Dena Hankins's Blog, page 8

Enjoying Horta

I (Dena) just folded a long grocery store receipt and had one of those thrilling moments that is so very prosaic when it comes down to it.

The receipt is in Portuguese. To figure out what it says, I have to apply my understanding of Romance languages (though English is not exclusively, well…that’s a long side conversation…and my grasp of Spanish is significantly un-fluent but definitely helping) for terms like alho (garlic) and queijo (cheese) and frita (fried). But then, there’s all the rest.

…picture perfect

I love this moment, this way of being, this foreignness as a comprehensible puzzle. This level of engagement with people and places and, yes, even receipts.

A G&T at Peter’s

I thought about avoiding the most highly trafficked sailor’s destination, in the mindset that we’re least likely to meet interesting locals there, but the family that created and runs it shares my maternal family name, Azevedo, so we went to Peter’s Sport Cafe, had a couple of the famous (and cheap) Gin do Mars, and ate a stunningly meaty grilled tuna steak that balanced on the edge of enjoyment for these two mainly-not-meat-eaters before tumbling decisively onto the side of relishing the flavor and appetite-fulfillment. The roasted sweet potatoes were also surprisingly pleasurable and there was almost enough sauce for these sauce-hounds.

The salty decorations are also a draw.

We took our first walks somewhat cautiously since Bermuda proved that atrophy at sea was a thing.

In an uphill neighborhood we explored for no particular reason.

Now, I don’t want to spend too much time talking/complaining about this part. Look for a Boat Projects post about how it all went. It all started with a rich fuck who fucked up, though, and ended with us being forced to raft on the marina wall through a contrary wind that eventually tore a section of our teak caprail apart.

After the rafting, before the damage.

But…the beauty. From Horta’s harbor, the ever-changing, constantly engaging scenery is the next island over, Pico.

Bao Dea!

Not kidding.

…Wow!

It’s spectacular. There are so many more.

The pico of Pico

We addressed the damage to the caprail like we do whenever possible, with materials and chemicals we already have aboard and the patience to do it right. That meant our mornings were boat work and our afternoons were for shopping (provisioning a little at a time) and exploration.

The marina balustrade

We didn’t have to go far for wonderful sights…

…they sailed right on by!

…but we needed to stretch our legs and did a couple of great epic-hikes.

The first one started with several kilometers to a buffet lunch because, well, fuel. Then we made our way back to the volcano we planned to climb and conferred briefly about whether we had more in us. It’s a good thing we ate so much and then walked ourselves back into climbing trim because, yeah, wow! The first set of steps off about 300 meters of beach got us up to a hundred-and-something-year-old overlook, and the second got us up to the top of Monte da Guia for a view of the double-caldera that we’d missed by coming into Horta in the dark.

We passed right by this in the dead of night

Plus a handful of gorgeous Horta views.

Looking north from the top of Mt. do Guia

And yet, Monte Queimado stood exactly between Monte do Guia and our very happily anchored Cetacea on that entire hike! We made our way down via the long, winding, road and its lovely switchback resting spot.

…damn we look good!

We were hooked, though. We had to climb Monte Queimado and see Cetacea from the heights!

Dena on the climb

These steps were less protected from the sun by lush greenery, but also seemed less likely to shed us without ado. We climbed and climbed, with occasional breaks, and reached the top only to meet a Canadian family of three from Montreal heading the opposite way. A very friendly and engaging guy gave us an excuse to thoroughly catch our breath and the rest of the trip was a stroll to…exactly what we wanted to see!

S/VSN-E Cetacea at anchor in Porto Horta, Azores, Portugal

Downhill was an exercise in control over the rock-strewn trail, but also an exhilarating pleasure.

Us at home

Way back in 1998, in the year that James went on the Warped Tour and I started working for Toys in Babeland, in the year that we watched the Around Alone race via the fastest internet that was available then to poor people, in the year that we started our definitive list of features our future boat would have…way back then, we knew that what we wanted to do was go to strange places, struggle pleasurably through the markets, and go home with exciting finds that we would then cook on our own stove, in our own home on the water. That what we wanted was to be at home in the world, wherever we were.

Here we are, using Portuguese options on our home’s stove and in our home’s oven, making and eating the most amazing pizza ever made in Horta.

Azorian Cast Iron Pizza!

We are at home in the world.

29 days at home

Sailing away from Convict’s Bay

Wrapping up into usable sound bites and elevator pitches an adventure such as our trans-Atlantic passage needs another kind of author altogether, maybe an author who thinks they don’t write fiction.

A column in the sky

We do write fiction and we are also aware that the truth is in the story and the story is always the adventure.

The truth is in the hundreds of Portuguese man-o-wars, the little fishies that hovered in and around our hull’s shadow for a thousand miles, the dorado that scoffed at the rusty lure, the dolphin, the arm of the galaxy spangling the nighttime sky.

The adventure is in the squalls and storms, the joy of feeling truly at home on the ocean, the sundogs and threatening clouds and all the fucking gybes…

We sailed our 9.07 meter electric sailboat across the Atlantic flow of the Earth’s ocean, 1798 nautical miles from Bermuda to Faial as the albatross flies. But, um, we’re not albatross. We are a family of three on a vessel under sail and electric propulsion only, moving mostly downwind, and that meant gybing. About a thousand times…okay, not a thousand and not even once a day, but some days we did it three or four times so, believe me (James), we did a lot of gybing. Going back and forth, we went 1907 nautical miles to cover those 1789 direct miles.

Shall we gybe?!

A gybe (even on a nice day in the Chesapeake Bay) is a big deal. If not done almost perfectly every time it can bring your whole fucking rig down. Now, we have this really cool device called a boom brake that (wow!!!) works like gang-busters to control the speed of the boom as it crosses from one side of the boat to the other. Just like any other piece of offshore sailing gear, it needs constant observation and care so… not all of our gybes were Chapman’s perfect, if you know what I mean. But we didn’t break anything and we caught the shit that did threaten to go tits-up before it actually broke and ruined the day.

Images may appear faster than reality…

On or about the thirteenth day we got the worst part of all the incredible weather of the adventure. We took rogue wave after rogue wave all that very long day. The gales lasted about seventeen hours and in the end we rode the tail end of that weather through a moonless star-packed Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon. The only light pollution came from hundreds of billionaire-satellites orbiting above. But hey, none of those guys will ever see what I have seen in the Atlantic sky.

In 2006, we sailed to Hawaii in a Gulf 32 pilothouse sloop called Sapien. We weren’t much into Hawaii for the year we spent there but the sail to that distant archipelago changed us forever. It took us twenty days to go 2040 nm…that’s a little better than 100 nm a day. We thought that was normal. When we made landfall in Radio Bay, Hilo, Hawaii, a small community of ocean sailing people showed up to handle lines on the wall and gasp at our incredibly short crossing to the most remote place in the world. They were all blown away. It took the guy on the 33 ft sailboat next to us 34 days from L.A. and the family on the big 45 ft ketch 47 days to get to the Big Island from Chile!

@ anchor on the Wall in Hilo

Since that incredible adventure, we have reveled in the facts that we only ran the engine a total of 20 hours the entire distance from San Fransisco to Hilo and that the Monitor windvane drove the boat for all except those motoring hours. We have thrilled many an audience with that adventure story. It’s true, we made great time and we sailed as much as we could.

It took us 29 days to get to Horta from Convict’s Bay in Bermuda in our little verse, our tiny vessel, our bobber on the massive seas and what we discovered was…we live here, on this planet, in this ocean on this sea among these residents in this verse on this world, absolutely at home.

Ahhhhh, at anchor at home in the verse!

Next!

To Azores Day 29

Tuesday August 22

Day 29 and Faial is in full view!

I can see details on the entire western face of the island.

We traveled 39.4nm over the last 24 hours and we are now 39.2nm to Horta…the wind finally came around to the west giving us a much better and faster angle.

We are now, as the albatross flys, 2773.4nm from Marathon, Florida!

Dena’s 4-5 pm watch

The chartplotter tells us the distance and ETA to our destination and today, for the first time, it’s not a joke.

It only give the time of day, so we’d read it out to each other and laugh. “Yeah, but 2:45 pm of which day?”

Now, we’re approaching Faial and it’s so very real out there. It’ll be today or very very early tomorrow morning. 

Whew.

Dena’s 4-5 am watch

Landfall 0500 Horta, Ilha Faial, Azores, Portugal…29d16h40m

To Azores Day 28

Monday August 21

Day 28 slow moving on an awkward beat to Horta…Day three of a frustrating nor’easter that won’t let go.

Dena’s 7-8 pm watch

7:36 pm: We just trimmed the staysail and got a bit higher into the wind. A little more speed too. I’m still hoping for a wind shift so that we don’t have to sail northwest and spend time backtracking, but this will get us close enough that it won’t be the end of the world if we do.

I’m going to take another long overnight unless the traffic picks up and I have to spend too much time awake. Last thing I want is to be exhausted while doing the approach and either anchoring or docking on the wall for the officials who will clear us in. Especially if it’s dark when we arrive. The entrance couldn’t be easier, but looking out for other boats and picking the best spot for anchoring will be harder in the dark.

Dena’s overnight watch

Tuesday August 22

2:39 am: Wind started getting extra flukey around 2 am and I am now nursing hope that this is a wind shift to the west. Meanwhile I have to babysit the steering so we don’t end up bow into the waves because it’s too light to keep the mainsail full.

Oh well, I was going to be up to set the 3 am breadcrumb (we’re doing waypoints so we don’t run the chartplotter all the time). May as well do some stargazing. The night isn’t perfectly clear…dark streaks cross the Milky Way like new dust lanes…but there’s a lot to see with the waxing crescent well set for the night.

8:10 am: Northwest, baby! We’re finally sailing for our destination and it feels good. Since everything is so changeable, I don’t know what it’ll mean for our arrival, but it’s not likely to be before dark today.

James’ 11-noon watch

11:50 am: From 45 nautical miles away, both Pico and Faial were big lumps. Now, about 40 miles out, Faial’s newer western end (created from lava flows and ash explosions in 1958-1959) looks like an independent island still, but the rest is becoming clearer. The dips and lower lands are more visible. Pico has an entire lowlands area the looks west and maybe a bit north of the caldera.

We both have been in the cockpit but the wind came up enough to make me want to save some energy (and wind resistance) for later. We’re going to do one-hour watches until we anchor, which could be anytime between 8 pm and 8 am. That’s cool, though it’ll probably be dark, because it gives us a good reason to anchor rather than land on the wall. I’ll dinghy to the office to clear in when they open.

To Azores Day 27

Sunday August 20

Day 27 starts on a beating to port.

Dena had a lot to deal with last night with actually getting the boat on a tack that wasn’t going backwards…she succeeded but at a restless expense.

Dena’s 4-5 pm watch

4:42 pm: Damn, this is frustrating! A hundred miles from our destination and we can’t head within 60° of it…and even that is so slow. Unless we have major growth on the bottom again, I don’t know why we can’t point any better than this. Ugh.

It’s not even that being out here is bad. It’s not that much different than plenty of the other 27 days we’ve been on this leg of the journey. It’s the proximity of the sojourn point that creates the tension.

At this point, there’s no way we’ll be arriving overnight tonight. That’s a null possibility. We may still arrive the next night.

All the maybes I want to think about involve a wind change, which will either happen or not. Nothing I can do. So yeah, we’ll keep on keeping on and wait to find out what’s in store.

James’ overnight watch

My long overnight…we’re within a hundred NM of Horta and still plowing the close haul into the same nor’easter we’ve been trudging along all day…but, we’re going in the right direction and the boat is preforming admirably with a single reef and a slightly reduced staysail only…1.8-2.5 knots, can’t complain.

Monday August 21

James’ 10-11 am watch

10:20am Land Ho! I (James) sighted the island of Pico off the port bow…now if only we could get a break from this fucking Nor’easter.

10:23 am: I (Dena) got a good night’s sleep and we did get quite a bit closer overnight. That helped my mood. I’m still maintaining a mellow attitude, but it’s at that point where the wind could change and get us there in less than a day. Even if it does, I’ll have plenty of time to wrap my head around re-entering the world of other people…or at least to try.

To Azores Day 26

Saturday August 19

26 days of living here…

We eat, we sleep we read we write we love on each other we pet the cat and we sail the boat through our world.

The marching rain cells have descended…they started just before 6 this morning and have been rolling on by all day.

I got soaked…grrr.

…And Cetacea performs her survival trick with us aboard.

Dena’s 5-6 pm watch

5:13 pm: After so much dead air (it went absolutely still in the morning) and yesterday’s blazing fast average of 1.5 knots, it’s a sudden and welcome pleasure to have real wind to sail with. It’s only been coming up for about a half an hour, but is already about 10-12 knots. 

5:35 pm: Back out in the cockpit. I finished that last sentence right as it started raining. The clouds are moving quickly, though and that one is done. Out here, we can so attentively watch the clouds build and then tatter at the bottom and finally unravel scarves or whole blankets of rain into the sea below.

We watched earlier while an arrestingly solid cloud bank emptied its entire being on the surface, salt water welcoming fresh, and became whatever you have when a skein of yarn is all used up.

While that drama, miles high and wide, played out, a hunting party crossed our path. Lots and lots of dolphin, as many as 50, circled, darted, and breathed. Some ce closer to check us out but most kept working until…leaping! Right out of the water! One left two body-lengths of clear sky visible under its tail before summersaulting to descend, as though it were just one of its many options, and cleave the water without a splash. 

I’ve seen documentaries about dolphins corralling the prey fish and then coming up through the mass. I imagine that’s what we watched. I do believe, though, that James was right when he called it the best Happy Food Dance ever!

James’ 9-10 am watch

9:33 am: What a strange night! I set us up for each wind change as best I could and then just conked out for a while. Sometimes I got an hour in, other times I’d wake to some signal that I had work to do. A different jolt over the waves, a different sound in the wind. Flapping staysail sheet rattling the turning block.

Then, right about first light, the wind turned to the northeast and something made it where I couldn’t beat. I couldn’t trim within 90 degrees of the wind. I tried less staysail, shook a reef from the main. Finally, I gave up and engaged the motor. That got me to a reasonable angle.

Then I realized I was heading into an enormous storm system with a dozen rainfall areas stretched across more than half the horizon.

I ended up having to use the motor more strongly than we have been, which runs the battery down extra fast. (The ratio is about 10 times as much battery power for three times the speed, and I wasn’t even getting good speed.) 

We’re headed north and sometimes west of north now, though I was able to back off the motor again.

I didn’t get a lot of solid sleep, though I did dream a couple of times. I’ll see if I can nap today, because I don’t know whether I’ll get the whole night off. We’re so close (though not getting there very fast or heading precisely in the right direction), I think we’ll go back to the 3 hour watches overnight.

Sigh.

To Azores Day 25

Friday August 18

Day 25 to Horta…we read the Azores Islands section of the Atlantic Islands guide again this morning…only, this time we read it together on the starboard lee settee. A hot steaming bowl of craisin oatmeal, a calming sea, and a change in wind direction got us (me, James) in the right frame of mind for our explorations…it’s breath taking out here.

LoveBot, the Yankee, the mainsail and the electric propulsion has got us pointing directly at the anchorage in Horta Harbor.

177.8nm away.

Hehe…

James’ 5-6 watch

5:16 pm: The wind really died on us. We have a total goldilocks problem lately, with too much or not enough wind. The Azores themselves are famous for summer calms and there’s no guarantee we’ll get any more wind than we have right now between here and there. These last 170 miles could take 3 days or more.

We had gained a lot of charge back on propulsion battery, so we’re okay for now. It’s peaceful, though, and I made a coconut peanut curry for lunch since it was such good conditions for it.

Saturday August 19

On the way to Bermuda from Fk. Lauderdale I I(James) had A Day…a hard day that made me not want to be here! Yes, meaning here in the middle of the Atlantic flow…well…

Yesterday I had another one…the seas were huge for no apparent reason…the sky seemed angry and everything was making me mad.

Dena, she listened and sympathized but bit right into it and let it all slide on by like a Cetacea through the verse.

She’s cool like that.

The long overnight…doldrums, ships and rain…oh my.

Sunrise was a spooky affair with a big bright orange hole in the sky with no sun in it and purple rain to left and right…holy shit this place is weird.

Home.

To Azores Day 24

Thursday August 17

Day 24 starts at 244.9nm from Horta

1673.2nm from Bermuda.

The sky is the clearest blues only the seas won’t give us a break…giant

I’m IJames) finding it harder and harder to focus on anything…it almost seems as if my balance is shutting down…it isn’t of course but I am feeling the fatigue of this leg of the adventure.

Lovebot has become almost useless on a port tack. We’ve been managing that tack by over balancing on everything…sails, control lines and cheating to lee at the tiller. It doesn’t work really, it just points the boat in a line. Really looking forward to rebuilding that machine with the utmost care. Well deserved after the beating we’ve given it the last year and some change. I still believe that’s testament to its design.

Dena’s 1-4 pm watch

1:37 pm: We going downwind with just about half the staysail out. With the yankee, it was still holding too much air. When the northern swell…some big mean almost-breakers…would rise from nearly on our port beam, she’d trip on her keel and heave to starboard. The yankee would keep us heeled over too long, long enough to dunk the starboard rail in the upwind side of the wave, or for the next wave in the set to hit us on our exposed port side.

Now we’re bobbing over them more upright. If it weren’t for the fact that those are the odd waves, coming only every few minutes or less, we could steer differently. We’re set up well for the real average waves, which are more west-southwesterly.

James didn’t sleep well last night, but it’s probably for the best he’d rather nap than write. I didn’t risk my computer yesterday either, so these rough days have more than one negative effect. On the upside, we’re really moving along!

I’m determined that we should eat something substantial at every mealtime (whatever we decide that means) because the last thing I want is to be hangry and fuzz-brained if it gets worse and we really can’t cook. Today has been a shared package of peanut butter cracker/cookies and a shared can of chili. Really, it’s better than nothing and if all we get for dinner is cold baked beans from the can and more crackers, so be it.

2:30 pm: If the wind were coming the same direction as these big rollers, I do believe they’d be breaking. They’re already tipping rather steeply, but the wind is blowing the tips lengthwise down the roller instead of over the leading edge. We’re still doing okay and not looking at closing up and just hoping it all works out…yet. Gale force winds now and then are keeping me attentive.

The weird part is that the splashing I’ve gotten hasn’t been part of the biggest waves. It’s some smaller peak bursting against the topsides and being blown into the cockpit. Very strange.

James’ 6-7 pm watch

6:28 pm: We just gybed and monitored Lovebot a while on the new heading. Racing clouds give us hope that this weather will pass us by. I mean, of course it will eventually. Sooner would be better.

It’s not taking a toll on the boat that I can tell, but Beluga has been in the forepeak since just after he used the litter box this morning, James is getting doomsday loops in his mind, and he and I are both getting physically fatigued from moving around in the upheaval.

So don’t move, right? Even then we have to brace ourselves periodically when the general heel reverses on the back side of a wave. It’s a certain kind of labor and we’re about 15 months out from having gym memberships. I’m not sorry the last year’s been coastal cruising…we wouldn’t have done the electric motor conversion if we hadn’t been…but we were more in shape for this trip back when we first attempted it.

Dena’s overnight watch

9:07 pm: Conditions are improving but not enough to swap the staysail out for the yankee. I do believe it’s going to be a fairly mellow watch after all!

5:36 am: A little after midnight, I realized that something had changed. We were going south, and yet we weren’t broad reaching. It wasn’t a Lovebot failure.

Wind change!

The wind had come far enough north that I had to gybe to a port tack in order to sail with any reasonable east to the course. It had also died out a lot, so I went back to the yankee (at 100%) and furled the staysail.

More drizzle drove me below and I napped with the alarm on. When I woke next, I checked the AIS, etc and went back to sleep.

About quarter to 3 am, I realized we were floundering. Oh shit. I was really hoping to put off raising the main until some light had reached me but…

Slowly, slowly, I got the sail readied and then raised. I left both reefs in because there were bursts of strong wind among the light ones. I adjusted further upwind (barely achieving the southeasterly angle on the other tack from before the wind change) and again ducked below.

So now we’re up to this awakening, when both sails were being noisy as hell and my phone was under me, hot from playing the alarm ditty for a half hour unheard.

The wind had died enough that the main couldn’t provide weather helm. I brought the tiller way over to help the monitor out, but what I really need to do is shake a reef. I’m belowdecks again, vaguely hoping it’ll wait for more light, as I’d hoped earlier, but it just did that same flutter.

But hey. At least we’re not running in a gale with 20 foot peaking waves from two directions. And a swath of stars opened up through the dark cloud cover, though I continued to be freckled with light rain.

To Azores Day 23

Wednesday August 16

Day 23… 323.8nm to Horta.

We traveled 91.3nm in the last 24 hours blowing our 72nm average out of the water…so to speak.

Did a full inspection of the rig and she looks good. Despite the stresses we’ve been pretty gentle on this leg. The Yankee roller furling needs repairs again…same problem as last time.

The seas kicked up on Dena’s long overnight watch last night. And she dropped that second reef sometime in the night…I was not awake for that.

1581.1nm out of Bermuda, I don’t miss it a bit.

James’ 1-4 watch

1:14 pm: It’s that time again! Or, it’s a new longitude again. We’ve gone more than 1500 nautical miles (the last 24 hours, we made 91 miles which is good for us) and so it’s time to do the last round of advancing the clocks. We should now be on Azorean summer time.

We’re almost down to 300 NM remaining, and it’s a 4-6 day trip now. It really does feel like we’re approaching something. Partly because the first of the islands is a hundred miles closer and partly because we expect to start seeing fishing vessels. In another day or two, we’ll have to return to a higher level of vigilance.

We’re going almost directly downwind and the waves are causing a certain amount of havoc. We’ll be lined up for a few and then get a couple that toss us back and forth as they pass. This isn’t anyone’s favorite way to sail, especially Beluga Greyfinger.

James’ overnight watch

The winds kicked up overnight making my long watch very, very long. The sky was perfectly clear for most of the night with lots of the usual satellites and meteor action but the seas are still in the 18-25ft range…fuck that!

8:16 am: What a rough night! Beluga kept coming back to the forepeak whenever it scared him and I only saw James resting once. I woke up a lot, so that’s more significant than it would be if I’d slept soundly.

There must be one hell of a storm north of us. We’re getting reasonable wind waves, but there’s a monster swell from the north. Glad we’re not getting whatever winds are making those.

We’re about 4 days out, I think, and I’m ready to arrive. If the weather improves maybe I’ll go back to thinking I can do this forever, but I’d like to get anchored behind a break wall right now!

To Azores Day 22

Tuesday August 15

Day 22 and all is well!

The winds are fair and seas are kicked up but fun…sailing in the middle of the Atlantic flow is cool.

8:58 pm: I wrote a few emails today. They won’t go anywhere until we have signal, but it felt good to reach out.

A while back, James said there was a single long-tail Bermudian that circled the boat and left. It didn’t occur to me in the moment that it could be the last of those birds we’d see, but it was. I feel like I missed out.