North Atlantic

The forecast was quite clear that if we did not head north straight away, we would end up motoring for over a week in calms, so as we cleared the outlying reefs of Bermuda we headed Northeast into the evening until the island was hull down.

We left Pennos wharf at around midday. After some last minute shopping, notably for some red nail varnish to paint our port bulb, as we had just noticed that the nice brass light cover was missing. We set the main and staysail and sailed through the narrows, through the well marked channel, and came onto a close reach by the fairway buoy where we set the spitfire. The swell picked up as we cleared the island, and we were making 5/6 kts NNE as we knew from the forecast we had to head well north if we were to avoid the big area of light wind directly in our path to the Azores and Europe. In the afternoon I decided to have a go at fixing the motor driven pump which had never worked since we changed the engine, as it was not quite aligned properly, so I removed the mounting plate and remounted it in alignment. I then worked on the clutch handle and got it moving freely, and realised that the shaft was seized up. I doused it in oil and left it until the next day. I then went about fitting an alarm system as with single person watch keeping, being able to alert the sleeping crew whilst up on deck was of great importance. I removed the bell from the front of the tiger cage, and remounted it in the saloon, and managed to rig a rope which rang it. A lot easier said than done! The night sail was nice, starry and clear, but the wind dropped by midnight and we then motored for the next 24 hours. Not ideal, but a fairly easy start to the trip and the batteries all got a good charge. Day 2was sunny and hot. Plenty of by the wind sailors, and flying fish and dolphins. We motored with a light NW wind . The bottom switch in the pump system jammed a couple of times. Day 3 continued with the fair weather, we motor sailed into the evening, when I decided to change the diesel filter as the fuel transfer pump was struggling to pull fuel up from the main tanks to the day tank. I also managed to get the shaft spinning on the motor driven bilge pump, which was a great success. At 0400 I was trying to fill the day tank again, but with no joy, and it was apparent that the sediment in the bottom of he tank had once again blocked the ridiculously small brass taps which were at the bottom of the main tanks and fed the whole system. Finding a well placed flexible hose, I chanced my luck at removing it and giving a good blow, hoping to dislodge the muck. Diesel promptly flowed like the Nile onto the Israelites, as I struggled to reconnect all the hoses I had off. The pump duly did its job in quick time. Dawn broke with yesterdays cake and tea for breakfast, and we shut the motor off and sailed at 6kts plus with the staysail poled out. This increased to 8kts plus through most of the night. 

Day 4 was memorable because of a large s bend in our track. I pondered this a lot before I came to the conclusion that we had crossed a spiral arm offshoot of the Gulf Stream. Earlier in the night we had been traveling due east at a SOG of 8-10 kts. Later in the night we were headed NNE in a confused sea at 4 kts, before evening out onto our approximate course of before it all started at 6kts again. We managed to get a forecast from a tanker Apache, which was very detailed and let us know that the wind was going to rise in the next 48 hours. This led me to be content in our easterly course, as to have headed further north would have been to head us into more wind. We were mainly sailing dead downwind 2 reefs and staysail poles out in F4 winds. 

Day 5 dawned with us running under double reefed main and boomed out staysail, and at first light I noticed the staysail luff was loose. Upon investigation it turned out that the boom fitting had crippled itself and was all twisted and chewing into the bowsprit, and had snapped the tack lashing. The lashing was easy enough, but to stop the rest of it was impossible using the staysail boom as were doing, as the fitting could not take the compression. We were carrying a spar which we were going to use as a mizzen boom, which had been made by Eric in Canada, and I decided that out of all our options that converting one end of that to fit the spinaker pole bell fitting was the way forward. We duly started the generator, got the angle grinder going, and in a force 6 started to convert it. A couple of hours later, we were sailing along much more happily with the staysail on a much stouter pole, rigged much more simply and strongly, with the problem totally solved. The downside to the whole thing was that we would have to do a lot of work to be able to tack or gybe, which is what we ended up doing later in the night... There are still plenty of sailor jellyfish around, but the flying fish are now few and far between.  

Day 5 we sailed well with f4 westerly winds most of the day, still pretty fair weather, with shearwaters joining the by wind sailors as our constant companions.in the evening we hailed a passing tanker, Apache, who gave us a very detailed forecast, warning us of the wind rising in the next 48 hours.in the night we hove to at 0300 in F6 Northerlies, and we remained hove to until 1500 day 6, when the sea state looked sailable again, and we set off under double reefed main and staysail. We were broad reaching through a 5m sea, it was fast and exciting, with big breaking waves rearing up all around, but the sun was shining and we were making good miles Eastward. A big breaking wave crashed on deck breaking the retaining catch holding down the port side lazarette cover. This cover is just under the helmsman foot, so I managed to hold it down so as not to lose it. The second and third waves which did the same thing were a warning that it was time to settle down for the night, as it would be impossible for us to steer safely through the upcoming night. We hove to again, taking some time adjusting the sheets to make sure we were drifting in the manner I desired to withstand the upcoming blow. We secured everything on deck, then gathered in the tiger cage as dusk came, watching the good Anne Marie nosing her way up the big walls of grey Atlantic, get to the top almost always clear of the white water, then topple, glide or lurch her way down the back side of the wave into the trough below. A ship appeared from nowhere at a distance of approximately a mile off, crossing our bow from West to East. We called him on the vhf, and a very polite sounding oriental fellow gave a slow, but detailed forecast. I asked him if he had me on his radar, to which he replied 'No, but I have you on AIS'. Upon being informed that we had no AIS, he appeared a bit flustered, and had obviously passed us completely unaware of our prescence. An hour or so after our chat he called back again, broken but just readable, and wished us the very best of luck for our passage to the UK, I think genuinely a little concerned for our safety. By this time the wind and seas had risen enough that he was not the only one thinking the same thing. His forecast had been 35kts for the next 24 hours, just gale force, and a 6M sea. We had had a 2/3 m northerly swell for the last few days already, so this all added up together promised to be a fair spectacle. The peak in wind strength came in the 6 hours or so around midnight, at F8, dying off to a 7 until midday. That morning of day 7 was quite a magnificent day on the ocean, up to 30/40ft seas which were breaking heavily, and Anne Marie behaving herself beautifully climbing the hills again and again, with relative comfort on board. Although it was mainly a grey spectacle, there was an hour or so when it cleared turning the sea a rich deep blue, with the breaking crests white, and the tops of the waves turquoise blue where they rose the highest, and the watery light passed through them. The mainsheet had chafed on a redundant shackle on deck, which Oz removed, then I put a long splice in it before we set off sailing again at 1600. Day 8 saw us sail at good speeds through the night, in a slowly diminishing wind and sea. When Dawn broke cloudy we had a force 5 and a 2.5m each state. The bilge pump had missed again, the bottom float switch was suspect, and I was awakened from my bunk to the loud sloshing of water in the bilge. It was pre Dawn and upon opening the bilge hatch I was disappointed to see the water only 6" off the alternator. I had rigged a bilge pump system, (BMS), with two float switches which started when the top one was up, and stopped when the bottom one was down. To this I connected a little red light which I placed visible in the tiger cage, so the helm could always keep an eye on the leak rate. This varied from once an hour in calm conditions, pumping for about 3 minutes to clear the bilge, to about 5 minutes during very rough conditions. So, when the bottom float did not rise, the system failed, it was not observed that the light had not come on for a long while by the helm, and we were quite close to a critical situation. Was the leak rate still standard or had something changed due to the gale the previous day...? 'Oz, we've got a bilge full of water here mate.' 'Urggh' which was Ozs' standard grunt when arising from slumber, was soon followed by 'aargh shit!' as he leapt out of bed to peer down into the deep dark noisy bilge. He quickly darted for the hand pump, but as the water had not yet reached the electrics on the engine, and I had fortuitously fixed and remounted the engine pump, I said don't worry about that mate, let's start the engine eh? I'll take the peanut butter out (stuffed in the disconnected exhaust to stop water coming in...)and you go up top and do that end'. So we fired up the engine, threw the lever on the pump and watched the level quickly go down. Panic over, this motivated me to get to the bottom of the float switch issue, which I duly did a few days later. The wind continued in the NW and died through the day, when we were forced to start the motor by 1800. The wind continued to drop away to nothing, and in the swell the mainsail was violently lurching from side to side, no matter what we did to prevent it, so we ended up dropping the lot and lashing it down to the gallows, when we started on our way again, rolling along to some tunes underneath a beautiful clear sky.