Dena Hankins's Blog, page 9

To Azores Day 21

Monday August 14

Day 21 to Horta which is 456.7nm away from us right now…

1435nm away from Bermuda.

Crawling along at the pace the world around us decides our pace to be. We drag those imaginary knees over the waves of blue super-highways that never end…not even the horizon can stop them. They must want to go on forever… they certainly seem like the do…

And now motor-sailing on glass in the middle of the Atlantic flow.

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The long overnight gave me an unobstructed and perfectly clear view of our local arm of the Milky Way galaxy from horizon to horizon. Not even a distance ship to pollute that light and it split the sky with the glow of a million, million suns.

Tuesday August 15

James’ overnight watch

7:48 am: I’m (Dena) not sleeping quite as much as I was when we started this overnight watch thing. It still feels decadent to go to bed knowing that I won’t have to do anything else unless something out of ordinary happens.

To Azores Day 20

Sunday August 13

Day 20 starts with 520nm to go to Horta!

1375.4nm traveled from Bermuda.

51.5nm traveled in the last 24 hours…

What?!

Who’s in a hurry?

We had pasta soup for breakfast…

What?!

Playing cards…doing watches…the Earth rolls along we roll with it.

Surrounded by 4 dorado’s. I couldn’t get them to even look at my lure.

I’m feeling a life of adventure was really the way to go for us…we can do this and make beautiful and exciting all at once.

Everything is so fucking big, ‘sept us.

Dena’s overnight watch

11:53 pm: I don’t feel like talking to the ship about to pass us astern. We haven’t called all of them, but we’ve tried some for weather and contacted others to make sure they saw us.

Their destination according to the AIS is coded to make use of a small number of characters. So Corpus Christi Texas is frequently US-CRP and Amsterdam has shown up as NLAMS. There’s no agreed upon port code, it seems, like the airport codes.

This ship is going to ESALG. And then I wonder whether this isn’t skewed towards English. Could be ES is España?

James’ 11-noon watch

11:31 am: I used half of the remaining pancake mix to make biscuits. I have a new thing where I put some herbs de provence in the mix and more on top before baking. With garlic smush and canned mushrooms fried in butter until they stop sputtering (drying out from the water they’re packed in) and the regular country gravy mix we usually use, it’s a filling and pleasurable meal.

I’m so glad it’s cool enough to do real cooking. It’s easier to be patient in super light winds when we’re using the calms to make wonderful meals.

James has said he’ll make smeat (TVP with taco seasoning) to mix with the black beans and yellow rice for quesadillas and dip and/or burritos. I’m considering whether to do a peanut curry or general tso’s tofu. It’ll be a good eating day, even if we don’t get to all of that!

Watching Don from Bermuda

We are officially waiting. Tropical storm Don is circling (WTF!?!) between Bermuda and the Azores. If we were to leave today (which we strongly considered), we would run into the headwinds (easterlies) off the storm several days out. Instead, we’re chill’n in Bermuda. AYFKM!?

…Oh that blue!

There’s always something to do. Cleaning (because we got some serious salt) and painting, little things here and there. The weird and wonderful thing? There aren’t any crucial projects because, amazingly, we didn’t break anything on the way here!

These folks weren’t so lucky.

We blew in here on 18-22 knot winds and rowed hard (one way) in order to check out the town of St George. As soon as it laid down, though, we rowed over to check out the dramatic bones of a wreck right off the small craft mooring area.

After the scorching heat and dead calm of the middle-part of the voyage, Bermuda’s fresh breeze and pleasurable warmth have felt reassuring, welcoming. We are getting to know the tangled streets and alleys of St George.

We haven’t used these public scooters but they’re all over the place.

The laundromat is just uphill from the dinghy dock on Shinbone Alley. Google maps doesn’t encourage the pedestrian path between the two, but we figured it out on the way back. Every single towel aboard had been pressed into service for sopping up some kinda thing. All those rain storms plus that one rogue wave that inundated even Beluga Greyfinger where he swayed down below in the main saloon…Whew. Lotta work for towels. Buying and adding value to the laundry card has been the one and only transaction that required Bermudian cash. Everyone else accepts BM or US dollars. James circled the neighborhood for the correct BM bills in sufficient quantities for the machine while I (Dena) pretended to understand the nice elderly gentleman who wanted to tell me all about his 35 years on the island.

The grocery store has a salad and hot bar that is an excellent source of wahoo in cream or lemon-butter or fried as nuggets in a delicate coating or as strips in a rugged one (when it’s not all goat and chicken which, to be fair, has only been one day so far). Oh, and when they say peas and rice, they mean like black-eyed peas, no mushy green peas in that British fashion. Delicious and filling.

Some of the flora is riveting. What the actual?

We did little walks at first, nothing like the big hike after our 20 days to Hawaii back in 2006. Finally, we wanted to see a bit more of the East End and did a longer walk.

The bus stops are color coded with pink and blue meaning different directions between St George and Hamilton.

The idiosyncratic architectural feature round these parts is one that photographs well. It’s hard to complain about the beautiful melding of form and function.

Just cool!

Multiple forts of differing ages gave us something to clamber around, but the view of narrow-ass Town Cut was less impressive from land than from the boat. We have a privileged perspective on so many things from Cetacea.

It just felt good to be out and about.

And then there’s life and art and people who care enough to create and install things like this.

Cool stuff

We brought water for the walk but no food and ended up looping back towards town out of sheer hunger.

Foreigners

Bermuda doesn’t feel like it’s stuck in the past for the most part…and then there’s…

…wish we could’ve seen the original phone installed in that booth

We’ve discovered an incredible civilization here in the middle of the Atlantic flow of the Earth’s ocean. So while we wait for Don to stop being pissed off between us and the next leg of this electric circumnavigation, we’ll chill and be civilized.

A sail across an ocean in the Verse

999.9 nautical miles in 13 days, 3 hours and 30 minutes and just like that, we’re in Bermuda.

This is what an ocean sailor looks like.

The End!

Lovebot’s got this!

Kidding!

We did it. We sailed to Bermuda from Fk. Lauderdale, Florida. And like all offshore excursions it was an incredible adventure.

Crazy Bermudan (The Bermuda Long-Tail) followed us almost all the way. Identified using the National Audubon Society’s book, Field Guide to the Birds of North America, their photo above

I (James) remember after we sailed to Hawaii in 2006, I would tell that story and people would always respond with, “Wow, how was that?!”

Flying the shoot in the Horse Latitudes

At first all I could do with that question was scoff. I mean, what?! I just told you I sailed 2040 nautical miles across the largest body of water on the planet Earth and all you got is, “how was that?”

Evil Frowny Rainbow coming to get us!

THAT was absolutely everything…THAT was life at the pace of the multiverse… THAT is the adverse environment that no monkey-brain could possibly comprehend…And That is the way we choose to live in this world.

Suffer, suffer, suffer!!!

It is amazing in every way! Sometimes it’s so perfect that it draws you into places in your mind that you couldn’t reach before but at the same time it can be so physically taxing that there’s no way to prepare yourself for that kind of thing. In other words: you’re not going to work this shit out in the gym.

…In the middle of Earth

Our planet’s Ocean is a body of life so incomprehensible to our puny human receptors that, when it kicks up, all most of us can do is lay down and quiver. I mean, we came out of the sea as sloppy, wet primordial lizardish things and evolved on land, so going back to our true home is a long, long way to go. For those rare few of us who get to dwell within its incredible intensity, well, lucky us.

…we get to see this on the regs!

The Earth’s Ocean is a vast expanse of this planet that can lull her sailors to hypnosis or shatter their lives with a fear unmatched by any on land. The Ocean is so deep and so divergent that land animals (like us and gato) must adapt at a pace that strains our land-locked comprehension. The sea jealously demands our absolute attention. Fuck it up and you pay with a pain that is unlike any you have felt before.

…the days stack up

The weather was perfect for the first three days. As we came out of Fk. Lauderdale, we were right in the Gulf Stream and doing 6-7 knots with barely a breath to fill all the sails. We made 95 nautical miles that first 18 hours and we wouldn’t see those numbers again on this trip.

…Me (Dena) at night …What I saw

Then there were the Horse Latitudes…

Every day, the wind would fail at dawn. Some days it came back only to die at noon and turn to glass for the remainder of the afternoon. At 1600-ish each day in the doldrums, we would feel the whisper on the backs of our necks and the game was most definitely (motherfucking) on!

A sailfish in our wake

The wildlife thinned out quick. The above sailfish followed us for a few minutes then disappeared into the depths. A pod of spinners–20 strong–passed us about 30 meters abaft and were never seen again. The tuna on attack, the flying fish (one of which gave its life on the bad bet that our deck was a safe place), and the ubiquitous long-tails gliding above all seemed to challenge us along.

…from abaft

Feeding ourselves amounted to eating every easy thing that might go bad if we didn’t get it out of the house. It was so hot and the sun was so oppressive in the mid-day that we did mostly cold dips and even cold canned soups with PB&J sandwiches. Moment to moment, the basic life-imperatives of drink water and find shade alternated in the foreground of consciousness with a 12-mile horizon is actual rather small and this ocean travels the whole world.

…coming to get us!

Storm cells. If there’s an overarching theme to this trip, that might be it. Along with the evening’s freshening breeze, the atmosphere laid eggs of brilliant white and dingy grey. The black bottoms of the serious clouds sometimes streaked the sky under them with rain-mediated patterns like chromatographs.

We altered course frequently in attempts to avoid the ones flashing with lightning and growling with thunder. More successful than not, the nots are more vividly memorable than the successes.

yeah, we lived through this

Wet wet wet, and every towel and every garment aboard soaked and then drying, donned damp to be soaked and then dried in the brilliant sun of the next day’s unclouded heat.

…miles and miles of miles and miles

The electric motor kept us directionally correct and not just underway but actually making way. I (James) called it ‘The Free Ride” with the sun providing just enough electrical thrust to keep us moving in the right direction we glided on a glassy sea for free. At the most inimical, a counter-current against us along with an absolute lack of wind had us motoring (with full rudder control!) at 0.5-1.2 knots for a half day. We don’t have a speedo for measuring our speed through the water, but this is the exact reason to have one…to make us feel better about the fact that we weren’t getting much of anywhere across the crust of the planet, but we were certainly making way through the Verse!

This is our revolution in action and kicking ass! The Free Ride is like the first time we made ice from the water we made from the wind and the sun. It’s a profound feeling of revolutionary success and it drives us to continue on.

We weren’t just moving through the world for free…sometimes we were getting change back! The 400 watts of solar atop the Primary Energies Tower blasted electricity directly to the motor controller. The motor monitor kept us informed when the net power was zero and then +0.8, then +1.2, then zero again. Even when we drew more than we made, dusk and dawn, we were content. Critics of the electric motor fuss about how such a setup would perform in exactly that situation and we are here to say that it was glorious. Starting and running a diesel engine, with its finite number of explosions that must be rationed carefully, is far more stressful than running down a battery that drinks light from the sky to renew itself. Oh, and the stink and rattle and the awful awful noise? Nope. All gone.

Getting shit done underway

The doldrum-days provided ample time for proj’ing but then it got real.

Gear up for the big stuff!

The first week ended with a shift in the currents that released the breaks. At last, every little breeze was progress and every calorie of electric motor power significantly furthered of our travels. Life and death struggles were visible only in the rings of disturbance on the surface waters but it was clear that this new current was home to many creatures.

This is the thing. This is where I (Dena) felt at home and agreeable to the situation. Still wondering with a bit of fussiness whether the wind was just a little north of us or whether the storms were worse there, but mostly? Mostly, I was living in my home with my loved-ones. The moon reached full and beyond and I was privileged to see it so clearly, so in context of the Earth’s solar system siblings and galactic neighbors and neighboring galaxies.

Rougher than it looks, this one we couldn’t out maneuver

The wind got good and then better than good. The seas grew steep, 6-9 feet regularly, meaning that the big ones approached 20 feet high. Lovebot steered remarkably well up the faces that lifted us, stern first, toward the sky and then slid us down the backside. Sometimes, looking down, it was hard to believe that Lovebot’s paddle was even touching water because the wave was so steep. Sometimes, looking up, it was hard to believe that we would rise to the occasion…but we did. Thousands of times.

Even Beluga got tired of the big seas

Everything became hard! The bruises were no longer cute and the ocean could give a fuck.

As we made our final approach to Bermuda, we realized that we were going just a little too fast to arrive during daylight so we really buried that staysail as far as we possibly could and still have any sail up.

Still doing 4.5 knots!

Just after dark, the country of Bermuda revealed itself to me (James) in lights. Gibb’s Hill Lighthouse in Cross Bay was the very first sign of land I’d seen in thirteen days. To be honest it scared the fuck out of me. We’d spent the two weeks crossing a part of the world’s ocean that gave us a little of absolutely everything we could’ve imagined and then some.

We did it though, we slowed Cetacea down enough to bring her around the island, skirting the last of the big squalls like a boomerang leading us right into St. George’s Town Cut. As we entered the deep narrow channel leading into town, the sky exploded in blue and the tight-sheeted main barely helped the electric motor propel us upwind into Convict Bay.

I brought her into the customs dock nice and slow.

I (Dena) hopped onto the quay and took care of clearing into Bermuda. Not only was it simply a matter of filling out a few forms and handing over a credit card, the charge to that card was less than I expected. When does that happen?

Entry by Sea!!!

The officials sounded Bermudan, I think. British-Islander is how I’d describe their accents and they both wore their brilliant-white uniform shirts, a high-contrast effect with their rich-dark skin, with the ease of long experience. No fuss, just the fact, just the forms and the fees. At the end, the official who had interacted with me directly walked out the door with me. She pointed out the grocery store and the place to get fuel and water. Still in the less-is-more-when-talking-to-officals mode, I didn’t brag about how we make our own water and power for our electric motor. Keep it simple is the best plan.

I jumped back down onto the boat. A breeze just off the port bow provided a perfect kick off the quay for the stern and then James released the bow as well. We slid downwind with just a little reverse thrust from the motor until I had enough room to kick her in forward and rotate in the narrow space. Only a few minutes later, we were hook down in Convict Bay looking over and up at the lovely town of St George.

We had arrived.

To Bermuda, Day 14

S/V SN-E Cetacea Log Day 14 – 67.2 NM

7/10/2023

James’ 6-7 pm watch

6:13 pm: Just got off the VHF after a second attempt to communicate with Bermuda Radio on channel 27 went poorly. It’s a low-power station and we’re still too far away.

There’s a pre-arrival conversation we need to have and it could have been done online. Seems pretty shocking that we wouldn’t take that option, but we weren’t sure of this stop when we left. I’d hate to end up as an overdue boat if the weather had pushed us to pass by Bermuda!

10:09 pm: Bermuda glows in the dark under careless Cassiopeia. A lighthouse is valiantly proclaiming civilization alongside the light pollution.

A cruise ship is in, but they can’t enter St George harbor, where we’re heading. Ha!

7/11/2023

We shortened sail to make sure we didn’t arrive in the dark and succeeded just fine.

Town Cut is incredibly narrow after the 12-mile horizons of the past two weeks.

If we have a day, we’re going to hike over to this place…

James landed us on the customs quay and I braved the lion’s den.

Clearing in went more than just smoothly…it was a few forms, about a third as much money as I’d expected to pay, and a happy crew leaving the quay to anchor nice and close to the dinghy dock.

Entry by SEA!

To Bermuda, Day 13

S/V SN-E Cetacea Log Day 13 – 79.2 NM

7/9/2023

James’ 3-4 pm watch

I (Dena) pushed back when James said, at the end of his 1-3 pm watch, that he thought maybe we should do the sail swap we’d discussed.

Since we don’t have a third reef (and I still have no real understanding of why the sailmaker pushed back when we requested one), to shorten sail from a double-reefed mainsail is to switch sails. It seemed early to do such a big production based on my short time in the weather, having just come out.

Within 20 minutes, I realized James was right. The right sail 80% of the time is still 20% the wrong sail. When I got some of the behavior he’d seen…8 knots down a wave, burying the leeward caprail on the offset swell…I called for help.

Beluga Greyfinger has great coping mechanisms

We talked through the plan, agonized over whether we really needed to, and finally committed.

Figuring that the person who made the call should take the hard part and also that the person off watch is less sharp (James had been napping), it’s our way to divide the labor so that the off-watch person stays in the cockpit while the on-watch person does the deck work.

I clipped my tether to the lifeline, eased onto the port, lee side deck, and removed the preventer from the boom. James had been preparing and was ready to deploy the staysail when I got back. With just a hanky flying, I went to the windward, starboard side deck and forward to the mast.

The second batten down concerned me, but James sheeted in as I dropped the sail and voila! We were happily depowered. Lashing the sail to the boom had me using one of my favorite safety techniques: put my butt down. Ah, stability.

Then James went back down below and I fiddled with exactly how much staysail I wanted to fly. This is the easiest of our sails to manipulate so no stress there.

Storm stress still, though, mmmhhhm. I’m fucking over the doldrum/storm dichotomy. I knew, intellectually, that Bermuda isn’t on a tradewinds path, but wow. All this way for weather forecasts…and they probably won’t even be that good!

Good in this case is making a clear case for what’s next. We want the Azores but the last forecasts we saw said they were engulfed in easterly winds. We’re not going to beat across the Atlantic. No thanks.

So. Did that weather leave? Is the high far enough south that we can get some real sailing in?

Or is the direct path to Ireland a better option?

The Azores are 1800 nautical miles from Bermuda and Ireland is roughly 1300 NM from there. A three-ish week trip and a two-ish week trip sounds pretty good. (For scale, this trip is 900 NM beeline, but we’re going to have spent 15 days covering about 1000 NM by the time we arrive).

In contrast, Bermuda to Ireland is about 2700 NM. That’s less distance, sure, but it’s all in one go at a very uncertain 4-5 weeks. We’ve only been underway 12 days on this one and we’re out of fresh food, let alone weather forecasts.

Anyway, if Bermuda doesn’t have a clear answer to the question of what next, I’m going to be Put Out.

To Bermuda, Day 12

S/V SN-E Cetacea Log Day 12 – 102.3 NM

7/8/2023

Dena’s 1-2 pm watch

The rambunctious seas are foam-streaked but the foam slides down the far side. I (Dena) remember that there’s a difference, when it comes to the Beaufort scale, in foam that is left behind by the kinetic energy in the waves and foam that is blown down the forward face of the waves. Next step is breaking wave tops and I’m glad we’re not watching those come up our asses.

I just applied my first bandaid. I was on the windward side in the cockpit, braced down low on the footwell grate instead of higher on the edge of the seat. James was sitting on that side and we were sharing a cold lunch because cooking seemed way too hard.

My hands were full of tortilla and a sort of dip-slash-burrito filling when a bigun’ swept under us. It tipped me towards James on the low side and my butt started sliding on the cushion. I planted my foot but it slipped too and my fourth toe dipped into the square void meant for water. 

Ouch owowow. I pursed my lips against the pain and annoyance. James asked if I was okay and of course I said yes. I told him what happened and we both looked.

Ugh. Bleeding. 

After cleanup it was clear that I’d torn the cuticle. Not badly, just a scrape really. Another wakeup call, though. No getting sloppy out here.

The light winds from before are long gone, so the flat seas are too. We have to sail the ocean we’re on, moment to moment.

James’ 6-7 pm watch

I look abaft and the world is a churning angry mess but to forward the his of the waves leaves only a memory of their potential. The big ones now seem to have their own weather systems within their growling depths.

The sun is dropping aft behind wispy clouds and it’s backlighting the wave crests. Most remain a deep-shadowed cobalt but some rise and thin and the tepid sunlight shows through as aquamarine.

The wind may be abating. If it does ease and the waves lay down a bit, this will be a good night. If it does ease but the waves are packing too much power to follow, Lovebot will struggle to steer.

Always running the possibilities. Always looking for multiple options. Whether it’s ditch spots down the Jersey Shore and Delmarva Peninsula late last year after James broke his rib or sail options in case the lull is temporary and the wind increases instead…this is what I do.

7/9/2023

James’ 6-9 am long-light watch

Just like with Dena’s last watch we got hit by a growing squall packing bullet-rain as soon as we shift kiss…this fucking storm hates me…this fucking Verse could give a fuck.

S/VSN-E Cetacea is wildly in her element. She is taking good care of the soft bits aboard that’s for sure and all our systems are working nominally so far and that’s pretty cool given these absolutely extreme conditions.

Dena’ 9-10 am watch

9:20 am: The wind came back fresh from a short rest and pummeled us all night. The real treat? Repeated rains. Over and over.

…the ship’s radioman said, “More of same, good luck!”

…thanks buddy!

I (Dena) limped along with a pair of near-useless rain pants for a couple of years. They caught the mud off my bike tires heading at my butt and legs, so I figured it was enough. I’d trashed them over the long winter riding from the marina in Lynn to work in Beverly. Enough tears and I finally threw them away.

In Marathon, I had the sudden odd realization that I was a sailor with no foul-weather pants. Going offshore? Heading towards places that can be cold and wet even in the summer?

No way. Chalk up another unexpected expense.

Last night proved it a good investment. It’s not cold, but drenching rain and high winds are a chilling combo.

To Bermuda, Day 11

S/V SN-E Cetacea Log Day 11 – 83.2 NM

7/7/2023

Dena’s 2-3 pm watch

2:14 pm

Two rounds of rain and I gave up on the kurta and churidar pants I was wearing. They’re draped on the lifelines (thanks, James!) to dry and I’m in bathing trunks and my adventurer’s long-sleeved button down.

I do appreciate skyshowering, though!

The afternoon calm has descended. We have to make water, so we are. It’s reasonably sunny for a rainy day and power is less of a problem because we aren’t keeping the chartplotter running all the time. I hope we can again soon…I really like having that information at my fingertips.

We did the whole trip to Hawaii without second by second info. We turned the gps on every 4 hours and plotted that location on the paper chart. We corrected our heading based on how far off we’d gotten in the meantime.

Now I’m used to constantly tuning the heading based on what the chartplotter says our course over the ground (COG) is. Saves a little wandering around but it can distract from just being here. 

Speaking of, that’s what I am going to do right now. Be here.

2:41 pm

We’d been marveling at how few bruises and such we’ve dealt ourselves on this trip so far. Yesterday was the end of that. I  bruised the ball of my foot somehow and banged my elbow in boring-story style. James has banged around more too.

I don’t know if it’s us getting slack because we’re too tired or too comfortable, or if it’s the extra swell that’s running at an awkward angle. I imagine the answer is “yes”.

James’ 7-8 pm

There’s an intensity to the sky that we haven’t noticed before on this trip…it’s not breaking up like the other squalls did. I think we’re in for a longer stretch on inclement weather.

Dena’s 8-9 pm watch 

8:16 pm

In 45 minutes, I’m going to lie down and fall right to sleep…right? Since we only have two three-hour watches and the rest are an hour, each day contains somewhere between 5 and maybe 7 hours of sleeping. 

The two chunks remind me of a professor who did a sleep study on himself, sleeping only from 2-4 am and pm. He said he thrived on those 4 hours a day because the first 2 hours are the most productive anyway.

Yeah, I’m going to say that I don’t have whatever sleep needs he did. I am not a napper, but I do end up sleeping for 20 minutes or so on 1 or 2 of my short watches. It makes it feel like I do very little other than being on watch and sleeping or trying to sleep.

I am going through books at a spanking pace, though, so I obviously have some down time. A slew of romances from my publisher, Bold Strokes Books, and a bunch of SF I got through the Boston Public Library. Ebooks, clearly. I think I have another year before that access expires.

Preparing and eating and cleaning up after meals isn’t that much time. We’re not doing anything ornate. The temperatures have improved, so we can start cooking more if the sea state allows.

7/8/2023

Dena’s midnight-3 am watch

Bermuda is no longer a mere cypher, a dot labeled because people are interested in where it is rather than any innate physical significance.

Now, on screen, it has shape and the promise of detail. We’re getting there.

James’ 11-noon watch.

In a following sea it’s hard to recognize how fast and how shitty it can get right before your eyes!

First reef…second reef…headsail furled and we’re still doing 5 knots. The sky fills with a solid grayness.

Another night of rain cells. Drying clothes and towels only for them to get wet again. This will be a more serious concern when the air and rain are colder, up north.

Here, we’re taking care to account for the strong winds on the leading edge. If it weren’t for those and the lightning, we wouldn’t have to try and dodge. As it is, we do what we can. We’ve been surprisingly effective, at least shortening the time we’re under the showerhead if not avoiding it altogether.

I just stitched the lifeline gates. Since this hollow-rope kind of splicing requires tension to keep everything in place (think finger puzzle), the gates are a weak point. The port side is loose anytime we have the steps down for swimming or getting in the dinghy and it’s working its way apart.

Fancy plan: remove the starboard lower and stitch it, use it on the port side, fix that one and apply it starboard. Lather, rinse repeat for the uppers.

To Bermuda, Day 10

S/V SN-E Cetacea Log Day 10 – 87.5 NM

7/6/2023

James’ 2-3 pm watch: The world reflects itself…ten days at sea and I’m just now starting to understand where we are in our local universe…yeah, yeah we’re a few hundred miles away from where we came from and a few hundred miles away from the place we’re pointing the boat but this place is truly a place I’ve never been to before…it’s Earth, Solar system, local group…and on and on through the endless blue above and below where we do the Free Ride on the daily…everything is so hot to the touch that every part of my body has to be protected, covered…long sleeves, long pants, socks and a big dumb floppy hat and I’m good. I (James) do believe I will nap on this next down-watch.

It’s not out of character for me (Dena) to have a hard time ranking things, so don’t be surprised when I say I can’t decide which is better…no wind, hot, swell against wind waves…or rainstorm after rainstorm with wildly variable winds ending in a double-reefed mainsail just because it slats too much in the light wind otherwise.

I hope we get the wind again tonight.

James’ 4-5 pm watch

When I felt even the slightest breath on the back of my head I jumped to set the headsails and shake a reef!

The wind freshened and veered south. We were able to gybe and reach a comfortable position for deploying the yankee. Even the big dominant swell is easier to take at this angle, and Lovebot prefers the boat’s balance with a headsail.

Dena’s 7-8 pm watch

You know you’re really sailing when your phone keeps coming on like you just picked it up.

The waves are at least 4-6 feet at 5 seconds, but there’s an occasional monster. We’re in F5? F6 winds. Whichever isn’t blowing spray yet but makes long running whitecaps that form on top like they’re thinking about turning into breakers.

James’ 9pm-12am watch

Unbelievable! The moon rose on the very tip of the bowsprit…you can’t really head more east than that. I never even touched the helm and the moon’s brightness through the mainsail set it aglow with a crisp orange blaze that felt too bright…best shy away.

7/7/2023

Dena’s 11-noon watch

It was a good night in some ways. We made a lot of progress towards our destination and I (at least) slept pretty well on my down-watches.

We left the chartplotter off most of the evening, night, and so far this morning to conserve power. Our house batteries are revealing their age in that the voltages drop unexpectedly fast under a cruising load. Years of keeping them mostly topped up didn’t give us any insight into how they would respond to being drawn down and now we know…time to build new ones.

Rain and threat of more rain held some discomfort, and the lightning storms needed dodging without the constant feedback of watching them on radar. Meanwhile, some freaky fucking wave action kept us on our toes (and heels and hands and knees) whenever we weren’t lying supine. 

I lie down on watch more than James does, partly for easier stargazing or moonadoring, partly because just staying in one place can be difficult when the boat is moving so much. I once jammed a knee bracing my foot on the opposite side of the cockpit for a wild trip down the Jersey Shore (swollen and sore for days), so I try to change up my position nowadays.

My agreement with myself is that I can lie down, but I have to set myself a 20 minute alarm just in case I doze off. That’s a generous amount of time for dealing with any ship traffic that might pop over the horizon and pretty strict compared to how most singlehanded sailors cope with their sleep needs.

Now, the wind has abated but not disappeared and we’re sailing north of the course to dodge one more lightning storm. I can’t wait to see what our daily distance is. (The chartplotter can’t tell us since we didn’t run it the whole time, but James has been running an app on his phone as backup, so we’ll still have the data we enjoy.) It felt like we were going pretty fast for a lot of the night.

To Bermuda, Day 9

S/V SN-E Cetacea Log Day 9 – 74.6 NM

7/5/2023

Dena’s 2-3 pm watch

The wind died out like it does around here in the afternoon and this time it pulled the really funny trick of turning west…meaning we need to go way downwind. 

There are 2 conflicting swells tossing the sails back and forth and Lovebot doesn’t have the forces it relies on: wind on the vane and water against the paddle.

At least the current isn’t against us!

7/6/2023

Dena’s midnight-3 am watch

I kinda can’t believe how hard the afternoon was. Heat, barely a breeze. Hand steering in a frustrating swell coming from 30° farther south than the wind waves that teased us with the idea that there must be wind somewhere or where were these made?

The wind came up just before dark, as we are beginning to expect. It strengthened quickly, then we got rain, then it turned twice in 10 minutes so we gybed twice and we were back to the track we started on.

With the onset of the wind, the alertness level went up but the stress level went down. Sailing while Lovebot drives is just better than motoring and hand steering!

Now we have an aggravating amount of swell plus heavy wind waves, from different directions like before. The wind is keeping us flying along, but we get a massive roll going that’s uncomfortable if not actively dangerous.

It’s the kind of thing that can send a can of peaches across the cabin. If something like that beans one of us in the head … bad times. We’re tidied up for it, but it’s always a concern.

Imagine taking a house, tipping it 10-20°, and then shaking it up and down. Ridiculous, right? Even other traveling people don’t get this particular effect. An RV has acceleration and deceleration plus bumps. You don’t see them going down the road heeling over 20° though.

Dena’s 6-9 am watch

The conditions are rough enough that Beluga Greyfinger is cuddlesome. He was right on top of James for my midnight watch and then joined me in the bunk for James’ 3 am. He tried hiding under the comforter like he used to hide from the diesel but he gets too hot under there. I pulled him out (gently) and made a triangle of safety with my legs. He settled right in.

I (James) wove our home through a pitch black maze of micro-storms and ship traffic on all points of a reach…this is how we live now.

Beluga’s on James again. As I’ve said before, there’s no strict line between the comforted and the one doing the comforting.

James handed me the helm, a real shit sandwich, right behind a storm that resulted in a wind shift. We gybed and the new angle on the waves is better. Three cheers!

Huzzah!