On December 2nd, we woke up with a boat full of fuel, food and excitement. It was launch day for our crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, where we would leave land behind for almost 3 weeks then hopefully arrive in one piece in a beautiful, sunny and warm Caribbean Island. Actual destination still unknown. We would decide in route depending on how things were going.
Since timing wasn’t as important as it is for overnight trips, we leisurely woke up and had a big team breakfast finalizing plans for leaving the dock. As we checked all the gear one last time and prepped the lines and sails, the skies were a bit ominous with dark clouds on the horizon. Hopefully, they would stay in the distance and not make day 1 more “exciting” than it needs to be.
Into the Great Big Ocean We Go!
We shoved off the dock and wound our way out of the marina and into the great blue for what we hoped would be an adventure of a lifetime or mostly just 3 weeks of nice weather and no drama! Once we were clear of the wind shadow created by the island the winds picked up to about 20 knots on the beam so we raised the sails. And so much for no drama! We had a number of issues right off that bat raising the sails that led to a 40 minute battle with the main mostly the result from getting the leach caught in the jack lines, trying to get the 1st reef downhauls set properly. The prototype Advanced Wing System rig we had on boat during this crossing consisted of a wide rotating mast that had tracks on the sides for two identical main sails. The two sails were then attached at the leech where the full length horizontal battens met. When the mast rotates it creates a powerful wing shape with a windward and leeward camber. This unique set up will all come into play as I detail our crossing and subsequent decision making.
After a couple hours, the water started getting very choppy in the gusty winds and everyone was still working on their getting sea legs. Lots of ginger ale and crackers were being passed about! We worked our way through the first night everyone getting fitful sleep. We had one accidental jibe as our crew, not familiar with the rotating mast system or that our wind instrument was really just not a good product, had us on wind hold. The wind readings tend to jump around a lot or just completely disappear; a problem when the auto pilot is trying to steer you based on wind readings. No more wind hold! Even up to this point, Kevin and I had mostly used the feel of the wind and a red string tied to the shroud as our wind guidance…talk about old school! It was going to take our seasoned sailors a little more time to readjust to the 1700s.
Settling into a Rhythm
As the sun rose on day two we were greeted with our first “fresh catch of the day”. A small dorado (Mahi-Mahi). The back deck looked like a bloodbath happened as they caught, cleaned and filleted the fish (Note to self: Adding a fish filet cutting board to the list of things to buy when we get back to the states!). Around noon the winds settled and we pulled down the main and jib and raised the big and beautiful spinnaker. Unless the winds pick up again, our standing plan is to use the asymmetrical spinnaker, primarily used for light-downwind sailing, during the day and switch to the Code 0 at night, another light down wind sail. Since you are often alone on night watch, if winds were to pick up suddenly or an issue was had, in theory, the code 0 is easier to get up and down with it’s furling system.
From here the first few days were pretty routine, we stood 3x 4 hour watches during the day and 6x 2 hour watches at night. It was a great rotation that gave everyone some variety and plenty of opportunities to rest in between watches. Since Kevin and I were the newbies to the ocean crossing realm, we put the more experienced Henry and Geoff in-between us in the rotation. The days were relatively quiet with large pods of dolphins swinging by to check us out and play in our bow wake. That will never get old! A LOT of reading, watching movies, napping, and storytelling consuming all of our hours. The nights quiet as all but the watch up and everyone else trying to catch some zzzs before their alarm went off. It was quite dark with no other boats but a random cruise ship or tanker/cargo ship passing in the distance! We caught more fish, saw lots more dolphins around the boat and few whales in the distance. We even decorated for Christmas. Unknown if we will be on land to celebrate. It’s going to be close!
Henry would practice celestial navigation at night. When he was on watch, and I wasn’t quite ready to sleep. I got to learn a lot about the stars from Henry, who knew quite a lot about the mythology behind them. We found the summer triangle, Orion, and Cassiopeia amongst others. I tried to learn how to dead reckon off them. We tracked Mars and Jupiter. I learned so much! (Sidenote: now adding a Sextant and a book about celestial navigation to my to-buy list!). Geoff would often relieve me on watch with fresh tales of his many many sailing adventures saturated with his hilarious dry British humor! We really did have an awesome very experienced crew on board to help us out!
The wind kept getting lighter and lighter as some multiple low fronts off the Azores started sucking up our winds.
Will There Be Any Sailing on this Sailing Adventure?!
On day 3, at 4 am, only 216 miles into our 2000+ mile journey, we couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer, the winds were dying off into nothing as we watched the sea flatten all around. We furled in the code 0 and turned on the motors. We’d make a few more attempts sail when the wind would feign to pick up. We’d raise the main and jib and putter along for a few hours only to give up and motor on.
Our Oceanvolt motors had 2 overheats along the way. Apparently, the motors aren’t a fan of long continuous motoring as advertised. We were only pushing them at 7 kw. They are rated at 12 kW continuous, so we were hovering at <60%! So this was a surprise. Thankfully, we had Jabsco blowers built in under the bed. They just weren’t connected as we didn’t think they were actually required due to the less-heat inducing electric motors. But after some serious wire chasing and electrical work, we were able to connect them and get them working! Funny how you really look into the connections and systems when you need them!
After refreshing the Predict Wind weather model updates every 12 hours hoping for some sort of wind to develop in a future forecast, we had to start thinking about how comfortable we were with continuing the crossing having now burned through 15 of our 16 spare jugs of fuel (375L). We used a third of our fuel in the first 6 days of the crossing. The ocean was like glass we’d been without wind so long! I’ve never seen anything like it. To be fair, we new we would be motoring for a few days with the the low pressure systems building to the north of us, but we did NOT expect it to be for 4 days straight! Predict wind did not have any good news for us. Wind wouldn’t start building for several more days.
wind to happen
The nice thing about departing from Tenerife is that your general track across the ocean chasing the prevailing easterlies takes you by Mindelo, a port city on São Vicente, an island in the volcanic archipelago of Cape Verde off Western Africa. Some cruisers set off on their ocean crossing directly from Mindelo to break up the trip a little. We chose to depart from Tenerife BECAUSE Mindel could be a emergency divert for us if needed. (How Naval Aviator of us). Turns out we are going to use it. Instead of burning through more precious fuel reserves, we decided change course and pull into Mindelo to refuel and wait out the dead wind. Bonus, we can now check off Africa on our world travel sailing checklist. Baby steps 🙂
An Unplanned Stop – Mindelo, Cape Verde
Day 6 Journal entry “Kevin woke me up at about 0930 not for cuddles, but a discussion on fuel conservation when crossing the Atlantic. There were a lot of numbers. Math is hard in the first 10 minutes of consciousness. Crawled out of bed and saw land. Cape Verde was in the distance”.
I was enamored with the bizzillion dolphins and a few pilot whales guiding us the last 30 miles into the port and the crazy mountains/volcanos that just appear out of no where in the middle of the ocean as I started my watch. I looked at the log book (we log time, wind/sea/Baro conditions, position, miles and speed, distance traveled once a watch and sometimes in between if relevant.
After a long few days of no wind, flat seas and all motoring our log book entries were deteriorating quickly…
0400 “I now detest motoring”
0900 “You’d never guess…we’re still motoring”
We called in on the radio and confirmed they could give us fuel and dock space for two nights. We first stopped the fuel dock and topped up our tanks and refilled the spare jugs. Then followed a crazy guy in a small derelict dinghy to our dock space which was aft to squeezed in between two other boats with line moorings all over the place. Kudos for Kevin for doing such a great job on his first med mooring docking. He was rewarded with a much needed cold beverage b/c …that wasn’t stressful AT ALL!
881 NM and 6+ days later of motoring along the majority of the time…Yep, we were ready for a break!
in here
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