14 days at sea

It was hard to believe but one miraculous day we found ourselves floating again, although with some incomplete and still unresolved tasks. We headed to Hampton, close to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to get ready to jump to the Atlantic Ocean and reach the Caribbean in just one leg. A very long leg. We joined dozens of other boats as part of the Salty Dawgs Fall Rally, a loose but well-organized migration of boats escaping the winter. The original destination was Virgin Gorda, in the British Virgin Islands, but due to the devastation brought upon by Irma, it was changed to Antigua, some 1500 nautical miles away. For reference, the distance between Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa and Natal, Brazil is 1400 miles, so this passage should count as an ocean crossing, shouldn’t it?

We tried to recruit additional crew among our friends, and Mariella, a childhood friend of Kathy was brave enough to accept the challenge. Never having stepped on a sailboat before, she flew from Chile to Virginia to join as second mate. Lucky captain. We loaded the boat to the brim with fuel, water, beer, dark chocolate and some lesser provisions, Kathy cooked three double-portion meals in one day to freeze, and off we went. We pointed roughly East to cross our old temperamental friend, the Gulf Stream, as quickly as possible, and then turned a slight right. Well, it wasn’t really that simple, as we had to take currents, eddies, wind here today and wind there tomorrow into account, so our actual track looks more like we’re lost than we know what we’re doing.

It was day after day of Atlantic Ocean and very little else, but it was never boring. With our crew of three, a typical day starts with Kathy and I having breakfast while Mariella sleeps to join us later. Correction: every single day, typical or not, start with feeding the cat. There’s simply no way to accomplish anything until you’ve completed that ritual. After a quick review of the morning chores (radar and navigation lights off… check; boat position sent to the shore coordinators… check; decide what to thaw for dinner… check), the day is spent leisurely. Provided the conditions are stable and don’t demand sail changes, the crew rests, takes a nap, or entertains themselves. Activities may include cooking (for the one of us who knows how to), fiddling with the sails to make the boat go a fraction of a knot faster (for the one of us who obsesses with efficiency), or fighting seasickness (for the one of us who hasn’t grown sea legs). Dancing to loud music and playing ukulele is also on the menu, but most of the time is spent chatting about every possible topic, from polyamory to bitcoins to hen breeding. A disorganized lunch based on leftovers or about-to-go-rotten stuff follows, usually so early that purists would not call it lunch. Then there’s more free time in the afternoon, with talks about exercising, doing yoga, trawling a fishing line, and cooking a chocolate cake that never go any further than well-intentioned words. On some special days there may be bread making. And on some very special days there may be a midafternoon bathing ritual: stop the boat, rig a safety line, skinny dip into the deep ocean (insert your favorite Jaws joke here), get back to the deck to liberally apply soap that never foams, dive to rinse the soap and then rinse the salty water back on deck with fresh water.

Sunset comes quickly (around 4:30 boat time) and with it a delicious dinner prepared by our lovely first mate. After the captain cleans the table and the second mate washes the dishes, the night shifts begin. It’s only 6pm but we’re all tired and ready to sleep. Kathy takes the 6 to 9 shift. She wakes me up and takes my place in bed. I operate the satellite device to get the daily weather report and make a routing decision. I keep myself awake by reading the weather report multiple times, navigating the interface of the chartplotter to the most obscure settings and options, sewing velcro tapes to the straps that hold the rolling windows open, and looking at the stars to hopefully learn a new constellation each night. At midnight it’s Mariella’s turn, but I typically nap in the cockpit during her shift in case she has any question. At 3am Kathy comes to the cockpit to replace Mariella and I. At 6am it’s my shift again, but by then there’s daylight and the strict shift schedule starts to morph into the day activities with breakfast.

Day 1. Saw a whale! At least the rear end of one. A sonic boom from a fighter jet scared us all to death. It’s mostly motor-sailing because we’re in a hurry to reach the other side of the Gulf Stream before a cold front turns it into a cauldron. Second mate starts her brave struggle with seasickness.

Day 2. It’s a full moon, so we get to see the sun setting and the moon rising in opposition. We reach the Gulf Stream and get a nice current boost to the East, but we also get a bit of a washing machine cycle.

Day 3. Cold front brings wind early in the morning. Lots of it, but fortunately we’re out of the Stream. It does get bumpy, and we have to explain Mariella that all that noise and violent shakes are normal. She trusts, but remains seasick until she tries my “Navy Cocktail” of pills. We don’t get much sleep.

Day 4. Sailed all night and Mariella takes her first shift. We’re treated in close succession to a beautiful sunrise, a tiny bird that takes a break to rest in our lifelines, and a pod of playful dolphins that keep us company for a while.

Day 5. Nothing happened. At least according to my log.

Day 6. We saw a cargo ship and made radio contact with Elusive, another Salty Dawg sailboat. That was enough social interaction for a whole week. Very calm seas and a dark night provide a spectacular bioluminescence show, which is then stolen by the moonrise. The autopilot disengaged and we went in circles for 15 minutes until I noticed. I unearthed the sextant to take some star sights.

Day 7. Keep motoring in calm seas, very slowly to save fuel. Dilemma: go South to get wind or East to avoid squalls? Some fluids make their way where they shouldn’t (leak in the watermaker), while some others refuse to go where they should (fuel blockage in the starboard engine). On average, we are perfect. I run the calculations from the celestial sights I took the night before. I’m surprised that I still remember how to do it.

Day 8. I plot the lines of positions from yesterday’s calculations. Now I know where we were, according to the stars, two days ago. Very useful! The GPS disagrees by 4 miles; looks like there’s still room for improvement with GPS technology. We reach the halfway point. I get my toenails painted. We get wind! Lots of sail changes though. We expect a squally night and are not sure the radar is working. Mariella remains seasick on and off.

Day 9. Radar is working (whew, we can see the squalls at night). We have the first of an epidemic series of flying fish suicides (by smashing their heads against our windows).

Day 10. Great progress sailing with the screecher at a sustained speed of 8+ knots followed by a very rough, sleepless night.

Day 11. Tropic of Cancer! Squally weather, reefing and shaking reefs back and forth.

Day 12. Are we there yet?

Day 13. Are we there yet? There’s more traffic out there: had to radio a cargo ship to make sure he saw us. We’re feeling the tropical heat. Another rough night in rough seas. Land ho! (Sombrero Island). Tamos llegando, chubai chubai. We should have nice and useful easterly trade winds; instead we get wind on the nose, so we motorsail.

Day 14. It’s D-day, as in “disaster day”. Only 12 miles from our destination the starboard engine suddenly stops when I’m in the head (that’s the toilet if you’ve been following). I suspect it’s the usual fuel flow problem. The smoke I see when I open the engine room hatch tells me otherwise. On closer inspection I find the culprit: our nemesis, the alternator bracket strikes again. This time insidiously, because no-one hears the overheating alarm. Maybe we just became desensitized to the engine panel buzzer, because we’ve had to endure it for hours when it triggered falsely due to an entirely different problem. In the end we made it limping with the other engine, but we now face more boatyard time to get things fixed.

The passage in numbers. Distance sailed: 1646 nautical miles. Best day: 168 miles. Worst day: 64 miles. Wind:  0 to 25 knots, usually closer to 0 than 25. Time with wind abaft the beam: 0. Consequently, number of jibes: 0. Beers consumed: 1 (seriously; I impose a dry regime while on passage—made an exception for a small celebration and shared one beer among all the crew). Sailboats sighted after the third day: 2. Flying fish found dead on deck: 4.

You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave. After so much work and effort to reach a tropical paradise, the landscape around us is not that much different from that in Deltaville. We are floating and don’t need to haul out, but we are tied to the “work dock” of a boatyard. It’s hot, just as in Deltaville. Our view is not that of sandy beaches but the familiar view of boats on stands on the ground. The ambient noise is not of that of gentle surf but the familiar grinding noise of sanding machines. The wind doesn’t bring the delicious smell of unspoiled nature; it does bring instead loads of fiberglass dust from the boat closest to us, just as in Deltaville. Please excuse our sinful thoughts of quitting and our lust for a conventional life with conventional alternator brackets.