Night

We often think of day and night as binary. Night is dark and day is light. But being on night watch for 20 days shows you a different side of night. You really get to know her personalities. On one side of the night personality spectrum is the darkest of nights. No moon, low clouds, no horizon. On these nights you have no frame of reference. The only sense that works is your hearing. You hear the ocean but you can’t see her. You’re glued to the radar and chart plotters as they replaced your eyes. These nights are eerie. At full moon, the moon is visible for 12 hours. It rises and sets roughly with the sun. But each day from there it’s delayed by 50 mins. You’ll have a full evening with a moon every month and then very dark parts of the evening with no moon as the moons orbit changes. When the moon is out, night takes a new form. It goes from eerie to majestic. You can see the horizon, shadows, and your visual perspective can now complement the sounds of the ocean. Of the evenings with some moon, my two favourites are obviously a full moon , and some moon with thin clouds. Having a layer of thin clouds creates a lamp that spans the width of the sky. The moon spreads her rays across all the clouds and it lights up the entire sky and ocean. It’s magnificent. We are arriving in Fernando tomorrow morning. Alizé and Nadine will join us for a short break. We need some rest. But I’ll still miss our night watches.

Storms

We’ve been blessed, the gods gave us wind for 3,300nm. We haven’t turned on the motors since leaving Cape Town. But this morning we rolled into disturbed weather, rain, and wind shifts. Sails reefed, in, out, motoring, sailing, motoring. The good news is tomorrow looks windy, so we’re going into this evening with “wing on wing” which is fancy sailing speak for no main sail and two headsails. It lets us sail dead down wind and it’s a nice comfortable evening setup.

The horn

After dinner the boat turns into night mode very quickly. By 7:30pm, lights are off. Radome and instruments are switched to night colors. The watch person is alone at the helm while everyone else is resting for their own night shifts. Being alone at the helm is fine, until it isn’t. This is a big boat and when we have the asym or code up at night furling in is a 2 person job. Meet our gas powered horn. She sits at the helm and is how you wake up the boat if you need help. Ray sounded the horn for the first time as we broke a main sheet soft shackle. Within 2 seconds Ray had us in action, in undies, wide awake, with headlamps, and dealing with the issue. Then we all stumbled back to bed. The horn went back to its resting spot and Ray knew that while we aren’t with him, we can spring into action quickly.

Being far

I wasn’t sure how or if to share this. But it’s a reality for those of us doing long passages far away. You’re not home and things can happen while you’re days or weeks from anyone. It’s a risk we take. One of my best friends had an accident on Friday and passed away suddenly. My wife called me last night to break the news. I’m gutted. I’d invited him on this trip, he contemplated but couldn’t make it work with his business. We’ve been texting daily, he was so excited for me. Olivier owned a fishing camp and he was a maniac at enjoying life. I credit him for nudging me towards where I’m at today. I’m sure yesterday morning he came and placed those 2 mahi on our hooks at the same time and laughed as we panicked. Last night the team offered to take my 12-3am watch but I said no. Something told me that the solitude and fresh air would be calming. Out of nowhere this little bird came and landed on the lifeline and stayed in one spot for my entire watch. I’ve never seen a bird at night in the last month. Olivier, you’ll always be “mon chum”

Everything broke

Was our most stressful day yesterday. While we started with the AIS down, we ended with a broken blind motor, AIS, and internet. After a lot of troubleshooting, AIS was a low voltage into the AIS box and not sure why. Terminal connection isn’t good as we have 13v on the pins before we connect. But luckily I’d download the proAIS debug tool and was able to get diagnostics from the device. Our router had a malfunction. It’s strange, that’s an industrial can handle anything router. It wasn’t booting. No problem, I’ve got a backup… came to take it out and found that I’d forgotten the power cable which is a 110v special starlink one. Fuck. Got out backup sat comms and ensured family knew we were fine and just dealing with a few issues but wind and boat were in good shape. One of our blinds, large side ones, fell off brackets and when trying to fix it seems the motor is not working. At least it’s down as it’s hot now! We worked all day into dinner and I went hunting for another option for the internet power cable. Found an extra 220v cable we have for the portable freezer. Then we went to bed, with a plan for the morning. AIS is kinda working… voltage still an issue. Had the best night watch yet, perfect sky and moon rising. Then promptly at 630, the fishing rods start spinning! Gareth is on watch, yelling. I’m first up and realize that we’ve got two fish on at the same time. Rods are spinning but we’re going 9kts. More yelling, Ballie and Ray up now and dowsing the asym and slowed the boat down. Our lines looked crossed, as we reeled in we weren’t sure if we were both pulling in the same fish or two. Mine came in first, big Mahi. We untangled the lines and realized that indeed there was another one hooked. We dealt with mine first, was just over 30lbs. Decided to let the other go as we already have a lot of fish meat. Ray started the fillet job and I went hunting for how to fix the internet. With a bit of dremel and improv was able to Jerry rig the freezer 220v power cable and the starlink accepts 110-220v. It worked. We’re using the original starlink router and I’ve ordered another peplink that Nadine can bring to Brazil. Hope today is boring..

Shoulder day

Because of our watch schedule, every fourth day you have all day and then most of the evening off. Day watches are 6-10, 10-14, 14-18 and in the evenings 18-21, 21-12, 12-3, and 3-6. Today I had 3-6 and 18-21. That’s all day off and all evening off with watches at the “shoulder” of the day and night watches. Not only that, but you get the sunrise and sunset. We pushed out v2.0 of SeaPeople today, that took up most of the day when I wasn’t napping. Then our AIS (automated identification system) failed with 12v alarms and we started to troubleshoot and will continue tomorrow. AIS is how other ships see you, but we also have radar and night vision camera. It must be a faulty connection or corrosion that should not be too hard to work out. But we have to take out one fridge to get access. Better done in day light and rested crew. I tried to push to fix tonight but got stern looks from the team. Beside that, had a fun drone session to capture our asymmetrical sail at work and the nice weather we had today. Our asym is 300sqm and is our workhorse in light winds from behind.

Started to worry, is it us?

We’ve been at sea for over 2200nm in the last month and no fish. Nada. Ok, we got two bites but we’re going too fast at the time and ripped the hook from the fish. But come on, we have 186kg of sushi rice and soya sauce to drown a whale. And our pickled ginger…. Today was my cook day, I’d prep’d most of the meal and was throwing some organics overboard next to the fishing rod. I’m not sure I was praying, but I was definitely talking to god about our fish situation… and then. Wham, I kid you not. Fish on! Got our first tuna. Crew is happy, I’m happy. We are grateful for the 6 meals she will give us.

Lumpy seas & nice breeze

The wind stayed between 17-26kts last night but the swell kicked in. The playoffs were on so Ray and I stayed up from 11pm to 2am to watch it and it was my shift until 3am. We had to frequently adjust the auto pilot to keep our AWS down as gusts would come thru and really power up. No moon, dark night. We saw our first boat on AIS in a while and she came relatively close. I tried to hail and ensure they saw us, but they weren’t that chatty. It’s warm out now, water is at 24.5C and it was my first night watch in shorts and tshirt. Twice a day I update our route plan in PredictWind and see what’s changed. Then load the new route into the chart plotters. Today we’re going to jibe and head north-west for a few days to avoid a pretty big patch of light wind to our west. Nadine and Alizé are going to come join us in Brazil for the week. Looking forward to seeing them in 8 days.

Settle for the evening

Our evening routine on longer passages are fun. The person on the 2-6pm shift takes care of dinner, and we play a dinner soundtrack game where the cook has to match the food with a song that complements the meal. Then it’s weather check, plan for evening sail configuration and expectations for plan b at night. Ray takes his celestial sights, and we wind down for night shifts. I’ve got the 12-3am tonight so that I can watch the hockey game, so time for a nap 😴 before shift.

Leg 2 to Brazil, bye St Helena

We spent the perfect amount of time in St Helena. Took in the whole island, went diving, and experienced the stunning natural beauty. The best way to describe the island is that it’s a combo of Jurassic park and Mars. We felt like we took a Time Machine back 100 years the minute we stepped foot on her shores. There’s one bank, there’s always a line. Which we stood in for a few hours and got the local pulse. Picking up their government cheques as the island is mostly a welfare state supported by the Uk. The sad part is that with their natural resources they could be self sufficient. They have wind, sun, and half the island is very lush and could be great for agriculture. The locals told us that the drive to build new things has been lost, they tried to build a wind farm and the contractor messed up and only 1 of the 5 installed worked. And they have no parts. Nevertheless, as with most places on this beautiful planet of ours the people are very kind. We drove around the island and my waving hand got tired as you can’t pass another car without waving and saying hi. We got picked up by a nice lady while walking our tender fuel can to the boat. Now we set our sights on Brazil 🇧🇷… in 9 days.