Wednesday 7/12/11 – Miscellany… - 14:20.1N 54.01.7W

Today was a bit of a curate’s egg, with some good bits and some less good. It is getting very hot, despite there being a fair bit of cloud around. The bimini is excellent, keeping most of the direct sunlight off the crew, and minimising the risk of scorching.  As the wind eased over the last 24 hours, its cooling effects also dissipated, and humidity has increased. It is quite uncomfortable. When we do sail changes on deck, we are more exposed to its impact and, everyone comes back dripping with sweat and has to down a litre of fluid on returning to the cockpit. The laundry bag is full again!

On the other hand, the lighter airs mean that the seas have diminished and the boat’s motion improved. Better sleep is very welcome indeed, as we have a lot of catching up to do.

Weather and Progress

The Proclaimers’ “500 miles” rent the air this evening, as we had our convivial half hour discussion before dinner. It was, to be fair, a bit premature since we will only hit the milestone at about midnight tonight, but we felt that Martin and Bob needed to learn the words properly to celebrate at their handover tonight (hope they sing it quietly!).

We have had a good day, logging another 150 miles with the help of putting the clock back for the second time (another twice to go before St Lucia). We see it as quite an achievement, since the forecast was for very light winds today, but we squeezed some good mileage out of the Parasailor in winds between 8 and 15 knots.

Our weather man had indicated that we would be best motoring when the winds died, since there will be a couple of days when the trough that lies before and north of us leaves an area of calm that we have to cross before the winds fill again from the east. We are, however, still sailing happily under the twin genoas as yet, so fingers crossed.

It looks like we should probably get to St Lucia around the front end of next week, all things being equal.

Picture Post

We have sent a few photos in, and hope they have been put onto the site. We cannot access it via our system, and we have been told that the first one had been posted but was not easy to access. We are working blind here (what’s new, I hear).

Kit Box – Communications and Weather

(Please feel free to skip this section if it bores you rigid!)

We had largely been very pleased with our communications systems and weather systems since we reached conclusions about what we needed at the turn of the year.

Satellite Phones - Iridium

We opted for a fixed Iridium 9522 phone, which handles calls and data though only at the sort of speed you used to get with dial-up modems (remember those?). It does let us download weather, email friends and family, and talk to you all. It is not inexpensive at $1.50 per minute, but worth it.  We had installed it in the spring to test it well before the crossing, and found it good. The lightning strike blew it all up, and we had to replace it in June, and set it all up again. Our experience meant that we wanted a back-up, so we bought a used 9505 phone (the predecessor to the 9522), and this worked well too.

In the 2 weeks we have been passage-making, it all seemed fine until we began to find the 9505 had increasing trouble locating the satellites and it finally held its hands up yesterday and refused. No trouble, the fixed phone can take the strain, we thought…..but it went on strike this morning too! We were and are still sending and downloading emails and checking weather, but the handset was stubbornly blank. After a bit of manual reading and experimentation, we discovered that the handset still makes outgoing calls and receives incoming, and as long as you are careful with your dialling, you will get your loved one and not the Vatican. Not a disaster yet, but not a great advert for the kit either.

Mailasail, from whom we bought the system(s) and who are excellent, have been unable to help us. Indeed, their best advice is that we leave well alone and live with what we have – both data and voice when necessary – until we get to St Lucia when we can get it all sorted. It is a shame, because we had been happy until yesterday, even though it is a bit of a clunky old system. Ratings today are inevitably coloured by the equipment failure. The used 9505 we might have excused, but the 9522 partial failure is not acceptable. 

Weather

Beyond the weather that we get from the satellite phone downloads, we also have a JRC Navtex, which is proving to be outstanding. Impressed by its performance over the spring and summer in the Mediterranean and on the trip to the Canaries, we have been stunned to be getting limited US weather transmissions for a few days now, which we had not expected. 10/10

We have been similarly delighted by the WIBE weather station, which has also been giving us synoptic charts from both European and American weather stations.  They are not always perfectly readable, but there are enough options to ensure that you can get a version that can be deciphered. As a bonus, it also has a very good electronic barometer, which gives us confidence in the readings from our other one. 10/10

Galley Ali, back again…

We can tell that we are nearing the end of our trip as the supplies diminish.  We’re on our last pack of bran flakes and crunchy nut.  We still have the allbran and muesli so fibre quotas are not yet critical!  Even more importantly our magnum stocks are dwindling as our ‘treat’ occasions seem to be rather frequent – any excuse for a celebration seems to be the order of the day.  Fortunately the skipper doesn’t seem to have felt the need to reprise his sandwich flip ceremony.  The first mate is pleased about this since she didn’t want to have to wash her hair after every ‘treat’ occasion.

 As has been mentioned above the laundry bag is bulging – and there is a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ emanating from it.  The generator charging sessions have been used to full potential for showering, water making and clothes washing.  As already mentioned we have a ‘Babynova’ washing machine, and it is worth its weight in gold!  The light winds and potential engine use translates into my mind as ‘laundry opportunity’ …sad but true! 

Our food stocks are working out well and we are still enjoying fruit and cheeses, meats, and vegetables for lunches.  We also benefit from having our freezer – we stocked up on frozen mixed vegetables.  They are easy to heat in the microwave oven, involve no preparation and result in a minimum of heat generation and energy use.  Cooking and washing up leave one sweating like a marathon runner.  We are so pleased that we had frozen our meals and only need to prepare the rice, couscous or pasta and vegetables – it’s enough!  Martin has even baulked at the thought of catching more fish since the proviso is that if he catches it he has to cook it too…there’s only so much sweating in a hot galley that a person can commit to. 

We are entering the final phase of our journey and we are feeling elated at the thought of arriving and completing our crossing but feel sad too that it is drawing to a close.  We have also commented that we don’t seem to have gotten round to many of the things we imagined we might do. I haven’t managed to finish my Spanish course, the starscope has been looked out but it’s been cloudy, Martin and I haven’t had the sextant back out of the box yet, and we haven’t watched a single film.  We have managed to play some music and our cockpit dancing is of the ‘sit down’ variety.  Who would have thought that we could spend so much time eating, sleeping and sail changing (not much sail changing in truth) -  so make that eating and sleeping.  Speaking of which Bob (Alan) and Martin are in their bunks and I am on 21 -24.00 watch, but Alan is doing the watch and I’m doing the blog, best stop now and change roles.

Hasta Luego

Watergaw