January - February, 2011 

Crossing the Atlantic.  Half Way Across & No Mishaps...Just No Engine.  Before We Lost All Power.

(This entry is meant for anyone who has ever wanted to cross the Atlantic or wants to know what it might be like.)

Days 1-25  Starting Point:  Gran Canary Island in the Canary Islands to Antigua, Caribbean 
Sail Boat:  45’ Jenneau Sun Odyssey 2006, hand held GPS, radar, no water maker or single side band.  Diesel: 460 liters, Gasoline: 2 liters gasoline for emergency back up compressor,  Water: 450 liters, 50 5-litre bottles of drinking water.  

The first 3 days are always the worst.  You’re not accustomed to the wave action of the ocean and often you feel a little queasy.  This leads to more thirst and more sleepiness.  But after the first 3 days, you get accustomed to constantly leaning this way or that way to keep your balance, you sleep better, and have some sort of a routine which includes having an idea of the habits of the other person, when you will eat, who will keep watches, etc.  

We motored the first 3 days to catch the Canary Islands current, and then sailed for 2 days.  But then needed to motor for another couple of days before we were helped by the wind and current.  The first stop is normally Cape Verde which is south of the Canary Islands but we decided not to stop.  We knew it would take at least 2 days to stop.  One day to catch our breath and at least one day to look around.  Cape Verde is rustic and undeveloped unlike the Canary Islands so it has a little less appeal.  Stopping would also mean we would need another ‘first 3 days’ to get accustomed to the movement of the sea.  We thought we would be shaving off time as we would be ‘rounding the corner’.

We actually didn’t wind up saving much time by taking the short cut.  Jose Antonio was vigilant about looking for the winds and currents of the trade winds.  They start at Cape Verde and go to Brazil and also to the Caribbean Islands.  Even though we hadn’t planned on going so far south, the winds brought us down to about the same latitude as Cape Verde but we still saved time in not stopping.

Things were going great.  Jimmy Buffet music on the sound system.  Herbal tea from the garden.  Lali’s home made puree soups in the refrigerator, not to mention oranges, apples, lemons, a bushel full of tomatoes and bananas.  Well actually, 3 bushels of bananas.    Plus our auto pilot, or ‘Auto’ was working really well.  But then it didn’t.

An autopilot is a wonderful thing.  You can go without a lot of things.  No lights, no cold food, no gas, no plug ins, but no auto pilot?????  Please, not that!!  Without Auto, we would exhaust ourselves very quickly at the wheel 24/7 and life wouldn’t be so good anymore.  Without an engine, Auto won’t work for us. 

Now back to the engine.  We had many storms along the way.  A storm would come one after the other.  They weren’t extreme.  They usually consisted of a cold gust of wind, more wind, some rain, more wind, and in 30-40 minutes it would be over. Until the next group of clouds came, which might be another hour.   It was never more than 50 knots.  With the tossing of the boat during the storms, water managed to escape from the engine pump and it damaged some things on the engine.  So now no engine.  With the tossing seas, it has been impossible for Jose Antonio to replace the water pump and try to get the engine to start working again.

Fortunately, Jose Antonio had already anticipated the possibility of engine trouble.  He brought along a Honda 2000 generator and some gasoline. He originally thought that having a lot of diesel was the safest thing to have on board.  Now he realizes that those 2 liters he brought of gas for the generator was the most valuable thing he brought.  If he runs the generator every 12 hours, Auto will work for us and we can charge anything that needs to be charged during that time, including this computer and the refrigerator.  

All of this sounds great but if there is no wind or current, Auto won’t be of much help to actually arrive.   Lights have been used sparingly at night, no music on the stereo and no radar as it uses too much energy and fortunately, there aren’t any boats around anyway. But for right now, the current is great and the winds are giving us between 4.5-6.5 knots.  So life is good. 

Day 1 – January 20^th, 2011.  I can’t believe that after 5 days from the original start we’re really going to leave the dock. 3,370 miles to go.  I asked Jose is we were there yet.

Day 2 – A little queasy.  Glad Jose Antonio’s wife gave us cooked food before we left.

Day 3 – Ditto.

Day 4 – Settled into more of a routine and a little more used to the rocking but it sure is bumpy and hard to walk from one side of the boat to the other.   Jose Antonio caught his first fish.  It’s possible to catch several different kinds of tuna here including bonito, caballo, or melba.  I personally like melba the best.  It has white meat and looks just like the beautiful white meat in a tuna can.

Day 5 – If the boat docked today, I would get off.  And get back on in a few days.

Day 6 – I realize that it doesn’t matter if I like the captain or not.  We’re stuck with each other for almost one month with no other company.  One has to choose one’s sailing company well.  
Let me just say I prefer skippers who don't yell, scream and throw things.  Ahemmm...

Day 7 – Calmer waters and enjoying the sunrises and sunsets.  About 20 dolphins were playing with the boat for about an hour this afternoon.

Day 8 – Motoring in calmer waters means we can cook up a storm or use the computers.  Jose caught about 5 fish so far and then he realized that I don’t eat as much fish as he thought.  So fishing poles were reeled in.

Day 9 – Bananas are starting to get very brown so time to cook one very, very large banana bread.  It’s wonderful to munch on for a snack.

Day 10 – Engine quit working on day 10.  More written about this above.   We also gave up doing watches at night because after leaving the vicinity of Cape Verde and heading west, there aren’t any boats around at all.  

Day 11 – Fun watching all of the flying fish.  The look like big humming birds that can go what seems to be about ½ mile soaring in the valleys around the large, cresting waves and then suddenly, they crash into a wave and they’re out of sight and you realize you were watching a fish. 

Day 12 – Storms most of the day and night about an hour apart.  Winds up to 50 knots.  With the engine not working, I do miss having the radar on with the alarm to tell us if any floating object is getting near.

Day 13 – Ditto.  The remaining bananas (about 6 dozen) are starting to get very brown so Jose showed me how to preserve them.  You mash them with a fork and pour a lot of lemon juice over them.  Now they are great for milk smoothies. 

Day 14 – Very choppy seas with fewer storms.  Still haven’t seen another boat in a long, long time.

Day 15 – Nice sunny day sailing only the genoa with following seas and waves not too choppy.  Wonderful fish soup from Jose Antonio.

Day 16 – The air is getting a little warmer and so is the water.  The waves are a little smoother today and Jose made a great attempt at fixing the engine.  All went well but the engine still doesn’t turn over.  He’ll try again tomorrow unless the waves grow in height.  

Day 17 – Today is like a washing machine with the rolling semi-crisscross waves tossing the sailboat. Jose is getting concerned about getting to the islands with no engine.  I don’t think we have to even think about it yet because we don’t know where we’ll end up.  The wind takes you to where it takes you.  You have to trim the sails otherwise they flap, make noise and wear out.  So you don’t have much choice where you will go.  Once we get closer to the islands we’ll have to re-evaluate the situation.  Most of the marinas are on the western side of the islands because they have less wind from the ocean.  So we’ll have to go around to the other side of the island.  We’re trying to choose an island large enough that will have a diesel mechanic and parts.   I personally am not worried about it.  If Lynn and Larry Pardy traveled around the world in their sailboat with no engine and no dinghy motor, surely we can make it.  And like Jose is now saying, ‘If Chris could make it, so can we.’  Christopher Columbus that is.

Day 18 –  More tossing around.  Cooking is an art between keeping your balance and keeping all the things you are working with on the counter.  Once today I completely lost my balance while cooking and went flying across the floor to the other side of the boat landing on a settee sofa.  The large, full bowl of tomatoes didn’t land as well and hit the floor.  I’m glad it wasn’t a large bowl of mushy, mashed bananas! Just part of the day.  

Day 19 – We have been doing about 140 miles per day these last few days.  So it looks like we might hit land in another 5 days.  We’ll see.  After making a huge batch of spaghetti sauce, what is left of the garden are 30 tomatoes, 5 lemons, 3 oranges, 2 apples and lots and lots and lots of mashed bananas with lemon in the refrigerator.

Day 20 – Biggest storm of the entire trip last night.  One passed and then within 1 hour another would pass just as fierce.  There might have been about 2-3 more.  Winds were about 50+ knots with some rain.  But the rain is warm so it’s not too bad.

Day 21 – Jose Antonio is getting a little crabby from time to time.  He’s not used to watching the day go by.  His ipod stopped working after the first week so I’ve been lending him mine.  He doesn’t use the computer much, doesn’t like movies much and doesn’t play cards or games.  He likes to cook but there is only so much of that you can do because of the wave action and getting a little nauseous down below.    And fortunately, there hasn’t been much to fix.  I don’t think he expected so much of the same thing every day and will be a little more prepared when he makes his trip back to the Canary Islands whenever that might be.  If he only had a garden to work in, he could be growing some more banana trees…

Day 22 – Nice rolling waves today and feels like we’re surfing. Kowabunga.  I’m starting to get a little excited about hitting land.  There are 400 miles left to go at 100 miles per day, if the steady winds continue, we might arrive in Antigua about 3 days from today. In the afternoon, feeling a rush to get everything done that I wanted to on this trip before we hit land, i.e. all books read, projects completed.  Once on land, none of it will get done probably for a long time.

Day 23 – Last night was an entire night of storms.  One large wave hit and managed to go down next to the stairs into the salon.  It wasn’t too big of a mess.  I felt sorry for Jose who was at the wheel and told me the following day that large waves would come and hit him in the face.  I’m glad the night is over.

Day 24 – We’re counting the hours until we hit land.  As of 12noon, there are still 230 miles to cover.  It seems like we’ll get in during light hours.  That would be great as we wouldn’t have to wait outside until light comes to enter a harbor.  Sailing with following seas and big, big long rolling waves formed from last night’s storm.  

But now some bad news…the generator quit charging the battery bank.  This will mean that we can’t recharge the GPS, have no navigation lights, no refrigerator, no energy what so ever.  But good news is we will arrive tomorrow.

Day 25 – February 12, 2011.  Well, I thought this was the end of the story.  We arrived at the opening of the Foul Weather Bay in Antigua at 4am in the morning on a dark night.  There was a range of tall hills in a row and the opening was between a set of these hills.  There were also reefs in the area.  With only a small hand held GPS and no instructions on how to enter, Jose decided to wait until we could see the harbor better before we entered.  So I sailed out and back for 3 hours until daylight came while Jose slept.  

The problem was that there was a current taking us past the harbor to the north.  I wondered why Jose would tell me to go out and back a couple of times when we might drift north but I figured he would handle everything when he woke up. As it turns out, I should have sailed South West and not straight West.

When he awoke, he had his new shirt, his horn to notify another boat for help, and it looked like he was ready to step off the boat on to land.  When he saw where we were, he was aghast at how far we were from the harbor entrance.  We drifted right past it.  He had a hard time getting the boat back down south to line up with the bay opening.  He would switch back and forth between starboard and port every 15 minutes trying to inch his way back of the coast.  It was a losing battle that he wasn’t winning.

Three hours later while he was still trying, I flagged down a boat that had come from the bay.  They called their charter boat company to see if they could help us and told us that help was on the way.  One hour later, nothing heard from anyone, we were wondering what we would do next.  Absolutely no energy on the boat, we had my hand held VHS and hands to wave people down and that was all.  

Jose was thinking of just giving up and going to the next island.  The GPS was not going to last long enough to get there and was on it’s last charge.  But we did have a chart.  The only problem was that once we got to the next island, we might have the same situation as last night not knowing how to enter the anchorage or how hard it would be to enter without an engine.  We would have to leave about 11pm to make it arrive during morning day light hours.  I favored staying since we were already there even though we couldn’t get in.

We got a friendly call on the VHS from a local company that could tow us with a tug type boat.  They would charge $300/hr. plus fuel charges.  I estimated that might be at least 3 hours with a bill of maybe $1000 or more.  Jose didn’t much like that idea.

Next, one very nice local man came out to us with his 2 - 50 hp engine boat from the hotel and charter business.  He kindly offered to help us.  Great!  He tried towing us.  That didn’t work as there was too much wind and the waves were very high.  So next, we put out all the fenders and he came along side of us to tow us boat to boat.  He wound up scraping Jose’s beautiful new boat slightly bending a stanchion, scraping paint, crushing a fishing pole.  Jose was screaming and tearing out his hair during it all and finally told him to stop.  

So now we were back to zero.  We thanked him for his good tries and wondered what we would do next.   Just then a very large, red, rubber, rescue boat looked like they were heading in our direction.  They were a local rescue volunteer group called ABSCOM that helps people in distress.  They heard us on the radio in the morning and knew we were still out there in the wind and waves trying to work our way back to the opening without success.  They told us we had to sail about 1 ½ miles south west and then head back up into the bay.  One of the men jumped into our boat and instructed Jose just how to make that happen.  After sailing for 5 hours, we were finally almost lining up to the opening. They towed us to an anchoring site inside the bay and finally, at about 6pm, we finally arrived.  

We were so glad to get in and be anchored.  Nothing was working but at least we could get some sound sleep and work on getting things fixed the following day.  

But it was Sunday.  Nothing open.  Oh well, ‘No problem mon’.  We inflated the dinghy and had a look around the very small village of English Bay enjoying the feel of soft, cushiony earth beneath our feet.

I am embarrassed to say that everyone knows we are here from our communications on the VFH radio.  So it was REALLY embarrassing when we lost our dinghy 2 days later and it drifted away because someone didn’t tie it well.  I could just hear everyone thinking, ‘Oh it Manigua again.’  I guess it just goes with the territory. 

 First 14" fish that was caught. The rest were about the same size.

With no SSB to send emails or Satellite phone for emergency calls, one of the books on board said to send out a message in a bottle.  Really!!!  Jess, did you get your bottle email yet?

I brought books to read, books on tape, music to listen and projects on my computer.  Jose was getting bored so he found this yellow piece of plastic and decided to fly it off the mast.

Morning and Evening Sunsets.  Every day.

Day after day after day.  The cockpit is 'home'.

One of my favorite past times was watching the flying fish darting between the waves, sailing through the waves, or sailing around the waves.  I think they can go over half a mile.  They're so amazing!

You can see the size here.  It was warm but I had my had and shirt on for sun protection.

Make no mistake where the boat is from.

Getting help from ABSCOM to make it into the harbor with the engine less and powerless boat.

Finally in the harbor at Foul Weather Bay, Antigua, Caribbean Islands.

Some Musings Along the Way

- I never anticipated that I would need to learn so many new Spanish words.  For example when you put one sail on each side because the wind is behind you, that’s called ‘wing on wing’ or in Spanish, ‘donkey’s ears’.  And verbs.  There are 3 different verbs you can use just for tighten as in ‘tighten the genoa sheets’.  The challenge is to listen for them when they are conjugated in a sort of screaming voice with the drowning sound of wind velocity all around you.  

- Salt, salt, everywhere.

- There are not many times in one’s life where no matter where you look, north, east, south or west, it’s the same view.  The only thing different is the direction of the waves.

- If we would need assistance for any emergency, at this moment, we are 1000 from the nearest landing.  That is a very humbling thought.  No satellite phone, no single side band.

- Fishing seems to be a miracle.  You put your line out and you get dinner!

- It’s so wonderful seeing a sunset AND sunrise every day.

- Funny how fast your toe nails, finger nails and hair grows when you’re on the water.

- Dreams are very noticeable and you have many dreams, probably because you are woken up a lot.

- To drive a boat like this 45’ sailboat in Europe, it’s very similar to getting a driver’s license in the States.  You need to attend a class for 13 months and then pass several tests before you are issued a license to drive.  Also, if you anchor in the wrong place, you can be fined a very large sum of money.  

-  Every day the same view.  The same view for 25 days.  It’s Amazing.  

- Time – It’s nice to know what time it is so you know how many more hours of daylight you have until the sun sets.   It’s more important now than before because, as the engine isn’t running, lights go out when the sun goes down.  When we left Gran Canaria, the sun was coming up at 8am and going down at 8pm.  But as we’ve been crossing so many miles traveling west, our clocks are off.  We can set them to the time of the time zone we are in but at 100 –140 miles per day, that doesn’t work well either.  The solution was to set my watch at the closest hour to match an 8am sunrise.  It worked very well.

- We never saw another boat the entire crossing.  Ever!!!

- I have a great appreciation for satellite phones now.  If we had one, it could have saved our lives if we needed one.  The people that towed us in told us how they are currently saving a row boat in the middle of the Atlantic by connecting them with a passing sailboat to give them food.  If it wasn't for the connection, they would never see each other on the big ocean. 

- I realized that when we reach our destination, all of the food left on the boat will be ‘imported from Spain’

- Regarding the danger of making such a passage.  It seems that it’s more dangerous going down the coast of the USA and Mexico then it is crossing the Atlantic.  On the West Coast of USA and Mexico, This year one boat sank because they hit a whale.  Another year, a boat sunk because they fell asleep and hit some rocks.  We haven’t seen any whales, and the Atlantic is very deep so no danger in hitting rocks.  The only danger would be a hidden container floating just beneath the surface and that could happen in any ocean.  Apparently crossing the Atlantic, almost all boats make it.  I’m told if you just float on a piece of styrofoam, you’ll arrive here in 48 days.