Sailing Log of a Mahe 36: Atlantic Crossing

The Atlantic crossing was the major milestone on our trip for both Kevin and I, after which we will have succeeded on our adventure regardless of what comes next. We had purposefully made the crossing considerably easier by breaking the journey in the Cape Verdes which we had wanted to visit and which gives a welcome break about one third of the way for only about a 100 mile detour. We had therefore replenished supplies of water, diesel and food as well as made some very good friends in the Cape Verdes before departing from Mindelo. We were given a send off by two of these Max & Gigi as we left the marina and also by a pod of dolphins as we entered the channel between Mindelo and Sao Antao.

Leaving Mindelo, Sao Vincente, Cape Verdes

We were given a welcome push along the way by the venturi effect operating down the channel between the islands, however by 9pm we were under motor as the wind had died away. At 5am the following morning we were back under sail, but this was sign of things to come in the following days with light and variable winds. The highest wind strength we encountered until the last 24 hours of the trip was 22 knots, with the average being more between 10-15 knots. This wind strength is fairly gentle for a fully laden cruising yacht and therefore we made good use of our Spifurl (a furling headsail between a spinnaker and gennaker) to maintain pace, though this is fastest at 120 degrees off the wind, therefore required gybing downwind and increased the total distance travelled. We were obtaining approximately half the wind speed in knots with the Spifurl though which made the additional distance worthwhile. We were initially ginger of using the Spifurl due to the issues we had previously had in furling it. However, Kevin had added a block and a new continuous furling line (the one supplied was not continuous but lashed and caught in the furler) which meant after a couple of false starts we had cracked the technique of furling. We found that with the lightwinds dead downwind we needed to goose-wing the genoa using a barber-hauler off the mid-ship cleat, however, the tradewinds which are in belts would vary by up to 50 degrees in different gusts causing the genoa to back. The Spifurl was far more resistant to variation in wind direction, which was useful with a short-handed crew.

On Passage

Wildlife wise, as one might expect being further from land there was less variety on this trip. There was quite a number of flying fish, though nothing like the quantity north of the Cape Verdes which must be some of the richest fishing grounds around. Kevin caught fish pretty much each day, though always of the same variety which we were not sure of the breed and following two bout of food poisoning for Kevin we were not too keen to experiment. We did get several bites which got away, the biggest of which could be clearly felt turning to run, but unfortunetly our rods, originally bought for mackerel fishing in the Irish Sea were not up to the job and the big one got away, along with a promise to Kevin for a shopping trip in the Carib…

We were followed by skuas for most of the trip and had an overnight visitor of a white stork type bird, which we now understand to be a native of the Caribbean, though he must have got lost as we picked him up about 1300 miles away. He arrived about 2pm on Day 6 and hung around until late in the afternoon on Day 7, when the need to deploy the Spifurl finally disturbed him. We were not too sad to see him go however as he had got quite cheeky and we were having to guard the door to the saloon as he had obviously decided that looked like better accommodation having been watching us through the windows. He like all previous overnight feathered visitors left rather a mess on the foredeck which was not very gratefully for a free ride of nearly 150 miles!

Our hitchhiker

There was little shipping traffic on the journey, though we did see perhaps 10 large cargo vessels, one which passed between 0.75- 1 mile of us. We had called them on the VHF to ask their intentions as our perspective looked like it would be a close call. They seemed to divert after our radio call, however, it never ceases to amaze me in such a large ocean how close two vessels can get.

Close encounter

Crew-wise we manged the journey very well and both enjoyed it better than any passage so far. I think the major contribution towards this was a change in the watch system made around Day 5 of the trip. At this latitude we were getting about 12 hours of darkess and daylight and therefore the night watches are quite long with a crew of two. We had started with a three hour watch system, 6-9pm, 12-3am and 6-9am for me and 9-12am, 3-6am for Kevin. However, this just seemed to result in a very broken night’s sleep for both of us and as the winds were light, we were under autopilot and little sail adjustment needed, we decided to extend the watches. We changed to 6pm-12am for Kevin and 12am – 6am for me. We both felt much better almost immediately after we made this change. I would go to bed at 6am for a couple of hours and was getting a reasonable 8 hours a night. We tried to plan gybes (on Spifurl) around crew changes, taking the southerly course (which caused more slamming) during daylight and northerly gybe at night to help sleep.

Sunrise on my birthday

Provisions-wise, we had a fairly reasonable diet, initially we ate tuna sandwiches for lunch and pasta and rice dishes for dinner. Athough for reasons of electricity economy we switched off the fridge except during charging after the first week when the bread and cheese etc was used. After this time we mainly ate pasta and rice dishes for dinner and instant noodles for lunch. Batchelors Beanfeast (flavoured soya mince – chilli, Bolognese and savoury) continued to be a favourite on board, this being the standard fee for any crew joining from the UK.

We found we were using 7 litre of water a day for drinking and cooking and the 44 litres of non-potable water we brought for washing up etc we still had some left at the end of the trip. We had also filled our solar shower with non-potable water and this (20 litres) provided 2 showers each on route. We did not want to use Cape Verde water in our tanks which we knew to be good drinking water (via our Seagull filter) and so set off with only half a tank (250 litres) which should have been twice as much as we needed at that rate of consumption. We also had 2 * 22 litres and 8 * 5 litres = 84 litres of drinking water stored separately in case of contamination and to allow carriage to liferaft if required. We arrived with over 70 litres in the tanks, about 5 litres of non-potable and 50 litres of separate drinking water.

In terms of equipment, we had the Raymarine C80 chartplotter/radar fail around the halfway mark (no longer booting up). We were quite surprised by this as we’d previously had Raymarine kit on our last boat which had been bullet-proof. We decided that we could manage without both as we had large and small scale paper-charts on board and we keep a very close watch 24 hours a day, we really only use the C80 as a backup as it uses quite a lot of power. The Furuno GPS is our main aid to navigation and we used this for tracks, waypoints, position find, distance to run and to verify course, boat speed over ground and to track system voltage, this uses very little power and is on 24 hours a day. Kevin had also been doing excellent work on the sextant and keeping a very close track of boat position – which it looked like he may have to use in anger at one point when both of our additional handheld GPS’ failed to switch on at the same time, 10 minutes after the C80 had failed! However, this was quickly rectified by recharging their AA batteries.
The aramid lines on the Spirfurl which attach the head and foot of the sail to the furling gear also chafed through, which caused the sail to be drop into the water, however, it was easily retrieved and the lines replaced with some 6mm braid on braid, which although needing closer monitoring managed the job perfectly satisfactorily.

Passing the famous Diamond Rock into Martinique after a successful Atlantic Crossing

Finally, during the last 24 hours, all of the squalls we had not received as we expected after the halfway point came at once and the wind was up to 25-20 knots, so our plan to slow our arrival to daylight was rushed to get us out of the larger swell which had started. We arrived to Martinique about 3am and had to hang off until about 6am to star our approach. Our Furuno multi-function display was really playing up by this stage (problem logged with dealer and awaiting a new transducer) and required 6 power-offs in 20 mins as the depth reading kept sticking, this plus no chartplotter meant we followed the buoyed channel very closely, but this was relatively well marked and we were moored on the fuel berth by 7am.

Entering Cul-de-Sac de Marin

We were both exhausted after very little sleep the night before and weren’t too pleased to be told to move to a buoy to wait until 8.30 when the office opened. We called on the VHF at 8.30am, we were told to stand-by, we waited an hour whilst catnapping, then tried again when Phillipe came to the boat to explain that their rather cryptic response to our request for a berth that they already had a booking for our boat, then lack of response to our reply to request clarification actually meant that they didn’t have a berth. We went to anchor, which luckily was excellent holding (our anchor is not the best), after a well earned rest, we went ashore for a meal out (not pasta or rice based) and a few beers and cocktails (what the heck we were celebrating!) at the Mango Bay bar at the marina. It was not the reception we hoped to get on arrival and we were both so tired it was a very quiet night, so we decided to delay the celebrations to the next night.