Tradewinds Sailing Blog

A slow progress day. We knew this would be a tough spot, as the equatorial current can run very strong to the northwest here, as much as 4 knots offshore. Which is why we stayed very close to the coast of Trinidad, looking for current relief, and after rounding it are trying to get the coastline of Venezuela for the same reason.  I think the worst we saw was about 2 knots against us, which doesn’t sound like much, but makes a 6-knot sail into a 4-knot slog, and with the very light and flukey winds we experienced, sometimes turned a 4-knot sail into almost no progress at all. Being sailors, we were too reluctant to turn on the engine, and thus had a very very slow day.

There were a few times we did finally motor for 45 minutes or so, as the wind died completely and we didn’t want to drift back to Grenada.

All in all I think we are through the worst of it, but we are still seeing over a knot against us as we head south to the shoreline, but there is some improvement already as I write this. By this evening we will be on the shoreline and hopefully making better progress.

We had an amazing lightning storm last night, and really close, too.

Some flashes were so close everything just went white, and you couldn’t even tell where it  was, as the flash was all around us. Some jagged bolts lit up your retinas and you saw shadows of it for hours.

We were glad to be surrounded by tall oil rigs, that’s for sure!

Today has brought the usual passing squalls, along with sunshine and day and night temps in the mid-80’s. This afternoon we are finally seeing some better breeze, thankfully, so we can start making progress again. We’re in the single digit latitudes!

09.32N  60.20W    659nm gone, 4129nm to go.  3pm 7/1

After passing Grenada last night on approach to Trinidad and Tobago, we got out of the Caribbean trades and into a whole different kind of wind and sea. Its actually been very pleasant, with easy breezes and relatively calm seas, making for very nice sailing, although not as fast.

This morning we made the call to sail along the top of Trinidad, instead of going into the serpent’s mouth and between Trinidad and Venezuela. It’s shorter this way, and we didn’t feel like we needed relief from the ocean, that the other route would have provided. Plus the seprent’s mouth is famous for strong, adverse currents.

With the wind gone light at 10am, we decided it was time to charge the batteries, so we started the engine for the first time, and have been running refrigeration and the freezer as well, while we motor along the north coast of Trinidad, a very green and jungley place.

During all this calm, of course something happened. And for once it wasn’t in the middle of the night!  With the mainsail down, the main halyard shackle pin wiggled loose, allowing the main halyard to disengage from the sail and swing about all over the boat, dangling from the masthead. We tried catching it with a boathook, but it was always just out of reach, then would wrap itself around the backstay for a while. I was decided to pull into some local cove to get the boat calm so I could go back up the mast, when clever Steve thought of snaring the halyard like a rabbit.

He made a nice little snare trap out of small line, like a noose, and hoisted that up the backstay with the spinnaker halyard. When the main halyard drifted into the loop, he yanked the string and grabbed it! We then pulled the whole mess of snare and line and halyards back down to the deck where we sorted it all out and put everything back in order.

Steve gets the merit badge for today!

We ended up motoring a bit more than we had planned, but after a series of squalls passed through the wind is coming back, and we are just sailing again off the NE tip of Trinidad.

10.51N  61.04W  543nm gone,  4207nm to go.  3pm 6/30

After yesterday’s email, we continued along at much the same pace until 4:30am (when else?) when the jib halyard chafed through.  It really just supports the furler, so it seems a very odd thing. But the result was that the head slowly slide down as the jib fed itself out on the bottom of the luff.  Steve was on watch, and I was apparently dreaming, as his calls of “David, David” worked themselves oddly into my dream. But wake up I did, and we soon had the jib ut of the water and secured back on deck. As daylight was only an hour or so away, we decided to wait until then to deal with it, so we cruised under main only at 5 knots for a while.

With the daylight came the obvious solution that I needed to go up the mast to make the repair. What is no big deal at the dock can be pretty exciting at sea, as the mast is like a big pendulum, and every little movement of the boat in the waves is felt 10-fold atop the mast. So, while hanging on for dear life through what felt like 3 or 4 G’s, I re-ran the jib halyard and made a few adjustments up there to prevent the chafe from happening again. A few minutes later the jib was back up and we were back to full speed southbound.

Its been a mostly sunny day, but we did get hit by a line of squalls this afternoon, which brought short periods of rain, and great variations in wind strength and direction, keeping us busy adjusting through all the changes.

It looks like we’ll pass Grenada this evening sometime, and hope to thead between Trinidad and Tobago on our way to the South American coastline. There is a huge bad current through those parts, so we want to get through as quickly as possible and into the current relief along the shorelone. We’ll see how that goes…

12.49N  62.18W   377nm gone,  4343 to go.  3pm 6/29

We’re sailing!

We departed about 2:30pm yesterday, and the sea trial went well, with everything working as it was supposed to, so we kept going. A little after 3pm we had the sails up, the motor off, and were in Caribbean sailing mode. The tradewinds have been as forecasted, a bit stronger than normal (18-22 knots), and slightly north of east, which has been good for us. We have been rollicking along mostly between 8 and 9 knots, with a few hours of 10’s and a couple of 11’s in the puffs.

This made our first day’s 24-hour run right at 200 miles- an excellent start.

There is always some adjustment time on a new voyage, while everyone gets over the excitement of departure, gets their sea legs, and settles in to the routine. Marianne wears a scopalomine patch at the start of voyages, but even so needed to feed the fish once. Steve also started a bit woozy, and made 2 contributions, so he’s taken a stugeron an seems to be doing better. I’ve been lucky so far, other than not sleeping well in the heat (86 degrees was the low last night). So far we are just eating snack food, as nobody has felt like cooking just yet. And with the strong trades on the beam, our world is a bit canted anyway.

We started with full main and jib yesterday, under gray skies, but no rain. That worked well, but at 2:30am (why is it always at 2 in the

morning?) the skies cleared revealing a dense carpet of stars, and the wind picked up to 25 knots, so we put a reef in the main, which smoothed things out nicely. It was an easy procedure, all handled from behind the dodger in the cockpit.

Today has been clear and sunny, with a high of 92, and not much else to report so far, other than lots of flying fish, a few birds, one cruise ship and one private jet that circled us and waved.

15.25N 63.23W 200nm gone, 4507 to go 3pm 6/28

I think we are ready !
We’ve been working all morning on much of the last minute stuff, and although the masthead work didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, we made it work, and hope it will last for a month. The air conditioning units are all working, but we wont use them at sea anyway. Fuel and water tanks are full, fridge and freezer and supply cabinets are full, and the gear is stowed. So for now, the plan is to relax a bit and have lunch, then head out for a sea trial to make everything works right. If it does, we’ll keep going. If we discover an issues, then we’ll come back and get it fixed.

One small job we decided to save was installing pad eyes on deck, to mount the spinnaker turning blocks. Rather than guess at the correct location, we’ll hoist the sail at some point and see where the blocks need to be, then install the pad eyes. With the generator, we can drill and saw and do pretty much anything we can do at the dock, just with less stability…

Off we go…

Steve and Marianne have arrived!  Now I have friends aboard to share the trials and triumphs of preparing the boat for (hopefully) tomorrow’s departure. I picked them up at the airport at noon, then took them grocery shopping. They were well-prepared with lists, but Marianne kept having nagging thoughts, wondering “will this really be enough for 30 days?”. In the end, I think we’ll be fine, and the boat is now stocked up for the long voyage.

After they got all their stuff stowed and familiarized themselves with the boat a bit, we got to work. One of the last items on my list was to install the masthead transducer, that wand with the anemometer on the end, that provides electronic wind data. They hoisted me to the top of the mast, I starting drilling the mounting holes in the thick aluminum plate, and then somehow in my wrangling around the wand slipped out of the bosuns chair and gravity did its thing. I heard the sound of it sliding out of the pocket, and though to myself “what is that sound, its like something sliding out of the pocket”, and a moment later I heard the thunk as it hit the deck 60 feet below me. Surprisingly, the damage was not too severe, but what did break were the electronic connecting pins that extend from the mounting socket, and this is something I cannot repair myself. We spent some time trying to mickey mouse it, but it just wasn’t going to work. So, maybe we wont need that after all. There is a Raymarine dealer across the street, so I’ll check in the morning, but I don’t have much hope in finding the right part here. Ah well…  it wasn’t critical, just nice to have.

If we get the 3rd air conditioning unit fixed in the morning, I think we will be good to go, maybe departing around mid-day. Some of the other little jobs still on the list, like installing pad eyes on the deck for the spinnaker turning blocks, can be done at sea, and we’ll have plenty of time at sea.

Keep your fingers crossed for us, and this may be our last night at the dock!

-David

Its amazing how all those little  things that need to be done take every minute of a very long day. Besides installing some new gear, and relocating some old gear, and running all the wires everywhere to try and hide them, climbing into impossible spaces behind and underneath everything, there’s little things that keep presenting themselves. Like a hatch lock that stopped working, or a GPS antenna that needed some solder, or running to the store for a part or some goop. Anyway, a long day its been, I’m all tuckered out, but much has been completed.

As I write this, Steve and Marianne are headed to the airport, and will be joining me here tomorrow morning. Hooray!  Now I will have someone to hoist me up the mast. And a few other things…  It will be great to have them here, and if tomorrow goes well, we may depart on Monday. But one item outstanding is the 3rd air conditioner, and despite taking it apart this morning and promising that our classic air conditioning services would finish fixing it today, they didn’t get it done. So if I am waiting for local folks on Caribbean tine, it may be a Tuesday departure.

One of the fun chores today was programming in a 10-point route for the journey. Nothing strict, of course, but a general route so we get a feel for distances. And yes, it was fun having to use Latitudes in both North and South. I am ready to go!  Just a few more days…

Well, there’s progress. I got the boat today form the maintenance marina, and am now parked on the main Moorings dock, watching all the charterers come and go. The weather has been sunny and hot, and I am currently munching a warm crispy loaf of fresh-baked multigrain bread, with some salami and garlic cheese, sipping a diet coke, in the air-conditioned comfort of my own boat. Hooray!

There are still a few items to be repaired, though, such as the forward air conditioning unit (the main salon and aft unit work fine), which keeps tripping the circuit. The engine idle needs to be adjusted up a bit, a fuel filter replaced, and the autopilot also needs some tweaking. All of these are going to be addressed tomorrow, so hopefully we are still on schedule.

I am just starting my own work list, and hope to make good progress tomorrow also. We’ll see…

I’ve had a few questions about the watch schedule on a trip like this. We’ve got 3 people and a long journey and a good autopilot. That means only one person is officially “on” at a time. So mathematically speaking, each person needs to stand watch a total of 8 hours a day, and gets 16 hours off. However, 8 hours is a long time, and standing the same watch everyday is boring and unfair- especially if you get stuck with the 10pm to 6am shift every day!

I have used a variety of watch schedules over the years, each customized for the purpose (race or cruise), and number of crew aboard. I have found that in cruising situations, and in long races, rotating watches keeps everyone happier. This means you don’t stand the same watch every day- there is an odd number of hours or watches, which causes the shifts to rotate.

For this journey, we have will have shifts of 4 to 6 hours “on” (longer during the day, shorter at night), followed by 8 to 11 hours off. As night shifts tend to be harder, we keep them shorter. And after your night shift, midnight to 4am for example, you get a longer rest period of 11 hours. This means you can eat something, sleep a full 8 hours, and still have time to get up, cook a meal, relax or whatever before coming on watch again.

All put together, each person stands 5 watches every 3 days, with some daytime, some nighttime, and some in between. Each person gets to stand every watch once in a 3-day period. After 3 days the rotation starts over again. The 5 daily watches are:  0000-0400, 0400-0900, 0900-1500, 1500-2000, and 2000-2400.  I have attached a picture of the watch schedule, to save another 1000 words.

More tomorrow…

I survived another airborne night, and have finally arrived in Tortola. After checking in at San Francisco, my concern all along was about my 3 overweight bags making it through Atlanta and San Juan on Delta, and to Tortola on American with me. As it turns out, my worries were founded. Only 2 of the 3 made it to Tortola. But after a few phone calls and hndling things on Caribbean time, my lost bag showed up on the next flight 3 hours later. Whew!  The hidden benefit of my troubles was that in all the commotion, the airline rep escorted me out of customs to take my report, and later delivered the lost bag to me outside of customs as well, so I avoided paying about $100 in duty on some new gear I had brought down with me.

I got to the marina and met with the local manager, and found out the boat had not been delivered from their maintenance marina a few miles down the island yet, and that there might be one or two small things to finish still. So we made plans to meet at the boat tomorrow morning at 8:30am, and we’ll go down the list and see if there’s still anything to be done. If its good to go, I’ll bring to the Moorings marina later in the morning, and then I can get to work on my items, and start provisioning it and getting things ready for Steve and Marianne’s arrival on the weekend.

Since the boat wasn’t quite ready, the good folks at the Moorings arranged for a nice new Beneteau 50 to be available for me to sleep on, and that is where I sit at this moment, ready to collapse and get a good night’s sleep.

The wind forecast is looking pretty steady, with one more tropical wave passing through next week, meaning we should see mostly 15-20 knots on the long reach to Trinidad, with maybe a half-day of 10-15. The skies will be typical tropical summer, with some sun, some clouds, and some thundershowers and rain, with a high of 90, and a low of 77.

More tomorrow as we see how ready the boat is…

If its Wednesday, this must be summer in California. Yesterday was winter in Argentina, and tomorrow will be tropical in the Caribbean. And then, finally, no airplanes for a long time!  Just wind and water and aaaahhhh….

Speaking of wind and water, I am starting to pay a bit more attention to the weather forecasts now that our departure is nearer. The earliest we expect to sail is next Monday the 27th, but its not a firm date, as we are not on a rigid schedule. And what a strange concept that is!  No starting gun for the race, no charter dates to adhere to, and a long enough journey that a few hours or a day here or there really doesn’t make a big difference. I hope I can adjust to such a relaxed pace…

Anyway, back to the weather. In the Caribbean, the tradewinds are pretty consistent blowing from the East, typically 15 knots on the windward side of the island chain, and a bit lighter on the leeward (West) side, which is where we expect to sail on the first 500-mile leg of our route from Tortola, passing Trinidad to South America. Sometimes, low pressure systems, tropical waves and the occasional hurricane disrupt the tradewinds, making them stronger or weaker, and altering their direction a little bit. That is what seems to be happening this week- a series of tropical waves is passing through the Caribbean sea, causing increased wind speeds and a more northerly direction as each wave passes through every other day or so.

If everything were “normal”, we would be heading pretty much South, maybe a little east of south, in Easterly winds, which means a basic beam reach for 3 days, with apparent wind from 70º to 110º. And this beamy boat enjoys a beam reach.  The tropical waves are bringing slightly stonger winds, so instead of 10-15 knots, we may see 15-20 knots, and maybe from a few degrees more north. This is a wonderful forecast for us, as it could mean a faster ride with the wind slightly more aft, and what’s not to enjoy about 3 days of barreling along in the hot tropics of the Caribbean?    As long as the wind doesn’t get too strong, like 25-30 knots, which makes the waves bigger, and then it gets harder to keep the wine from spilling out of your goblet.

So, I’ll continue to monitor the weather, and we’ll see what next week brings. But first I have a few more airplanes to ride, far above the waves…