Trans-Atlantic 10: LAND HO! (Alternate title: Sneak Attack!)

Barbados rose up over the horizon and into view at 1:25PM. I’ll be using local time from now on, which is GMT -4 just in case you care. It’s significant to us because it’s been like a countdown clock as we get closer and closer to home. Just a year ago today we were GMT+7, so a time zone per month average, not bad!

We were 17 miles east of the island at the time. Based on the first 20 days, it didn’t look like we had a hope of arriving before Monday but Neptune really took our “Longest Passage Ever” post to heart and we logged our two best days back to back. By the time we sighted Barbados it was looking like we would not only make it on Sunday, day 24, but we would make it just before sunset. It was the fastest, roughest day of the passage for sure. We had 30 knots behind us most of the day and night, and the swell had built up considerably. The average was probably 4 meters, but we would get a 6 or 7 chucked at us from time to time just to keep things exciting. Nothing like surfing down the face of a twenty footer at 12 knots to dispense with the need for caffeine. Apparently it had the opposite effect on Jaime, who decided that these were the perfect conditions for a nap.

Believe it or not we logged 158 miles yesterday using main only, no headsail. I was nervous about the southern point in these conditions but fortunately that turned out to be unwarranted. The wind held and as we adjusted our heading to wrap around the southern coast and started to creep up the beam. Soon it was at 120 degrees, the magic number which allows us to put the headsail in play. The swell got smaller and smaller as we moved further behind the protection of the island. By 4:00PM we had “sailors dream” conditions; 20 knots of wind just aft of the beam with no swell. We were light in the water since we had already burned up 23 days worth of victuals, water, diesel and the like. All this is to say that we hauled prodigious ass around the south western coastline. Jaime and I were both outside with stupid grins enjoying the best two hours of sailing we’ve had since encountering similar conditions leaving Tonga a few years ago. Slappy brought us screaming home in style and
with this last spurt actually beat the sunset. We came skidding around the corner, doused and packed the sails, tidied things up a little and made for shore.

At exactly 6:00PM we approached the “Careenage” on the northern end of Carlisle Bay and heard shouts from shore. “Ahoy Slapdash!” were the Canadian accented words being carried over the water. There on shore shouting and waving were Jaime’s Dad Ken and his wife Pam. They were waving us down into the harbour now and shouting “berth four on your left”. So we trundled further into the narrow little harbour and watched Pam and Ken run along the sea wall. True to their word, half way up and on the left we found a vacant spot on the seawall underneath of a little number 4 and at the feet of two people that had travelled all the way here from Squamish B.C. to catch our lines, save me from spending my first night here in the clinker, and bring us burgers. Yep, burgers.

A few minutes later we had our lines squared away, were clinking plastic champagne glasses, and scarfing down the best tasting burgers imaginable. Jaime and I were a bit shell shocked to say the least. The roars and whoosh of traffic replaced the roar and whoosh of wind and wave. We weren’t moving. Barbadians walked along the seawall and said things like “welcome to Barbados”. Pam and Ken were sitting in our freaking settee!

After 24 days of nothing but this boat, each other, water, wind and wave this was all alot to take in. Happily the burgers and spicy potato wedges were a lot to take in too, so I did the honourable thing and finished Jaime and Pam’s wedges.

Tale of the tape:

• We sailed 2800 nautical miles in 24 days from Las Palmas to Barbados (average 116.6 miles/day)
• We used 40 gallons of diesel (average 70 miles to the gallon)
• 60 gallons of fresh water (1.25 gallons per person per day)
• 20 pounds of LPG
• We played a role in the assisted suicide of 28 flying fish and 1 squid
• Made and consumed 36 servings of soup
• Flicked 200 trivia cards overboard
• Jaime puked once
• Listened to 3 audio books (Treasure Island, World War Z, Robopocalypse)
• 192 watch cycles (96 each)
• Sighted 4 vessels; three commercial one sail (average 1 sighting each 48 watch cycles )

So there you have it. Today I’m off to face the music. Pam and Ken are here right now, they’ve suspiciously offered to babysit Slapdash. I’m beginning to suspect a set-up. Pam is the only person that’s had personal contact with the officials, assuring me that I won’t be arrested when I turn up with an expired passport. Now they’re here offering to take care of the boat?

Things that make you go hmmm…

Trans-Atlantic 9: A post-before-the-post entitled “Land Ho!”

I woke up this morning as usual for my 6AM shift. A big 5 meter swell has rolled in from the N-NNE so we’re on the Slapdash roller coaster again. I went for my morning bow pee and provided naval burial at sea ceremonies on the way for 4 fallen flyers. Everything appeared to be in order topside so I came back to the cockpit and checked on our overnight progress. I guess we insulted the Atlantic with our comments in the last post because it’s making up for lost time. Fine by me! We averaged 5.8 knots for the past 24 hours which means we’ll put 140 miles behind us, our best Atlantic day yet. One more like that and we will be in Barbados tomorrow night.

By then the sun was up so I came inside and read a few pages of War and Peace. Right now the rich Russians are retreating from Moscow. Alexeyevich is doing some stuff with Bolkonsky in Torzhok while Napolean runs around clicking his heals saying “Zut Alor!” or something like that. I decided that working behind the toilette would be more fun so went and pumped out the float-tank, still appreciating the irony that something on our boat called a ‘float-tank’ keeps filling up with water and threatening to sink us.

Float-tank emptied and toilette cover back in place I went outside and pulled out our last jerry can of fresh water. I topped off our 5 gallon jug of drinking water that we keep in the tool shed by the galley (one of those kitchen jobbies with a hand pump on the top) and poured what was left over into our starboard main tank. After that I dug all of the jerry cans out of the starboard lazarette and poured the dregs in each into the tank as well. There are 5 jugs and each had a half gallon to a gallon of fresh water so in total we squeezed out another couple of gallons. I checked the main tank and was pleased to see that we scraped together a quarter of a tank, maybe 7 gallons. The port side is completely empty now but this 7 gallons and the drinking water in the tool shed should easily last 3 or 4 days.

After that I shaved my head. This was accomplished by laying face down on the settee facing aft (feet towards the bulkhead). I put an old towel down to catch the clippings, plugged the clippers into our little yellow 12V converter and went to town. Hairless once again I went outside, sat on the top starboard side transom step and poured buckets of sea water over my head again and again. I lathered, rinsed and repeated. I towelled off, shaved, brushed my teeth and woke up Jaime for her 9AM shift.

While Jaime wandered around getting oriented I checked the LPG. Our conservation program seems to be doing well, the tank was heavier than I expected. This was shaping up to be a good day and we celebrated our good fortunes with a big breakfast. I scrambled up our last two eggs with salt pepper and parmesan cheese. We’d been saving a pack of bacon which saw the pan this morning, which I rounded off with some sliced potatoes with mushrooms (canned) and diced onion. Then we washed the whole thing down with a cup of coffee for me, tea for Jaime. Decadent!

Despite our friend Kerry’s opinion that the embassy has not returned our messages because they are:

“busy cleaning out your cell after the seventeen Haitian refugees that were living in it up until yesterday were repatriated”…

… we have had some indication that I may not be going to jail immediately upon our arrival. Pam has been working on this from Vancouver and sent a message to us yesterday stating that she had finally been able to get through to someone from the embassy that was really nice and claimed to have knowledge of us. Pam made her pinkie swear to tell somebody at immigration not to arrest me and has since received confirmation that she did. So we’re really grateful for the shore support and we’ll see how all of this ends soon enough. If it works Pam gets a spot in the Slapdash hall of fame and I will consider the iSatphone Pro to have totally paid for itself.

We also received confirmation that Jaime’s mom Laurell will be arriving in Barbados on January 26th. She hasn’t been out to the boat since we snuck her in as Jaime’s surprise birthday present in Jamaica so we’re both excited about her visit. Speaking of visits we’ve had several threats which must have something to do with the Canadian winter and our new proximity. We have a new policy of not reporting any potential visits until flights have been confirmed though so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Have I mentioned that our toilette is leaking from the hand pump and now smells like a shrimp cocktail left out in the sun? The leak will be no trouble, I have a rebuild kit. A freshwater flush with a bit of bleach will take care of the smell. Would hate to arrive in Barbados and have to enjoy myself or something. Fortunately a new list has already begun to materialize, such is boat life. Paperwork, bureaucracy and toilette repairs are lurking just around the corner to keep me from getting bored.

Meanwhile the wind is windy. The sun is sunny. There are signs of civilization here and there, a passenger ship, garbage, a bird. So I think we’re heading in the right direction.

Trans-Atlantic 8: The Longest Passage Ever

Today was significant for two reasons.

First; it’s the last day of work for my old boss. This is such a big deal that news of the event made it all the way out here to the mid-Atlantic. Back when I had a job Dale got me on my way and was there for all the key moments. Count me among the many who would say they worked for him as much as they did the company. Congratulations Dale and good luck… dink!

Second; this is officially our longest passage ever. We’ve been at sea for 22 days now. Our latest estimate has us arriving Sunday night or early Monday morning, still 3 days away.

We’ve had some uncomfortable swell but more often than not have been frustrated only by the impotent wind. There’s been little traffic, more stars than night most nights, and even the squalls we’ve encountered have provided a nice boost and fresh water rinse.

It was cold for the first week as we dropped in latitude, but that quickly changed. Now a t-shirt keeps us warm enough on night watch. Based on all previous experience we expected to be out here between 18 and 20 days, but we’re going to be 25% longer than the outside estimate. The Galapagos to Marquesas passage was longer (in mileage) and we completed that in 20 days, but a quick glance at the log book shows plenty of 160 mile days a few 170 mile days and even a 180 mile day (double reefed!).
That’s a far cry from this Trans-Atlantic at 110 to 120 miles a days and our best a lousy 133!

The passage has been an overwhelming cakewalk, laughable in simplicity with only a few logistical challenges brought on by its longevity (water, LPG, expired passport). Should we care? Apart from being confined to our cell for an additional 5 days does it really matter? We reluctantly say no, it does not. In fact ‘low mileage high comfort’ is easier on the boat and crew, arguments in its favour are easy to come by.

We give this slow but steady passage a begrudging two thumbs up and only wonder why our thumbs aren’t more enthusiastic.

Have you ever had the opportunity to watch a complete transition of night to day? I don’t mean just watching a sunrise either I’m talking from the weigh in, live footage of fanatics outside the stadium, anthems, main event, speeches, trophies and post –game show; the whole package. If you haven’t then it’s something to try. Stare up at the shimmering white stars, all the way through a cold pre-dawn grey until the sun redefines everything; the view, the temperature, the weather, your thoughts and mood.

We know when it’s time to set the clocks back based on the sunrise, but before we do it’s still the dead of night at 6AM. When Jaime gets me up on one of these days it’s the perfect opportunity to sit through the whole transition. It’s not life changing or anything like that (‘cold and boring’ could fairly describe the experience as well) but there is some magic in it. If you decide to try it here are some considerations.

Pack a thermos containing your favourite hot caffeinated boozy beverage, and plenty of layers and a blanket. You will be surprised at how cold you get just sitting there.
I prefer no music so that your mind and mood can drift around uninfluenced by a playlist, but we have a built in nautical soundtrack and no distractions for a couple thousand miles. If you are dealing with traffic or barking dogs then an iPod might be the perfect accessory.

Most importantly you need a comfortable place to sit with an unobstructed view of the horizon. Get as far away from ambient light pollution as you can. I hate to say it but probably should; make sure you’re facing east. If I need to tell you why then you are probably an ARC participant and need to be concentrating on chewing your food slowly and not reading this.

We’ve been going through these clumps and fields of sea grass for the past week. It’s a bit weird really. I would pull the line in, clear the weeds off the lures, throw it back out and watch it catch another clump 30 seconds later. I weighted the lures and still caught grass. For 4 or 5 days straight every single time I checked the line we would be doing nothing but towing some bloody clump of sea salad back to Barbados. It got to the point that I started to wonder if this could have something to do with our lousy mileage. I finally got fed up, pulled in our lines and conceded defeat. Chalk one up for the predator fish.

Flying fish are another story though. We continue to kill them in prodigious volume every night.

With a following wind it’s best to pee off the bow.

Every morning on my way up there I gather up the dead and fling them back into the sea. I scan the horizon while peeing off the bow then complete a little inventory of sails, lines and rigging while I’m up there. I take the leeward side on the way back and clear the dead off that side of the deck. It’s not always flying fish either; we had our first squid the other day. These are even worse than the fish which leave only scales and the occasional wing. Squid on the other hand leave a nice big blotch of dried ink on the deck.

You have to wonder how incredibly surprised these guys must be. I mean, what are the odds? It would be like you or me diving off a boat in the middle of the ocean only to land on a submarine. It’s probably one of those surprising facts; right now I bet there’s a squid at a party trying to impress its friends by telling them that more of them die each year by randomly jumping onto a boat than are eaten by sharks.

So that line in the last post in front of the sunrise was of the mainsheet. You can tell because there were several lines in the shot indicating multiple purchases and the mainsheet is the only multi-purchase line on our boat. If you were especially clever you may have deduced that since we are heading west, and that it was a sunrise shot then the picture must have been taken facing aft and in all likelihood from the cockpit, and if you were in our cockpit facing aft you would be looking straight at the mainsheet.

Congratulations to someone! Only a couple hundred miles to go now, it won’t be long before we can see your comments and tally up all the beers we owe.

Trans-Atlantic 7: Viking Vegetables

Getting a little artistic with today’s sunrise shot. Actually that was the last we saw of the sun for most of the morning. A succession of squalls followed which has blotted it out until now, a couple of hours past lunchtime. The squalls were the first we’ve seen on the passage and didn’t amount to much; A couple scuttled past south of us, the two that did run us over only had 25 knots of wind. Far from being unwelcome, the well mannered guests didn’t show up empty handed and brought some fresh water to the party. I was thrilled to see the salt crust and Saharan dirt that had built up over the past weeks streaming off the deck and down the scuppers. While Jaime kept a weather eye at the helm I did my best to help things along by running around in the rain happily scrubbing away with the deck brush.

We spent a couple of days being whisked along by 30 knot winds after that last post. The wind pushed up a sizeable swell behind us (north east) which eventually combined forces with some north westerly swell pushed down to our latitude by some distant storm. This resulted in a 4-5 meter soup pot. We were like a nerdy new kid being pushed back and forth between two big playground bullies. The conditions weren’t dangerous, and we were happy to finally be making decent mileage, but they bred no enthusiasm for fiddling around with the laptop or sat phone. Keeping the boat in order, the care and feeding of crew, and trying to sleep monopolized our time which is why you haven’t heard from us in a few days.

It’s tough to take on anything non-essential in weather like that so once it settled and the swell flattened out we spent a day straightening out the boat. We cleaned out our sea berth (aft port cabin), shook out all the bedding, re-made the bed and put away the pile of dirty clothes. We had collected a pail of fresh water which I used to clean all of the salt out of the cockpit and wash the windows. We cover the settee with sheets for long passages to keep the inevitable salty feet, spills and sweaty backs off the cushions so those needed to be removed, shaken out and rebuilt as well. We ran the engine for a couple hours to top up the batteries, reduced and compressed the contents of our two garbage cans, swept the floors, and had a bath at the end of the day. It was a day well spent, the boat looks great and it made for a huge lift in morale.
There have been a few significant Trans-Atlantic milestones worthy of mention as well. First of all we finally finished working south. Slapdash met the 15th degree of latitude at 40 where we adjusted course to a predominantly westerly heading (267T). So now we’re running along latitude 15, pointed straight at Barbados and this is as far south as we go; it’s all uphill for the remainder of this trip.

We started and finished ‘Treasure Island’ to get in the Caribbean mood and it worked. We`ve been yo-ho-ho’ing ever since. What a great book. Speaking of books Jaime finished War and Peace! Can you believe it? This is probably a good time to mention that even though it’s not quite official yet, this will in fact be the longest voyage of our whole trip. I’ll probably have time to finish the damned book as well. I had hoped to interview Jaime for this piece to find out if she agreed with the inset which proclaims it “the greatest novel in any language” but she’s sleeping right now.

We finished ‘Weeds’, the Showtime series about a drug dealing soccer mom and were disappointed in the third season. In other news we finally ran out of dainty diva vegetables (cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce and what-not) and are down to hearty Viking vegetables like cabbage, onions, garlic and potatoes. Their ruggedness is inspiring. If you had to pick the vegetable most likely to drunkenly cross the Atlantic in an open boat to raid and pillage new lands, it would have to be the bad ass cabbage in a horned hat every time.

Last milestone; we’re on a three digit passage now. Woo-hoo! Now counting down hundreds of miles instead of thousands and it’s a good thing too, I just changed out the propane tank the other day. Either we used more gas than usual or the LPG wizard gave us a light fill. Either way we only got 17 days out of the tank instead of the usual 21. There’s a small reserve that we use to keep the fridge running while we fill the other two tanks which is hooked up now. There’s probably only enough for a few days though, so now we are gas rationing which means that we only run the fridge 12 hours per day, we pre-cooked all of the meat in the freezer in one shot and will eat it cold, and no more coffee or tea. Hopefully these drastic measures will stretch the dregs out long enough to reach Barbados which, by the way, should be on this coming Sunday or Monday.

Regarding fresh water, up to this point we’ve just been conservative with our use which has always worked for us. Now we’re getting into what was formerly called our reserve so have been forced into getting a little more strategic with our usage. If our tanks do go dry we still have a week’s worth of drinking water which is kept separate so we’re not going to run out but we are paying more attention now.

So that’s food, water and LPG which just leaves diesel of which we have stores sufficient for approximately 60 hours of motoring. It’s not a lot but more than enough to keep the batteries topped up, get us into port, or out of trouble.

We saw a sail on the horizon approximately 5 or 6 miles north 2 days ago. At that distance it was just a tiny little white triangle getting lost between swells but well within radio range. We tried hailing them on the VHF but they either had it shut off, were listening to their iPod, or just didn’t want to talk to us. Their heading appeared to be a few degrees north of ours and before nightfall they had disappeared over the horizon, we’re not sure if they even saw us.

That same night at 2:45AM I heard a clink from somewhere up on deck. It’s the kind of sound that you would laugh at if I had a recording because behind the symphony of wind, wake, slamming of waves, groaning of lines, whistling of rigging, and the million other creaks, splashes, clunks, thumps, clanks, beeps, whirs and whooshes our humble clink would be all but lost. After weeks on passage, and years on a boat there are just sounds you hear and sounds you don’t hear. We’ve heard the million sounds above for years now and have every single one of them mentally catalogued. Once in a while one of the less frequent sounds (like “greee-onch”) makes an appearance. Jaime and I might take pause, look at each other for a moment before saying something like “ah, spinnaker halyard rubbing where we’ve tied it down” at exactly the same time. And actually as she read this post she even said, ‘hey do you mean the gree-onch of the spinnaker halyard?’ It is an amazing thing but ask any sailor and they will tell you the same. So this tiny clink gets me out on deck in the middle of the night with a flashlight because it just doesn’t belong. It takes a couple of minutes but soon I notice that a gate clip (?) which fastens the headsail to the roller furler had failed. The clink was the sound of the steal ring at the bottom of the luff end of the headsail whacking the forestay. It wasn’t hard to imagine the luff line being torn out of the furler track with the next gust of wind so I got Jaime up (perfect timing for her 3AM shift) and once she was in the cockpit went forward with a small line and temporarily secured the sail. Once there I saw that spring and pin had fallen out of the gate clip rendering it useless. I detached the clip from furler and brought it inside and after a bit of digging struck pay dirt in the form of a perfect sized nut and bolt to act as prosthetic limb for the lost pin. Back up on the pitching deck armed with clip, improvised pin, and appropriate tools, I completed the impromptu nocturnal project. Jaime finished her watch and I was lulled to sleep by all of our familiar creaks, splashes, clunks, thumps, clanks, beeps, whirs and whooshes.

Last night at about the same time we had a very different auditory adventure. Jaime came inside to wake me up for my midnight shift and told me to just listen for a minute before I got up. Seconds later I heard the pod of dolphins singing to us through the hull. They sound just like the sensor that Hollywood guy in the yellow haz-mat suit has when he’s checking for a radiation leak. Outside you couldn’t hear or see a thing but our little sea berth seemed to amplify their every little wheee, brrrr, click and whistle.

The broken furler clip story really challenged my sailing terminology ( I even had to break out the Chapman’s Guide). To win today’s “cold beer on the Slapdash” contest I’m going to challenge yours. Take a look at the sunrise picture in this post and to win rights to your very own free cold beer on Slapdash identify and correctly name that line!

Trans-Atlantic 6: Don’t fear the reaper

Almost immediately after finishing that last post the wind shifted and wing and wing would no longer work. The wind shifted to an uncooperative angle making it too sharp for wing and wing but not sharp enough for a broad reach. We furled the now useless head sail and when the wind dropped to 6 knots we had no choice but to start up the engine again. We weren’t thrilled about that development but when we downloaded a new GRIB file from McBoob it lifted our spirits. If the forecast is correct we will have 15 knots by Thursday afternoon and 20 by Friday. We’ve been enjoying our pleasure cruise but are both ready for some proper trade winds and some proper mileage.

With all these 110 mile days we might as well be in a mono-hull!

We decided the good news called for a celebration so we made reservations at the most exclusive restaurant within a thousand miles. Worried that we wouldn’t get a table on such short notice we resorted to name dropping. I hate to do that but what’s the point of owning the place if you can’t get a little special treatment now and again right? Their veranda is celebrated for its immaculate and unobstructed sunset views so we reserved a table and timed our arrival to take full advantage. Although seafood is the specialty of the house and the Dorado is in season they were all sold out so we opted for the sweet and sour chicken over coconut rice. Service was good, food was excellent and the view? Unbeatable.

Yesterday I finally rigged up a couple of hand lines. I gave away my rod and reel in Turkey in favour of a simplistic yet effective hand line set-up. I haven’t really done any serious fishing since Australia so this turned out to be quite a project. Getting the lines, shock cords, leaders and lures organized took a few hours but before dinner I had two lines out each with three pink squid lures. So far we’ve caught nothing but sea grass but once the wind sets in we should be moving along a little quicker, which all of our favourite predators seem to like.

Our latest estimate has us arriving on January 22nd; 3 days after my passport expires. Arriving in a country with an expired passport will be a new experience for me. Hopefully I won’t end up like that guy Tom Hanks played in the movie who had to live in the airport because he wasn’t officially allowed to arrive or leave. We’ve got some potential visitors lined up which is good because if I end up in jail at least there will be someone to help Jaime sail the boat home. I’ve advised the Canadian Embassy in Barbados of the situation and asked for their advice but haven’t heard anything yet. I’m sure this isn’t the first time it’s happened so am hoping they can issue some temporary permit to get me in while I sort out a new passport.

We haven’t seen another boat for a week or so, not even an AIS hit. Two nights ago at 3AM I was sleeping and Jaime was on watch. All of a sudden the VHF starts blaring Taylor Swift at her. Apparently this is some kind of American Country pop princess crap. The song was Romeo and Juliet and it was accompanied by a bunch of indecipherable French gibberish. It’s a strange ocean.

Even more alarming than ghostly nocturnal broadcasts of shitty country-pop was the visit we received from the sinister hooded reaper of flying fish, also known as death. Jaime has harboured an irrational fear of flying fish for quite some time now so imagine how scary it must have been for her to find the scaled harvester of little fishy souls in our cockpit. I consider it a good omen. If we have the fish reaper in our cockpit it can only mean that we are about to catch a fish right? Fortunately we did manage to get a couple of pictures. This is pretty scary stuff so viewer’s discretion is advised. I’ll try to post them here later, but for now go to HYPERLINK “http://www.facebook.com/theslapdash” www.facebook.com/theslapdash to check them out.

Here’s a disgusting phenomenon that you would only know about if you have taken part on a long ocean passage on a small boat. After about ten days at sea something strange happens; your feet shed dead skin like a leprous snake. There’s no warning either. It’s like a bunch of bananas or avocados that all ripen on exactly the same day. I’m not sure if it’s the lack of walking, the salt water or what, but one day everything is normal and the next, bang, your foot skin is sloughing off. As gross as this sounds there is an upshot. You get them wet, and give them a scrub with a towel or something and afterwards your feet are brand new. I’m sure that this is some kind of spa service that people pay big bucks for at home. All we had to do to get the exact same result for free was sell everything we owned to buy a boat and spend 5 years at sea… ha ha, in your face 30 dollar spa treatment!

Are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet?

Trans-Atlantic 5: Hair today, gone tomorrow.

Although I’ve never tried it, apparently you can tell the temperature by adding 32 to the number of times a cricket chirps in 14 seconds!

We still have no way of knowing who is winning the Slapdash trivia contests or even if anyone is playing, but we’re looking forward to finding out once we get to Barbados.

Today is Tuesday January 10th and conditions have not changed over the past five days. Light wind right behind us. We have been winged out now for five days straight, a new Slapdash record.

Lubberish readers may not know why that is significant so I’ll take a stab at explaining; Wing and wing involves setting the headsail and main straight out on opposite sides of the boat. Open a book in front of you. Imagine each page facing you is a sail and the spine is our mast. Not perfect but that’s the basic idea.

This configuration works only when the wind is right behind you and there’s not much room for error. If the wind shifts or the boat is rolling sails will luff and the boom can crash around. It’s hard on sails and rigging and because of its inherent awkwardness can be dangerous if a squall kicks up. There are things you can do to give yourself a little more breathing room (rig a preventer line on the boom, pole out the headsail etc) but without getting into all of that just remember that wing and wing is a finicky and kind of ugly sail configuration.

As previously mentioned, we need the wind right behind us at 180 degrees. We get maybe 5 degrees leeway on either side before it becomes more trouble than it’s worth, so out of 360 possible degrees of wind direction, we have a 10 degree margin. That’s a 2.7 percent chance of getting wind that’s workable for this configuration if maintaining your course. We’ve been doing exactly that for 5 days straight with no end in sight, kind of amazing. So our wind is light but merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along.

In regards to our communications; this is the first time we’ve used our phone for data so we expected to do a little trouble shooting. Over the past week I’ve spoken to the people that manage the satellites and the people that distribute the phones and sell the air time. Yesterday to round things off I spoke to the people that build and maintain the software and servers that complete the hoop and enable satellites, laptops, and handsets to cooperate with each other. A helpful fellow named Jeremy got us sorted out and cleared a corrupt file off our account on the server which enabled things to start flowing again. Too techy? How’s this; our com lines were constipated, Jeremy gave them an enema, things are quite regular now. The only reason I bring this up is that the enema dislodged 4 or 5 days worth of transmissions that were backed up. So all at once they went flying off to their destinations. Their destinations included our daily position reports and news feed on the homepage, the slapdash facebook page, these logs and various messages to friends and family. This may have caused some disruptions to the chronological order of things and for that we apologize.

Going forward I will date our position reports, starting with this one:
1/10/12 @ 18:00GMT 17.28.62N 35.16.72W Wind 10k Waves 1-2M ENE

Hey, you know what’s really cool about that position report? We’ve crossed over the half way mark of our voyage! To celebrate I offered up my passage beard to Neptune. Normally behaviour like that is reserved for equator crossings, but it was getting really itchy and we both forgot what my chin looked like. How do you like the before and after shot, should I grow it back or keep it short?

This morning I got up and went to the gym, which is to say, the cockpit. I’ve incorporated a light fitness routine into the daily grind to keep from feeling too lethargic. Inventing ways to exercise on the boat takes a little creativity but with some imagination you can get a pretty decent workout. After that I woke Jaime up for her 9-12 shift with a mango and green tea smoothie. This is a recipe Jaime picked up from her mom. She had the foresight to throw some mango slices in the freezer before we left and it was delicious. A mango, some green tea, a cup of plain yogurt, a scoop of protein powder and Bob’s your uncle. I froze the green tea in an ice cube tray which… okay, enough. First soup now smoothies? I’ve taken on a lot of the galley work and have apparently gone Mount Gay.

We’ve started working on our Caribbean tans now, 17 degrees is a pretty agreeable climate. Will, the tattoo guy, read us the riot act before we left about protecting our new pieces and we’re inclined to follow his orders even though he’s a thousand miles away. I cut the toes out of a sock and pull it up my arm to wear like a big arm band and Jaime has been keeping sunny side up in order to keep her back protected.

So the float tank project is off the table. Jaime’s mom forwarded us a message from Ted (the guy we bought the boat from) to our super top secret classified sat phone mail account. He pointed out that although plugging the hole may prevent water from getting in, that it would also prevent it from getting out. I hadn’t really thought of that. We’re not taking water over the deck though and I think that apart from the vent hole the sail locker is water tight, but better to play it safe. I am totally happy to have a valid reason to put this job off until we are at anchor in Barbados, and not only that now there’s someone to blame if we sink. Thanks Ted!

The trivia questions are coming from a big brick of cards Jaime picked up somewhere. They belong to a board with pieces and dice but that all got tossed. When we are bored we each take 20-30 cards and ask each other the questions. The right answer gets you another card, the wrong answer means it’s the other persons turn. Every once in a while we come across something really interesting like whales sleeping vertically and share it with you. The first person to get through all their cards wins.
The best part about the game is flinging all the used cards overboard when we are finished. The worst part is that our friendly wagers generally include things like “loser does the dishes” or “I get an extra 15 minutes off my next watch”… and I keep losing. You do what you can to pass the time.

Since we didn’t play today, I’ll leave you with a joke instead:

A chicken and the egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette and looking pretty relaxed with a satisfied grin. The egg is clearly annoyed and says angrily: well I guess that answers that question.

Trans-Atlantic 4: South of 20!

Whales sleep vertically: True!

Columbus’ three ships were registered as the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria: False!

Since we have no way of viewing comments right now we will have to wait until Barbados to find out who won. It’s kind of strange actually, we are sending out these daily location reports, updates to facebook.com/theslapdash and these log entries but it’s like a one way mirror. The sat phone acts like a dial up modem from the nineties. We have enough bandwidth to send out and receive a little text, and the occasional low res picture (you should be seeing one on each of these updates). Any kind of web activity is out of the question, totally impractical and would cost a fortune. Air time on the satellite phone isn’t cheap, so we would like to thank everyone who has donated to the site and enabled these real time updates from the middle of the ocean.

Even with sat credit you still wouldn’t be reading this if it wasn’t for IT guru Shannon (Endeavour Arts on Friends and Sponsors page) who set up this email update thing for us and manually intervenes to trouble shoot and publish each post.

While we are thanking people, our own weather personality from Calgary (Jeff) gets props for sending us daily reports. He has never been wrong (forecast 10-15 ENE somewhere in the Atlantic with no date or location and you are going to be right 100% of the time) and has been getting up early every day and getting on line to email us GRIB files before he goes to work in the morning. There is a TV weather personality in Calgary named Dhar McBoole (or something to that effect) so Jeff has become Dhar McBoob, or more frequently just McBoob. It may be a big bra to fill, but even so Jeff managed to enlist a back-up Boob while he was away over the holidays. We would be remiss not to thank Mike McByrom-Boob for filling out, I mean in.

Since our mainsail had been out of action due to a lack of wind I had plenty of time to notice the strap that attaches the sail to a slider (car?) that fits into the mast had chaffed through. The strap had chaffed before so when we took the sail down in Thailand I had them make an indestructible one made of 4 layers of thick nylon webbing sewn together. Nothing on a boat is indestructible. So I cut out the chaffed piece and after trying out 3 or 4 different replacements finally settled on a stainless shackle which should do the trick for a while.

The wind finally filled in at 9PM on Friday night, about 6 hours after that last post. It wasn’t much but it would have to do. Since then, going on 48 hours now, we’ve been running wing and wing with 8-12 knots right behind us. We are only getting 110 miles a day which is painfully slow, but on the other hand we are getting a totally comfortable chilled out ride and most importantly; not motoring. We did have some funky swell roll in today though. Things are a little confused at the moment and its harshing our mellow a little. Fortunately Jaime managed to get in a little quality time in the hammock before things got too rolly.

This morning I cleared 4 dead flying fish off the deck. Every so often somebody will tell us how good they taste, and whenever they do I think to myself “okay, next passage I’m going to try it” but when I’m out here and like this morning peel one of these stiffs off the deck I change my mind. I’m sure they are great but it somehow seems weird to pick up a fish off the deck and eat it. Speaking of dead fish, we have eaten out enough room in the fridge to store some fillets now and I’m craving a fresh fish taco so I think I’ll rig up some lines this afternoon.

Last night we had a pizza and weeds night. Weeds is a show about a suburbanite drug dealing soccer mom, quality stuff. We’ve blown through two seasons already and only have one left so we may have to consider pacing ourselves. Despite the pizza we have actually been eating really healthy on the passage so far. Loads of vegetables, no alcohol, hookers or blow. I’ve been taking my vitamins even day and unintentionally cut out coffee for some reason, just sort of forgot about it or something. So these days Slapdash is like a floating rehab center or a Mormon boat without even the fun of plural marriages. We had been piling it on pretty heavily from Ibiza to Las Palmas so in fairness it’s probably a good thing, besides all this abstinence is just going to make us appreciate falling off the wagon so much more once we get to the Caribbean.

Sorry no updates on the float tank yet, we are still slowly sinking. In the calm following conditions the amount of water I pump out of there each morning has been dramatically reduced. In my mind this lends support to my sail locker seal theory and one of these days I will get around to plugging the vent hole to be certain. I should probably be more excited about this, but the job involves emptying the contents of the sail locker (no insignificant amount of stuff) onto the deck before climbing inside to plug the hole. You can see why so far I’ve chosen the 60 second morning pump out ritual.

So we have been out here for 10 days now. I’m off to rig up a couple of hand lines and harvest us a Mahi Mahi, or maybe even a nice Yellow Fin Tuna. In the meantime:

You can tell the temperature by adding 32 to the number of times a cricket chirps in 14 seconds.

True or false?

Trans-Atlantic 3: Becalmed!

Here’s the picture I mentioned in the last post, the one of Jaime all bundled up. Notice that she’s even got her coyote mittens on so you know it must be cold. Actually I take that back they’re not a reliable temperature indicator at all, she’s always looking for an excuse to wear them.

So we’ve been motoring for the last 36 hours now. It seems really weird to have no wind in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but there you go. The word ‘becalmed’ seems to have inherited negative connotations. Maybe it’s from those stories dating back to the golden age of sail when they would reduce rations and throw prisoners, slaves and horses overboard. Or maybe it’s from the modern day accounts of people going bat shit after 2 weeks of sensory deprivation.

In any case being becalmed has been vilified for long enough and we here at Slapdash feel compelled to present another side. Let’s put an end to these unfair generalizations…

Here are our top ten reasons why being becalmed is fun!

• Running the engine supports the economy and pisses off the purists
• Less diesel = less weight; so we go faster…if we had wind
• Constant power supply to write top ten lists and watch HBO series’
• No wind = calm seas and deep sleeps
• Eliminates pesky sail wear and tear
• Our engine produces a cherished hot water supply
• You get to go swimming
• No annoying accidental jibes
• Great excuse for taking longer to cross the Atlantic than friends in mono-hulls

And the number one reason why being becalmed is fun:

You don’t have to hold your girlfriends hair back while she pukes!

Here’s the scenario; we have 6 days worth of diesel. We will keep half that in reserve for landfall on the other side of the Atlantic which means we get to chug around out here looking for wind for a total of 3 days. Since we’ve already been at it for a day and a half we either have to find wind before Sunday morning, or shut down the engine and subject ourselves to Neptune’s good grace.

Thanks to Jaime’s stellar preparations our food supply has been excellent and we continue to work through the fresh stuff. We have water for at least another 3 weeks, and enough LPG to last the same. After that we’ve got plenty of canned goods. Patience is a virtue.

For some reason I imagined that the Atlantic would have had a little more traffic, but we saw our first ship since leaving the Canaries only yesterday. This was the 292 meter CPO Asia, a cargo ship bound for Saldanha Bay, South Africa. Funny thing is that even though it’s the first ship we’ve seen in a week it was heading straight for us and needed to change course.

That’s it for today; I have to get back to growing my good luck passage beard now. I am going to leave you with two statements though. One of them is true and one is false. The first person to guess which one is which without using Google gets a free beer on Slapdash:

1. Whales sleep vertically.
2. Columbus’ (who’s route we’re following right now) three ships were registered as the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

Trans-Atlantic 2: Bird Brains!

As of right now we are officially one week into our Trans-Atlantic passage.

We finally broke the 2000 miles to go mark at some point this morning, very exciting business indeed. I am also declaring my head cold officially dead and gone. This is good news for everyone because for the first few days I was a miserable mucus making machine. If we run out of toilette paper before we reach Barbados I will probably have to take the blame. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but in the meantime I can’t tell you what a relief it is not to be sneezing, coughing, drugging and draining every day. I generally assume the roles of chief cook and bottle washer for the first few days while Jaime gets her sea legs and can’t imagine she was thrilled to have a sniffling chef cooking dinner with a snot rag in one hand and a piece of chicken in the other.

I was equally unimpressed doing, well anything besides sleeping really and may have lost it once while trying to make a stir fry. I’m sure Jaime would love to elaborate but since I’m doing the writing here we’ll just keep it matter of fact; I always hated that pan and maintain that it really needed to be thrown overboard; a non-stick for Neptune. We are a boat better off without it. Stir fry turned out okay though.

We had our first bird visitor yesterday. He didn’t stay long enough to get a name or a nest but Jaime did get a pretty good picture of him hanging out on our backstay. If you’ve been following us on past passages you will know that this happens from time to time. We realized at some point that they are generally bad luck though; their arrival heralds some kind of calamity. We shared the insight with Pontus recently and he readily agreed. Apparently this is common knowledge to Swedish sailors who believe that a freeloading bird trying to hitch a ride should be shooed away immediately. Still we didn’t have the heart. Now there’s no wind and I’m sitting here listening to our engine throb away wondering if that bastardly unnamed bird is to blame.

So we’re slowly making our way southwest. Hopefully by the time I am ready to send this Jeff will have a new forecast for us with good news in it. Our current plan is to continue on this course (240T) eventually passing the Cape Verdes a few hundred miles to their NW, then on down to 15N and 40W, or until we find the trade winds, hook a right and point it straight at Barbados. We were 29 degrees north in Gran Canary where we started from, and I don’t care what the brochures say about their “perpetual spring climate”, it was freezing. For the first five days we were under 4 layers of fleece and gortex, gloves, caps (toques), socks, shoes… the works. Now we’re finally able to go outside without all of our foul weather gear and can feel it getting just a little warmer each day. We can’t wait to be sweating profusely while complaining about the heat. I’ve got a good picture of Jaime all bundled up but will have to try and use it next time. Any more than one picture and the sat phone gets a little cranky. That’s why the pictures are so small as well.

A positive note about the slow passage, we’ll both have time to read War And Peace. Actually I’m not sure if that can rightly be called a positive. Don’t ask me, Jaime started it. Some kind of stunt I think. It’s two massive volumes and she’s already finished the first one and onto the second. So out of curiosity I picked up volume one and my take so far is that it sounds to me like the early 19th century powdered wig Russians deserved to have their asses kicked by Napoleon. I’m only on page 281 though, so stay tuned this opinion could change.

We discovered soup (Soup? Wow. Could this be my best log ever?) We just started throwing things in a big pot with broth, heaps of veggies, spices and meat and cooking it up. Maybe it’s the climate but we have both been getting pretty excited about soup time. Then it just sits on the stove and whenever you get hungry or feel a little chilly you just scoop out a bowl and heat it up. Like the best passage meal ever, why did it take us 4 and half years to discover it?

Besides extolling the virtues of soup, one of my daily chores on this passage has been to pump out the port side forward float-tank. This is like an air tight cavity that is meant to keep the boat from sinking. We have four of them in total, at the forward and aft end of each hull. I say ‘like’ an air tight cavity because it’s not. It’s not even water tight, thus why I am up there pumping a few gallons of sea water out through the inspection plate every morning. So are we sinking? Well, technically yes but in practical terms not really. There’s a vented sail locker ahead of the float tank. Vented is a fancy boat term for hole. Maybe people store LPG up there or something; otherwise I’m not sure why it would be vented. So as the hull moves up and down water gushes in and out of the vent (hole). A piece of Plexiglas appears to be all that separates this locker from the float-tank and I guess that seal must be broken. It seems odd to have a piece of Plexiglas and a bit of sealant holding the ocean out, but I guess it’s been working all this time so maybe it’s fine. Anyways, my operating theory is that water is getting into the sail locker through the vent (hole) and into the float-tank through a crack in the sealant around that Plexiglas barrier.

Emptying the sail locker and trying to re-seal that while underway is nearly out of the question so I’m thinking that temporarily plugging the vent (hole) may be the best interim solution. If I can keep water out of the sail locker than I will also know if that’s where the water is coming from or if it’s a different problem entirely… like maybe we are sinking? Stay tuned!

Trans-Atlantic 1

I had been waiting for weeks to wake up Jaime and say, “Hey, you want to go to Barbados today?”

Despite meeting some cool new neighbours and nearly falling victim to the old “just one more beer” routine we finally got away from Las Palmas on Thursday afternoon, December 29th. Even though we didn’t stay for that tipping point one more beer with Zack, he still copied the first 3 seasons of “Weeds” for us to add to our trans-Atlantic trash TV supply. It’s a good thing too; we’re fresh out of Modern Family.

Our R-pier homies all came out to see us off. I guess we were there long enough to get to know most of our neighbors but it was still a touching and unexpected send off. We had been getting used to casting lines off for other boats so were struck with a bit of stage fright when the 10 well wishers came out to cast us off. Finally we were the boat leaving for a change!

At least we are consistent in one area though; never having the camera around for moments like this! Stupid. Most of these guys will be making their way to the Caribbean this season as well though, so there will be more photo ops coming soon I’m sure.

We waved goodbye and motored out into the bay where we pulled in and stowed all of the lines and fenders. Then while still being protected by the breakwater I hoisted up the mainsail before putting Slapdash on course.

Three minutes into our voyage and I’ve already sustained the first passage injury. Somehow I managed to peel up both my right toenail and right thumbnail while getting underway. Acting like a rookie, guess we’ve been dock barnacles for too long.

We started off with amazing following conditions. That would change soon enough but it was nice to have a smooth transition while we got used to things again. A couple hours out we had a VHF call from our neighbours Pontus and Malee from Tua Tua who weren’t around when we left. They came back from visiting parents on the south of the island and just missed us. We had a quick chat before losing reception but hope to see them soon in the Carib.

Six days into the passage now and we are somewhere around 22 North and 25 West. Wind has generally been 10 degrees off either side of our ass the whole time. We don’t have a good downwind sail plan and since there’s too much cross swell to effectively sustain a wing and wing configuration we end up running under headsail only. It’s easy but slow. We would prefer wind at 120-130 degrees instead of 180, but if we alter course to do that any speed we pick up by being able to get the mainsail in play would be lost by the added miles deviation from course.

Another factor has been this annoying cross swell from the NW. Wind is from the NE, and so are most of the waves but there are big storms up in the north that push swell down thousands of miles for the sole purpose of making Jaime puke (only once so far). That NW swell barging into our party combined with some stronger than usual wind (25-35K) made for a couple of exciting days.

We celebrated New Years on one such day. Jaime woke me up for my midnight shift and when I got up saw that she had a few decorations up. There was a sign that said something in Spanish, an apple with a “2012” candle in it and champagne glasses. We filled the glasses with water, toasted the New year, snapped a picture and 5 minutes later I was outside on watch and Jaime was sleeping.

The first test we ran with the sat phone after getting off shore didn’t work. We still had all the usual features, but the data service mentioned in the last post wasn’t working. After that I spent a couple hours each day trying to trouble shoot the software settings. I also contacted a couple of numb-skulls at the Inmarsat help desk in London via phone calls and sms and was completely blown away by how utterly useless they were. Apart from blowing through my air time credit like it was their one and only mission, they did nothing of any use whatsoever and succeeded only in causing immense amounts of frustration aboard the Slapdash.

So today I sent a message to the distributer that we bought the phone from, Satphone City. Chris was our contact there and has been super helpful in the past so I brought him up to speed in a short email.

The experience was polar opposite to the one above. Knowing that my only means of contact was the sat phone Chris didn’t waste a bunch of time running down a checklist of standard remedies. He read the message and fixed the problem. That’s it. Yes, just like that. And if you are reading this right now, it’s working!