12, 2008

The winds picked up during the night, and we started to have some problems with the radar scanner. During this trip, it started to trip off when ever we flushed a toilet, either because of the voltage drop caused by the powerful motor, or due to RFI from the motor. However, because this is a new problem, it is more likely related to a loose connection somewhere, probably in the power to the scanner. During the night, this problem got worse, to the point that we had to shut it down completely at about 5 AM this morning. It was not a good thing, because we depend on the radar to see other ships at night, as well as weather. We had many rain-cells pass over during the night, and in the morning, we had a few flashes of lightning, but these seemed to be cloud-cloud. We shook out a bit of the reef in the jib at 5, and then started the engine, because we were not making good progress to windward to make our mark in Horta.
The slow speed of the boat, coupled with the strong winds on the beam combine to push us quite hard to leeward. Later in the forenoon watch, the skies cleared up a bit, and the wind veered more to the SW, so we stopped the engine and unfurled the mainsail completely. The jib is still deeply reefed. Made 7 kts and up to 8 at times before having to reef down again because of blows. Sea-state was still high, but no whitecaps. Finally shook out reef in main around 2 PM.

Sailed nicely at 6 kts thru the afternoon, and just before dinner we shook out the reef for the jib, and with all sail up headed towards Horta at 5 kts. Patches of sunshine all afternoon, interspersed with rain cells, and even some green water over the bow as boat fell off of waves into troughs. We are mightily glad to have the enclosure. Dinner was more tuna provencial, with green beans and mashed potatoes. The tuna was a bit moister than the first time around, because NL had essentially marinated it in the sauce for 2 days before cooking it.

Winds and seas continued to diminish through the evening, and eventually we rolled in the jib and started the engine, motoring east at about 6 kts. The current has been fickle today, as throughout the entire trip. Sometimes 1-1.5 kts with us, sometimes against us. During the mid-watch, we are losing 1 kt to the current. We are now down to less than 60 miles to Horta!

June 13, 2008 (Friday the 13th)

Soon after the mid-watch started, we noticed that the winds were blowing again, so we stopped motoring, rolled out the main and jib, and sailed east at about 6.5 kts. This pattern continued thru the night, sometimes sailing, sometimes motoring. We made water during the night, filling up the central tank in anticipation of needing it in Horta.

Land was sighted about 8:30 AM. The mountains of Faiel appeared briefly and tenuously thru the clouds, and then disappeared. The western end of the island appeared next, and eventually we were able to see the coastline, including buildings and other structures. We sailed almost continuously after about 5 AM, at speeds from 5 to 9(!) kts, sometimes close-hauled, sometimes on a reach, but the boat handled quite nicely. We reached Horta entrance about noon (boat time), anchored in the harbor, and went ashore to clear in. Customs was quite easy, and we talked to some other boaters about sources of re-supply and repair. So far, it appears that we need to deal with the GPS and the depthsounder, which is not responding. The Raymarine GPS works, but it would be best to fix it before we leave. The sounder is a significant problem that may require hauling the boat. The radar has come back on line, after we unplugged and replugged the connector cable. We also had quite a scare when the genset had a “surge and die” episode, but that seems to have passed. Probably some air got into a fuel line, or some water, but the fuel filter looks fine. We also have some mast tuning to do.

Re-provisioning includes fresh fruits and veggies, propane, other consumables. We also discovered that we had to advance our clock by 2 hours, instead of the one hour we thought. We are definitely getting closer to France…

AS and NL went off hiking in the hills while rxc and ch went off in search of good food and likker. We found both at the Peter Cafe Sport, an internationally known dive for sailors in Horta. It is decorated with all sorts of boatie-stuff, and is right there on the water. Food was good, at a reasonable price, and we got both local beer and vinho tinto to asuage our thirst.

June 14, 2008

We were up early this AM, to get to the laundry and to the nearest marine supply place, which is supposed to be a Raymarine repair center, to see whether they could do anything about the GPS or the depthsounder. Unfortunately, it is Saturday, and their technician does not work on weekends, so we will have to come back on Monday at 10. We also left the empty propane bottle but that will not be ready till Monday at 3:30(!), so we are consigned (?) to stay here till probably Tuesday.

We did get laundry done, and NL found the local market, which is not open on Sunday, but which will be open on Monday. We now have enough to cook on board, so we will see what we do tonite. It looks like there is not much left to do on the boat till Monday, and we are trying to decide whether to even try to fix the depth sounder. The track into the Gironde is well-marked, and deep, and if we have good GPS fixes, we should be fine. Replacing the tranducer would require hauling the boat, and we are not sure it could be done in slings, but might instead require putting the boat on the hard for a few days. The GPS seems to be fine, and we have confirmed that we can hook up one of the handhelds thru the autopilot, as a backup.

While AS and NL and ch worked on laundry, rxc put together a 220v shorepower cable, and rewired the taps on the isolation transformer to take 220, and we now have shorepower. The fussy Brit (identified from this point as the FB) offered to let us plug into one of his outlets - he said that it had French plugs, and we could use it, but we declined. We didn't want to sully his pristine sockets with our connectors, and in and case, we don't have any French plugs on board, yet.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Success!!!

Success!! The parts both arrived today, and have been successfully installed. The Racor filter was easy to replace, and tested fine. The quadrant was a bit harder, but we installed it and the steering and autopilot are back in operation. We will do a quick-cruise tommorrow to fill up on fuel, and last grocery shopping, to give it a real test, and then we will be off, probably tommorrow afternoon.

The SPOT position reports will resume as soon as we start out the harbor.

See you all in Horta!!!

Rainy Wednesday

Well, we received confirmation that the parts are here, and they have cleared customs. Unfortunately, there seems to be some problem on the part of the agent here in getting them down to he customs dock for us to pick them up. The latest UPS status says that they attempted delivery last nite at 4:51 PM, but no one was there to sign for it. We will go ashore this AM to see whether they tried to make a delivery today. We will also call the agent and start to complain… And we have already sent an email to UPS complaining about this agent, so maybe we can light a fire here.

We did some provisioning yesterday, but not perishables, because we want to make sure everything is fixed, first. Today will be a day for fixing the rudder, doing laundry, hot showers (and making more water), and hopefully, final provisioning. Tommorrow we will head over to the fuel dock and top off, and then checkout. The winds towards the Azores look good for the next week.

One comment about services here – we are glad we have the genset and the watermaker, because slip space is limited, and many days the boats in the slips have moved out to anchorage because the weather made the slips untenable. Some boats tied up to a long wharf also had to move out to anchor because a second cruise ship arrived yesterday. The genset and the watermaker make waiting here at anchor much easier and less stressful.

We have uploaded a bunch more photos from the parade and other scenes around the island, but they don’t have captions yet.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

News!!!

Well, it appears that our parts have arrived in Bermuda. The Racor filter arrived last Friday, but is waiting for some sort of clearance thru some customs broker.

The better news is that the quadrant left Newark NJ this morning, and as I type this, I believe that it has arrived somewhere at the airport. Unfortunately, the UPS tracking system does not have any record of it arriving here yet. It went from St. Herblain, France on the evening of the 22nd, to Koln on the 23rd, to Louisville on the 24th, and then on to Newark the same day. It looks like it spent the Memorial Day weekend in Newark (instead of going sailing, like it should), and left for Bermuda this AM.

The weekend here was pretty good, in spite of some showers. The wind died down, and shifted to the east, so we ended up with the stern of the boat protruding into the channel. On Monday morning we were approached by the pilot boat, which asked us to move so that we would not get run over by the cruise ship, so we up-anchored and moved in about 100 yds(meters). We were not alone in being asked to move.

After lunch we took the ferry to Hamilton where we watched both the Bermuda Day parade, and all of the people who lined the streets for the event. It was fascinating to see how it seemed like every family on the island had brought out chairs, tables, food, portable tents, and whatever else they needed to have a grand picnic. There were relatively few vendors, compared to what would be seen in a situation like this in the US, maybe because no one wants to pay for food they can make themeself. We talked to some of the people after we noted that spots had been laid out on the sidewalks in duct-tape with names on the tape. It turns out that there is a first-come-first-served opportunity for people to “mark their spot”, starting at 6:00 AM the day before the parade, and evidently some people start a bit earlier. But everything was civilized and well-ordered. We were wondering how such a thing would work in, say DC....

The parade had lots of floats covered in flowers and local plants, dance groups, high-school bands, drum corps, and all the rest of the usual parade participants. It was quite nice. We took the bus back to St. Georges and had croque-monsieur sandwiches, salad, and Natalie’s pumpkin pie, all quite excellent. We are gradually working on Art’s French so that he will be able to order food in France when we get there.

I will post more when I know more about the parts. The photos on Flickr have been completely reorganized, with title and comments added, so take a look. If I don’t get the parts this afternoon I will upload photos of Bermuda and the parade. I hope that we get the Racor before the quadrant – I don’t want to have two projects to do at the same time…

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Another Day in St. Georges Harbour

Well, this is starting to get old, waiting here with the wind blowing. Our latest info from Jeanneau is that the entire quadrant will not ship until the end of this week, or maybe even early next week. And the word from France is that there is a major trucking strike in progress, shutting down transport of gas and diesel. So we don’t know when we will get this very important part.

We have otherwise been productive, making water, changing fuel filters, and getting all ready for installation of the quadrant. The canvas is all repaired. We discovered some stripped threads in the vent valve for the Racor filter that feeds the main engine, so we have ordered a new one from Defender. They responded quickly to the request, but have taken a day to pick the item off the shelf and pack it, so it is still sitting in Ct., when it should be on a plane on its way to Bermuda. We could probably do without the Racor, but it would not be wise to leave with a filter housing that had a potentially significant leakage path (some training from a former career is influential here). We have also determined that the Raymarine navigation equipment on board is indeed putting out GPS navigational information on the NMEA output connections, so it SHOULD be possible to see these on the VHF and SSB radios. The next part of this task is to make sure we have the correct wires identified, and also to find out what NMEA sentences the radios expect to see. And to push the right button combinations on the radio to see if it needs this "push" to see the GPS info. The work to make the boat work never stops…

We have been having cine evenings here on board. Before we left WV, we recorded a number of films that the local PBS stations broadcast, and we have been enjoying them. First up was “High Noon”, and then last night we watched “Hairspray”, the one by John Waters done in Baltimore. Highly appreciated. We thing we may progress to dominoes tonight. I don’t know when we will get back to SG1, but we have discovered a number of Stargates on Bermuda, and they are in some of the photos on Flickr.

Dinner last night was Breton galettes de sarasin, with oeuf, jambon, et fromage, and simple galettes with butter and sugar for desert. We even have some movies of crewmembers making the galettes. We made enough for dinner last night and breakfast this AM, and were mightily satisfied. We had some nice English scrumpy to accompany them, instead of the traditional cider, but it all went together well.

The weather continues to be unpleasant, blowing out of the SW at 20-25 with gusts to 35. It makes a LOT of electricity, so that we only run the gen-set to heat our hot water, but it is getting tiring. A high is supposed to move in tomorrow and get things settled down a bit. We have seen a few boats leave from the ARC rally, but we don’t know where they are headed – surely not to the NW. The cruise ship also left this morning, with help from a tug to get off the pier.

The weather situation has also affected our internet connectivity. The best signal, with the highest speed, is pretty weak, and when the boat moves a lot, the antenna loses sight of it, or something gets in the way. This is why I haven’t uploaded more photos yet – the connection times out. There is one much stronger signal coming from Bermuda Yacht Services, but the speed is quite slow – they likely have a LOT of people hooked in. And they occasionally won’t accept our connections. We have just found a third AP, which is stronger than #1, so we have some diversity, in case things get really nasty. It is amazing how dependent we are on this technology – before it existed I guess we would all just sit on the pier and wait for the mail boat to come in with letters. And parts would be a REALLY long wait…

We are hoping for better weather this weekend, if only so that a LOT of boats that are here would LEAVE, and we would then have been internet connections….

We will set off the SPOT device later today so that you can see right where we are anchored. We think we will start doing this each day, so that this page does not appear blank. The SPOT shared page evidently drops all position reports that are more than 24 hours old, although they are still available to the subscriber.