It has been seven days sense my last post. This is an attempt to to catch up so forgive me if I jump around. That being said this has been a wonderful trip. There were a lot of curve balls thrown our way before leaving Marathon. An inoperable bow thruster, a broken radar, balky electronic navigation system, an autopilot still prone to throwing a crazy Ivan to keep things exciting to name a few. In the end we threw off the last dock line in and we are now one day away from arriving in Horta. So let me take a stab at a catch up.
Once we cleared the shelf 10 miles out of St Georges the seas settled into the deep water rhythm Orion’s Light stretched out her waterline and shifted to a new gear. We settled in to our rhythm as crew to regain our sea legs and familiarizing ourself once again with OL building the necessary trust in each other and our boat .
After the first day the conditions were perfect for flying the spinnaker. The wind was SW on our starboard quarter. We put a reef in the main so it would not blanket the spinnaker making it easier to set. The spinnaker is hoisted in a sock, think long nylon tube containing the sail, until we are ready to set it. Once the spinnaker was set our boat speed shot up to 9-10 kts. We began to surf with the waves at times accelerating to 12-13 kts. Our auto pilot began to act up, a common theme on OL but after a few hours of trouble shooting we got it working and it has worked well since. OL was now powered up under the big blue sail and the mainsail. After making adjustments balancing the sails they began to work in harmony. We had our rhythm. We carried on all day until sunset, ticking off the miles. Not feeling comfortable sailing in the dark under spinnaker with a crew just learning Orion’s Light we doused the chute put it away and rolled out the jib. We broke into our watches, Bob took the 1800 – 2100 I took the 2100 – 2400, Bobby Hall the 2400 – 0300 and Wade the 0300 – 0600. During the day we would tend to OL’s needs adjusting sails, inspecting for the ever present chafe that comes with long distance sailing. Chafe can happen on almost anything where there is rubbing caused by the motion of the boat. Sails, sheets and halyards, lashings, gear stowed in lockers. It has to be checked daily if failures are to be avoided. .
As the sun rose the next day it became apparent that the sky was going to be a steel gray. It turned out the overcast was to continued for the next six days. It didn’t interfere with making our steady march east however. We were reaching which in boat lingo means we had the wind coming from the side, Most boats like to reach coupled with winds in the mid 20’s we were sailing fast. We have been blessed with a steady wind veering from South to Southwest. The ocean swell was pushing us along with a steady cadence. As waves catches our starboard quarter OL begins to accelerate digging in her bow in the wave ahead increasing our boat speed. As OL accelerated the apparent wind decelerates momentarily as our new found boat speed subtracts from the wind speed. The wave rolls under OL’s hull she begins to slow a bit, quickly the wind speed returns and the next wave begins the cycle again. This is part of the rhythm of sailing, unique to a sailboat and part of the magic.
The wind and seas continued to build by the third day we were sailing in 25 to 35 kts of wind with seas of 6 to 8′ but we are still fast and under control but it was hard to move around OL due to the seas, but we didn’t mind. We put another reef in the main, rolled up the jib and rolled out the staysail balancing the boat to the new wind and seas. We sailed under the main with 2 reef and the staysail for the next four days still going very fast. Our log showed we had a 198 nm, 188nm, 195 nm, 190 nm days. These are very fast numbers for OL.
Bobby heard the bilge high water alarm go off. Great! Orion’s Lights bilges are always dry. We pulled up a floorboard and sure enough there was water in the bulge. A quick taste confirmed it was sea water not fresh. A good thing, we were not loosing our fresh water. However we had a leak and we needed to find it. A leak is a tricky thing to find on a boat, especially when under sail. The boat is moving up and down and so the water in the bilge is sloshing around making it hard to hunt down where the leak is coming from. We needed to find the source and hopefully it could be easily fixed. There were a couple of areas to check first. I had work done on the bow thruster in Marathon so it was a posable source. I pulled up floorboards in the forward cabin and was happy to see the bilges forward were dry. A leak with the bow thruster would have been thorny one to deal with because we couldn’t operate it because there were still a problem when we left for St Augustine. We then started checking bilges aft and in the engine room. After eliminating each area we discovered a leak in the sea water strainer intake for the water maker. The top had cracked and water was leaking from the crack. It wasn’t much of a leak but over time it could have passed enough water to fill the bilge to cause concern. We carrie a full complement of spares and we had spare strainer cap onboard. Problem solved but we began a regiment of checking the bilges every hour instead of the normal once a day until we are sure we no longer were taking on water.
Much of our daily routine is spent on tending to Orion’s Light. We do however have down. One of the bonuses of long ocean voyages is time to read. we all have books that have long sat on the night stand or piled on the desk. Bobby is reading The Republic of Pirates. Wade alternates from politics to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Bob is reading the biography of Alexei Navalny the politician who challenged Putin only to die in a gulag in Siberia. A brave man or a foolish man, maybe both. I’m reading Hemingways Farewell to Arms. We prepare meals, often bacon and eggs for breakfast, Mia’s frozen Lasagna, and pasta for dinners, sandwiches and whatever is semi fresh as the ice slowly melts in the fridge and freezer for lunches. The Galley has been renamed Mama Tortellini’s kitchen by the crew in honor of my Great Grandma Tortellini. There is a story to be told on this one. Mia’s Lasagna is the hands down winner with the crew as are, the oxtail and chicken soups.
Sleep is important, especially when the wind is up so we nap when we can. We kept making our way east on a starboard tack the we stayed on for roughly 1,300 nm adjusting our course no more than 5 or 10 degrees the entire trip while tending to sail trim, . The first 3 days the winds were steady at 15 – 18 kts from the southwest. The conditions were great for getting in rhythm with OL and the seas. Sailing like this is very much about finding a rhythm and accepting mother nature and the Atlantic ocean are in charge. We quickly learn to work with what she gives and make it work for us. We continue to tick off the sea miles, we trim the headsail (jib or staysail) mainsail and centerboard thereby balancing OL keeping her in harmony with nature. Once she is balanced with wind and swell only then can she find her rhythm. Keeping her in harmony with nature is a constant process, a loop of time, a repetition that must be tended to even when we are blessed with sailing for days on the same tack the entire way. The work and the rhythm never stops.
During the day Bobby takes sun sights, brushing up on his celestial navigation. He was always within a couple miles of where the GPS put us. If the electronics decided to quit we are confident in Bobby’s ability to navigate us to Horta using the sun and the stars. Bob, wade and I have been occasionally taking sights but our accuracy is off and our ability to navigate us across the street is questionable much less the Atlantic ocean. Wade has been busy deploy ing his home made dolphin cam. Like most of us he has a lot of videos and photos of dolphins playing around the bow from above. He now is on a mission to use his GoPro fastened with duck tape to a boat hook to get videos from under the water. Very cool. No doubt he will get the shots he is looking for. Hopefully he doesn’t send his GoPro to Davie Jones’s locker.
After over 1700 nm of sailing we fired up the Volvo for the final 175 nm to Horta. We sailed into the Azores high a famed area in the Atlantic where the wind goes light and the seas lay down, turning the ocean into a surreal glassy seascape. We had our fill of great sailing and we are ready to plant our feet on dry land. We are excited to explore the Azores. To our surprise the light wind a glassy calm sea offered up some surprises. We saw whales off our starboard bow. They were too far away to identify the type but we could clearly see the spume when they breathed and we could see their backs roll above the surface before they sounded. Dolphins came to play regularly in the bow wake throughput the day. Be cause the water was like glass and very clear we could see all kinds of jelly fish and other unknown creatures in the water below us. Portuguese man-o-wars were all over the surface as if to greet us. Wade finally got the underwater videos of dolphins playing in our bow wave. Our last gift of many for this leg was the Azores high with the light wind flat seas reveling a part of nature we would have missed otherwise
Today is Sunday May 25 0630 Bermuda time. The islands of the Azores archipelago are shrouded in the morning mist. Horta is 26 miles off our bow. Elusive but there and soon one of us will shout out a phrase that has signaled the end of one journey making way for the next to begin.
“Land Ho”
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