Tradewinds Sailing Blog

We crossed the line!  From summer to winter in the blink of an eye.

Now the numbers of Latitude are getting bigger again. We’re affirmed and re-affirmed Trusty Shellbacks- no Slimy Pollywogs here. That’s right, we sailed across the equator at about 2:30pm this afternoon. We toasted King Neptune, and asked for him to look a tad bit more favorably upon us with regards to the wind and seas and currents. Then we drank a shot of rum and gave an equal share to King Neptune.

In the “be careful what you wish for” department, last night’s very light winds turned into surprisingly strong winds about midnight, and right on the nose, of course, with rapidly building seas to go with it. So we have been forced to head more south than east, hoping to find some relief along the coast. On the plus side, we have been sailing fast- mostly 8 and 9 knots all day, which is why we crossed the line so early.

All the books and guides talk about the light NE winds to be found here, and how it never blows more than 15 knots from any direction, with July and August having the lightest winds. And how the current should only be about one half knot. Yeah, right. We’ve had winds in the 20’s most of the day, and last night saw 3 to 4 knots of current against us. We’re making the best of it, but if the coast doesn’t offer better conditions, it is going to be a long slog to the eastern tip of Brazil.

00.02S  45.56W     1884nm gone,    3102nm to go.  2:45pm  7/10

First of all, satellite reception is the worst on the equator, surprisingly, so I am having trouble getting  data connection. So be patient over the next few days, just in case.

The sea is an amazing deep blue out here, finally away from the Amazon’s brown influence, and the sky is a blue to match.

Unfortunately, the winds remain very light, and the current is strong against us, even though it is not supposed to be. So we make the best of it, progress slower than we would like, but hard to complain with such beautiful weather.

Steve tried fishing (trolling a line) with an ultralight spinning rod for most of yesterday, but only upon reeling in the lure at sunset did he realize he hadn’t taken the protective plastic cover off the hook!  So theoretically, a fish may have swallowed it, only to have us yank it back out of his mouth, since there was no hook to catch him with. Fishing experts we are not.

01.41N   46.53W   1750nm gone, 3200nm to go.   3pm  7/9

Today has been pleasantly uneventful so far.  8 to 10 knots of breeze, mostly flat seas, lots of sunshine and blue skies, some puffy white clouds, and hot. We are finally offshore enough to see some sealife, and twice now dolphin have paid us a visit. But its not offshore enough to avoid the influence of the mighty Amazon river. Even this far out, its effluent (along with a 17-foot tidal swing) affects us, creating currents, swirls and eddies seemingly in the middle of the ocean.

It is interesting how little we get done each day. Maybe it’s the influence of the weather, the routine, our diet, the rotating watch schedule, and I don’t know what else, but we tend to lay around a lot, and not have a lot of energy. Its rather nice, really, as there’s not that much that needs to be done. One day I cut my finger nails AND my toe nails. That was an exhausting day. The next day I just shaved.

Yesterday was laundry. After all that acivity, there’s nothing scheduled for today, allowing us all to recover from our individual efforts.

One thing is for sure- we have a lot of time with nothing but our own thoughts for company. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

02.56N  48.49W   1604nm gone,  3340nm to go.  3pm 7/8.

French Guiana has come and gone, and we are now in the waters of Brazil!

Weird weather to go with it, too, as we are now in the ITCZ, or Intertropical Convergence Zone, which is a fancy scientific name for the mixed up region where the northern and southern hemisphere weather systems collide. Last night we saw huge squalls and torrential rains with East winds, then early morning saw SW winds, and for the first time the squalls did not go from our left to our right. Lots of rain through the morning, but this afternoon is back to our clear and sunny with light winds, although now they are from the NE.

The promise of a dry afternoon has made me declare today to be laundry day- and we now have lots of colored decorations streaming from the lifelines on both sides of the ship, drying in the hot tropical sun.

For now,  we are going to try to stay pretty much on the rhumb line towards the far east corner of Brazil, which means we will be far offshore from the Amazon river basin and all of its effluent. If the adverse currents get uglier, we may try going back inshore, but it would be a pretty big detour. If we can hold the course, we should be out of sight of land for maybe 600 miles or so.

04.18N  50.58W  1448nm gone,  3493nm to go.  3pm  7/7

Today has us sailing along the coast of French Guiana, which from our perspective doesn’t look a whole lot different than the last two countries. Although we have seen a few taller, more modern buildings here, and there are less fishing boats about.

The sky remains very open and blue, the sun strong and hot, and the water mostly a milky green and still on the shallow side, which should persist until tomorrow, when we will start to get farther from shore.

The winds are light, and look to stay that way for a while, maybe down to the equator and beyond, so we switch from sailing to motoring when progress gets too slow, confident in the resources of our new crew members Larry, Mo and Curly. The equatorial current still punishes us off and on, and we see our speed drop a knot when going against the stream. Not much to be done about that here, unfortunately.

We are happy to be making some progress, and some southing again, as we start to anticipate our audience with King Neptune somewhere off the Amazon river basin. Marianne and I are trying to get Steve to put out his fishing line and catch us something tasty, he is holding back, saying the water here is too shallow and not clear enough for his tastes.

We shared the first mango from yesterday’s picking, and it was delicious.

05.27N  52.44W  1318nm gone,  3618nm to go.   3pm 7/6

We anchored right off the mouth of the Suriname River last night, then celebrated the 4th of July with Steve and Marianne enjoying rum and cokes, and I had Baileys in my coffee. We all had a good, long night’s rest at anchor.

This morning about 7am we started up the river going about 10 miles to the Shell station. It was a fascinating ride, as we passed an old Dutch fort, some more modern homes and buildings, dikes with below-river-level homes behind them, and lots of jungle. The main city of Paramaribo seems to be a decent city, and even has one 10-story high-rise- a bank.  We had hoped the Shell station would be near town, and maybe we could sneak around a little (we weren’t doing customs or immigration, just buying fuel and not getting off the boat), but it was a backwater place with nothing near it but the tank farm.

They delivered as promised, giving us three pretty red drums with yellow lids (courtesy of Royal Dutch Shell), and filled everything with a ton of diesel. Literally, we now have a ton of diesel aboard.

I didn’t have time to explore the jungle, nor see any toucans, macaws, jaguars, tapirs or anteaters which the area is famous for, but I was able to grab an armload of mangoes from a nearby tree. All too soon we had to leave to allow another ship to dock, so it was back down the river and out to sea.

We decided to name our 3 new crew members Larry, Mo and Curly, so as to avoid any confusion, and duly labeled them with a Sharpie. In the process I made a wonderful discovery- these fuel drums play like timpani drums, and each with a different pitch!  It wasn’t long before I was singing the dramatic theme from 2001- A Space Odyssey, with me covering all the parts except the key timpani drum solos, which I played to perfection. The performance was very well received, albeit by a limited audience.

We are back at sea now, finally on our way again, and expect to cross into French Guiana around midnight tonight.

06.06N  54.57W   1172nm gone, 3754nm to go.  3pm  7/5

Sailors can be a superstitious bunch, but I don’t think of this crew as really being that way. But yesterday, we got some signs…

With the winds remaining very light, we decided to try going in to Neiuw Nickerbie, a small port on the border river between Guyana and Suriname that my charts showed as having fuel. About 8 miles out, the big outside GPS plotter lost its fix. No big deal, GPS’s sometimes do that- even this one did it once before. It just restarts itself and a minute later has a fix again.  Then about 10 minutes later, and a mile closer, it loses the fix again. Hmmm. Another minute or two, and it reacquires a fix, and can show us exactly where we are. About 2 miles from the river entrance buoy, when knowing our exact position really starts to matter, and it loses the fix again!  What’s going on?  The inside GPS has had no problem, but also doesn’t have the detailed maps.

It gets a fix once again, and not a minute later the engine dies. What now?  So a quick tack out to sea and safety while we figure things out. Turns out we finally used enough fuel in one tank to start sucking up what  appeared to be the creature from the black lagoon, and the fuel filters were plugged.

While removing the filters, draining the fuel-water separator and making everything smell nice, we had sailed a way down the coast, and it was now getting dark, so we decided not to double back, and skip Nieuw Nickerbie. In reflection this morning,and realizing the GPS had no issues since,  we wonder if someone was giving us a sign to avoid that place. Guess we’ll never know.

We got the engine running again, but not for long. There was enough gunk still in the fuel line to plug everything up again. Being dark out, and us being a bit sleep deprived, and there being some wind for sailing, we put off the repairs till morning, and sailed slowly through the night, tacking upwind.

This morning we did the same drill with the filters, and this time the engine has been running for a few hours now, so there has been progress. But we decided to make a pit stop to load up on fuel, and maybe source some more filters. So we are now headed for the grand Dutch metropolis (maybe an exaggeration) of Paramaribo, Suriname, just a few miles up the Suriname River. I’ve already called ahead to confirm fuel availability, which they have (Shirley’s English was better than my Dutch), but we won’t know about filters till we get there. I did find out they close at 3pm today (no celebrating the 4th of July for them), so we won’t get there in time and will need to wait till tomorrow morning.

Our plan is to get close, maybe a mile or two offshore (its shallow) and anchor for the night, giving us all some nice rest. Then in the morning ride the rising tide up the river and go exploring!

We know this puts us a few days behind the schedule we insist we don’t have, but it is what it is. If we run out of July, we’ll see where we are and decide what to do then.

06.07N  55.39W    1080nm gone,  3794nm to go   2pm 7/4

Light winds and no squalls continue today, so perhaps we are in the doldrums? Although I really expected more squalls. Regardless, we motor a lot, sail a little, and make progress south and east.

The event of the day yesterday was the masthead VHF antenna working loose. As the seas were pretty flat, up I went, and it was a much less bruising experience this time. It seems the antenna hadn’t been secured that well at the yard, and didn’t have a lock nut, so the movement of the boat worked it loose. Fortunately there was no damage, and I was able to re-attach it and secure it properly. Since we were sailing at the time, I tried to take a few pictures from up top looking down, but I think I mostly got pictures of my feet .

Last night we passed Georgetown, Guyana, the main city, and a few dozen fishing boats out working their trade. Avoiding them kept us awake during the night shifts without any problem.  About midday today, the clear skies clouded over, although the winds (or lack of) hasn’t yet changed.

As we look ahead, we are considering taking on some more fuel before crossing the Amazon basin, just in case the light winds persist.

Looking into possible places for fuel can be pretty interesting down here, and all the other exotic stuff available (crocodile and monkey meat, fruits and veggies, etc.) make a brief stop sound rather appealing.  We’re not sure yet, and we said we wouldn’t stop, but it is kinda enticing… maybe just for a day, or even a few hours…

06.19N   57.10W    953nm gone, 3885 nm to go     3pm 7/3

Our first squall-less day so far. Mosty sunny with a few puffy clouds, but no squalls all day, and a temperature of 92. The winds have been light, too, just 5-10 knots, with very flat seas. This has made for pleasant motor sailing off and on all day, making 6-7 knots with the wind help, and 5-6 without it. And we were thrilled to finally get along the coast of Guyana and out of most of the adverse current.

We are running about 15 miles offshore, in 20 to 30 feet of water.

It’s weird, like you’re just going over a shoal or something, but in fact that’s the way the coast is here for over a hundred miles- very shallow from the shore out about 20 miles. By staying in this shallow water we avoid the bad current farther out. We get little tastes now and then, when a tendril of evil current swirls into our path, disrupting our milky green expanse with the darker waters of the deep.

But at least we are making some progress again.

If things go as expected, there will be some balance in the second half of the voyage, as after rounding the corner of Brazil we should start to see a 1 knot current going with us. So hopefully the pace will pick up then. We are also encouraged about tomorrow and Monday, as the curvature of the coastline suggests we may get an eddy, or at least no bad current.

So what’s the dress code here in the equatorial latitudes? Swim trunks.  Day and night, nothing else.  Sometimes a T-shirt to avoid getting too much reflected sun and maybe a hat.

Incidentally, our time changed today, moving one hour ahead. This means we are now on the same time as Buenos Aires-  6am in California is 10am on the boat.

08.06N  58.59W   793nm gone,  4019nm to go.  3pm 7/2