As the wind blew from the Arctic down over the ice to Phesheya in the north Atlantic things grew colder. We sailed in and out of the northern version of the Roaring Forties yesterday. Last night the temperature dropped and it was time to find our thermals again. Foul weather gear was in order too as the waves splashed against the topsides. This was a big change as up until now we have worn shorts and t-shirts for most of the time. Sleeping meant that we could crawl under the sleeping bag and not just lie there in the heat.
Around 03H00 local time I heard squeaking around the boat. There were torpedoes of light in the water. Dolphins were swimming alongside us, jumping and splashing around the boat. The dolphin were illuminated by the phosphorescence in the water and with their fast swimming action they looked like torpedoes under the water.
Nick and I spent the day positioning ourselves for yet another storm. We tried to get south but we got caught in an eddy with 5.5 knots of current that was trying to take us back to the States. There was not that much wind and the eddy just took us with it whether we liked it or not. So progress was slow but eventually after about 6 hours we sailed out of it.
This afternoon we hoisted the gennaker for a short time to try to help us get a bit further south. This time we managed to hoist it, sail with it for few hours and drop it in the normal fashion, in one piece, for use at a later date. This practice has bit been a bit rare on Phesheya recently but today we succeeded. In the next storm over the coming days we will be sailing to finish the leg and the Global Ocean Race. It does not matter were we come in the leg as long as we finish we will be guaranteed a 3rd. We are so close to the finish yet so far! 2250 miles to the finish and the next few days looks like a real challenge. Nick and I dont like the calm before the storm and waiting to be thrown around once more.
The questions that always run through my mind are:
Will it be worse than forecast?
How big will the waves be?
How will it approach us? Steady build up or sudden squall?
It is the unknown about these storms that is the worst part.
We spent the day preparing the boat and ourselves for 45 to 50 knots of wind that is forecast. The storm jib is ready as we expect we will probably need it along with 3 reefs.
Today I am going to have a bit of a grumble. I’m sorry, but it has been that sort of day. Phillippa and I try to keep these blogs upbeat so hopefully you will allow us just one day to do a bit of venting of our feelings?
I guess the first problem actually started a few days ago when I somehow cut my elbow. How it happened I will never know. We have been thrown about on this race so many times that cuts and bruises are regarded as the norm and are generally ignored. And so it was with the small cut on my elbow. But after several days it began to swell and become quite painful.
Not a good sign. Luckily an ex-crew mate of mine from my days of sailing aboard Steve Fossett’s catamaran “Playstation”, Dr Claire Bailey, had agreed to be on standby for us during the race, in case we needed any medical advice, and within minutes of our emailing her she had prescribed a course of medication from our first aid kit, as well as offering advice on how best to protect my elbow over the next few days. Just 24 hours after contacting her, my arm already feels a lot better, but it is still annoying.
Our second problem today was that we have destroyed another spinnaker - this time the A4! At this rate we will soon have no sails left! It seems that the destroyed spinnakers have reached the end of their usable lives and this final leg of the Global Ocean Race was just a step too far for them. Both of them were old sails that had good shapes, but I guess they have just been pushed too hard for too long. We now have a real shortage of light wind and downwind sails so I guess the next problem of the day might be a blessing in disguise…the weather forecast looks quite bleak for the next few days. Ahead of us a gale is forecast to develop with winds to 40 knots. A long way to our south west the second tropical storm of the season has already formed, still a few days before the hurricane season officially opens on 1 June. This storm, Tropical Storm Beryl, is still somewhere near Florida, but is also forecast to eventually track north east, eventually becoming an extra-tropical depression, and bringing an added dimension of complexity to the weather of the North Atlantic.
On the positive side, we have been able to make good use of the Gulf Stream for most of today, but this evening the wind has shifted to the north north east and the seas have become quite horrible, pushing us bodily towards the south east and out of the Gulf Stream. Right now life is extremely uncomfortable onboard with a grey, overcast sky, rough seas breaking right over the boat and a cool wind blowing. We now find ourselves in the grip of an extremely powerful eddy current running south south west at nearly 4 knots. Not a fun place to be.
Outside has been reminiscent of the Southern Ocean today, with Cory’s shearwaters doing their best to imitate albatrosses gliding in our wake.
The Cory’s shearwaters breed on the Azores islands, over 1 000 miles east of us, though they might even come from as far as the Mediterranean. A little more surprising was the sighting of a Sooty shearwater today. These guys breed on the islands around Cape Horn, over 5 700 miles away! During the southern winter they do migrate to the North Atlantic, normally arriving here in June, so like the recent tropical storms, this guy seems to have arrived a little early.
Today we have only seen one ship, the “Cosco Tianjin”. An interesting argument that is often heard amongst sailors is how far away can you see a ship on the horizon? Well, the AIS goes a long way towards being able to give a definitive answer. At 11.1 miles the “Cosco Tianjin” was barely visible, though even at that range it was clear that she was a large ship, heavily stacked with containers. On the other hand the tanker “Nestos”, which we saw yesterday, with her lower freeboard than a container ship’s, only became visible at slightly over 10 miles away, and even then all that we were able to see was the superstructure, the hull was still below the horizon. As these ships typically travel at about 18 knots, and we do an average of around 8 knots, that gives a maximum of 25 minutes from when a ship directly ahead of us just becomes faintly visible on the horizon, until she is on top of us, so we are careful to keep a good watch at all times, scanning the horizon and checking the AIS and the radar.
After a very dark, gloomy night last night the stars and the moon have come out in full force tonight. We have had some very pleasant sailing today between the big black clouds…
The sun rose behind the thick layer of grey clouds as we bounced along in the Gulf Stream just 350 miles south of Nova Scotia. Around mid-morning we were fetching with the stay sail and full main and I heard a clunk from down below. I rushed up on deck and heard another clunk. Out the back of the boat a big wooden palette appeared. We were lucky that at the time we were only down to sub 5 knots so there was no damage that I could see.
In the distance there was a rugby field of Sargasso weed. There is not as much Sargasso weed as when we sailed past the Caribbean but there is a fair bit. On the deck lay a small flying fish. We do not see as many flying fish as when we left Charleston but there are still around in the warm waters of the gulf stream.
Around lunch time we sailed through a school of Dolphins. We are not sure weather they were the Pan-Tropical Spotted Dolphin or the Atlantic Spotted Dolphin? It appeared that they might be feeding as they swam around in a circle together and almost left us alone. Nick spotted a whale blowing in the distance so there certainly is lots of wild life out here.
Late afternoon we did a series of tacks as the wind shifted around between the big black clouds. The boat sailed through the boat wash as it poured down heavily under a big black cloud. The temperature dropped off and we sailed out of the gulf stream again. We noted a few birds flying around such as the Storm Petrel and the Cory’s Shearwater.
The wind shifted around to the north so we hoisted the Code Zero and eventually the wind increased. We headed north east again to try and find the gulf stream.
Th sun set and we hoisted the A4 as the wind had shifted to the North West. There wasn’t quite enough wind so we dropped it before we wrapped it around the spreaders and hoisted the Code Zero once more. As I went on deck to drop the Code Zero I noticed that the bow was covered in black stuff. We must have been hit by a squid. There was ink all over the place. We have picked up a bit of the gulf stream again now as the clouds have disappeared and it is certainly helping us to push on towards the gate.
While sitting in the cabin attempting to repair the solent one has a lot of time to ponder things, and one question that has been raised a few times on this voyage is the question of time itself. Aboard Phesheya-Racing we normally refer to UTC or Z time and we recently received an email with some comments about why the familiar term GMT seems to have been disbanded in favour of UTC.
It seems that GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) was seen as being too Anglo-centric and has officially been replaced by a more universally accepted term, UTC (Universal Time Coordinated). Of course some English speakers see this as a plot by their eternal rivals, the French, to undermine everything English, but aboard Phesheya-Racing we have a simple come-back that keeps us well clear of this long running debate: The world is divided into 24 time zones, each spanning 15 degrees of longitude, and NATO long ago assigned letters to identify each zone in military codes with the zone surrounding the Greenwich / Prime Meridian being designated as Z or Zulu Time. As a proudly South African team we are happy to stick to referring to Zulu Time, and conveniently ignore ancient European feuds!
For navigational purposes all our working is based on Zulu Time, though our Luminox watches are kept on the local time of whichever zone we happen to be in for day to day running of the watch system and planning meal times, etc.
As the wind dropped today we decided to make a break for the north to try and get back into the core of the Gulf Stream, and for much of the day we have been successful, polling some of the best average speeds of the fleet, assisted by as much as 3.9 knots of warm NE flowing water and accompanied by the usual Flying fishes, but at sunset the water temperature suddenly dropped 5 degrees within minutes, and at the same time the current shut off completely as we sailed over the “North Wall” of the Gulf Stream. The north wall is always clearly defined as it is dictated by the bathymetry and the effects of the Labrador Current. The south wall is more difficult to define as it is characterised by eddies that spin off into the central Atlantic. The cold water also caused an instant chilling of the air and we immediately tacked back towards the SE, quickly getting back into warmer, more turbulent water, but also almost immediately seeing the current increase to over 2 knots again!
As we crossed the North Wall the Flying fishes, Portuguese men-o-war and Sargasso weed disappeared, to be replaced by Storm-petrels fluttering over the waves.
Surprisingly we only saw one ship today: the “Cape Glory”. We took the name as being a good omen as it nicely reflected our Cape Crisp logo on the side of our hull!
At sunset we toasted Phillippa’s birthday with some Wilde Juice.
We continue to beat into a light easterly breeze as a high pressure system ridges to the east of us, but the forecast is for the wind to increase and become more favourable in the next few hours as the centre of the high moves slowly away.
Looking at the American weather forecasts it is interesting to note that they are again talking of a “possible Tropical Cyclone” developing in much the same area that generated Tropical Storm Alberto. This new system is forecast to develop over the next 48 hours and could be interesting to keep an eye on.
We started off the day sailing downwind with our big kite up. We were humming along with our big 185m2 kite and full main.
We even had water ballast in the aft tank as the wind had increased to 13 knots. The moral on board was excellent as we were catching Cessna and Financial Crisis.
I went off watch to sleep and suddenly Nick shouted ‘Pip! Pip!’ I was already awake as the boat was heeling over and the kite was flapping. As I sat up things started to fly across the cabin. I was crawling out of bed and I almost got hit by the first aid kit amongst other things as it came flying across the boat. I looked through the hatch and the kite was in the water, it was blowing really hard, Nick was on deck easing the main sail, it was raining and water was flying everywhere. On the water there were little eddies forming. I clambered up onto the foredeck to save the stay sail.
I was so angry and I had tears streaming out of my eyes as our A2 had shred itself once more (3rd time in the GOR). The 900 US dollars that it cost to fix it in Charleston was now in the water! Sitting on the foredeck waiting for it to pass I realised it was not a squall. The water was flying around the boat and we were in a water spout!
I could see through the water to the edge of the spout which was less than a boat length away. It lasted a few minutes and then there was no wind. We were soaked to the bone and dropping the remains of the spinnaker on the foredeck when we saw the water spout reform about a mile from the boat. We opened the clutch to the main sail and dropped it straight into the lazy jacks. We both stood on deck watching the water spout come closer to us. What was going to happen next? We had no idea.
After about half an hour the clouds levelled out and the spout dissipated so we hoisted the main sail. The sea was flat and there was no wind. There had been a big wind shift so now we were beating up wind to the bluQube scoring gate. As our solent is still out of action we hoisted the stay sail. Since then it has been very slow with speeds less the a knot and wind less than a knot!
In the ensuing chaos it was difficult to capture the water spout on film but the arrows in the accompanying picture help to show the edges of the second spout as it began to form, and at the base it is just possible to make out the spray on surface of the water where the spout is beginning to touch down.
This evening as the GPS turned 00H00 UTC Nick, Monkey and Pippa Potamus sang happy birthday to me!! Presents, cake and candles were pulled from Nick’s dry bag. I had no idea he was hiding a chocolate cake in there. The cake made it through the Tropical Cyclone so he lit the candles and we had a cup of tea. What a great way to end the day of dramas! Thank you to bluQube and Antoine for helping Nick organise the cake and the wonderful presents! :-)
Now we are stuck between 4 weather systems. To the NE Cessna and Financial Crisis are fighting it out together. We had hoped to be in this system this morning. To the SE the Volvo Boats are fighting it out. To the NW Sec Hayai is catching us and hopefully bringing us some new wind. The next 24 hours will be slow but hopefully soon we will be blasting a long towards the bluQube Scoring Gate.
Last night we sailed out of the main core of the Gulf Stream and were instantly rewarded with flatter seas and more pleasant sailing conditions, though with the disadvantage of much less current in our favour.
Tropical Storm Alberto is now described in the weather forecasts as Post-tropical Alberto and it passed south and east of us during the course of the day, bringing lightening to the southern horizon and a heavy dew on deck in the early hours of the morning. There was a bit of light squall activity at times but generally the night was quite clear.
If the Southern Ocean was the sea of Albatrosses, then the North Atlantic is definitely the sea of ships, with no fewer than 8 appearing on the AIS during the day, and a few of those passing within just a handful of miles of us. One of them was a large passenger liner, the “Explorer of the Seas”, which is just a little short of 1/3 of a kilometre long and 38 metres wide, travelling at over 18 knots. Quite an impressive sight. Others that passed close enough to identify were the “Queen Busan”, the “Sichem Contester”, the “Cosco Kobe” and the “Oleander”.
Sea life has again been sparse. A few large Portuguese men-o-war floated by and I cleared a bit of Sargasso weed from the port rudder. Bird life has been non-existent today though a few Flying fishes made a brief appearance.
For the moment the weather remains warm, with a low of around 22 last night and a high of about 26 during the day, though down below, in the cabin, it still reaches a sweltering 30 degrees or more during the day!
We had carried the Code Zero for much of the time while we were in the turbulent waters of the Gulf Stream as it is a very stable sail and easy to trim, but now that the water is flatter we have changed to the much larger A2 spinnaker.
The North Atlantic is unfortunately also the garbage dump of modern Europe and North America, and today we passed an interesting collection floating plastic, drifting buoys, bags, etc.
This evening has been misty and damp, though as the night progressed some stars have made an appearance, and we did have almost 2 1/2 hours of moonlight, which is always welcome.
Now that Alberto is moving away the barometer is rising quickly and there is a forecast for more very light winds over the next 24 hours.
With barely 3 000 miles left to the finish it is interesting to consider where we are in our circumnavigation, and although we have long ago completed the 21 600 miles which is the equivalent of travelling around the world on the Equator, we have not yet crossed our outbound track or all of the lines of longitude, which would complete the circle for us. In fact it is curious to note that we are once again still to the west of the longitude of Cape Horn and have many miles to go before we are at the longitude of Fernando de Noronha, at which point we will have crossed every meridian line. I guess tonight we will cross the longitude of Cape Horn again!
Today we started to make a concerted effort to repair the solent jib, which we tore on day one of this leg, but it is proving to be a mammoth task. The sail is made of Carbon and Twaron fibres laminated between a layer of Mylar film and Dacron taffeta, but hours of hard use and UV degradation have caused it to start delaminating, and a violent pounding over a steep wave finally split it along the leech. We have started to repair it by drying it out and cleaning it as best we can and then trying to align the pieces and stick them back together with Dacron sticky-back tape. As the original Mylar and Dacron laminate is too thin to sew effectively we are now trying to reinforce it with Dyneema sticky-back on both sides and then hand-stitching the whole lot together. It is very time consuming and we are not sure how effective it will be,
but we are persevering and hope that the sail will be usable when we really need it most.
Night skies filled with stars and blue sky days, it is warm sailing in the gulf stream. Rolling lumpy swells flogging the sails down the waves. There is very little wind to speak of at the moment. Our movement towards the gate is caused by the Gulf Stream. There is very little sailing going on here!!
With frustration kicking in on board Phesheya sail changes were key last night. We did a sail change every watch trying to keep the boat moving in the right direction. As the day moved in the wind eased off as it heated up. By mid morning it was very hot on deck and down below. We drifted along between the Sargasso weed and the marine debris. Today we saw two more fishing buoys float past us.
The sea looked so tempting for a swim but as I mentioned this to Nick we soon saw several Portuguese men-o-war floating on the surface of the sea. Bright pink in colour with their fins acting as sails there was no chance I was going to hop in for a quick dip. We saw a school of dolphins on the horizon but they never came close to the boat.
As the day drew to a close we had dinner in the cockpit with some fresh carrots and leeks mixed into our bolognaise sauce and rice. The sun set and the temperature started to drop quickly. We are at 36*N now and it is still 23*C at 22H00. It is amazing how the warm gulf steam (27*C) has such a huge effect on the weather here. If we were at 36*S off Cape Town we would be freezing in shorts and t-shirts! Hopefully we will be able to get in some sleep tonight as it has been too warm to sleep during the day time.
The thin slither of moon has already set. The sky is a busy place at night time with aeroplane lights flashing and satellites moving across the sky. I have seen a couple of flashes of lightening but nothing like our second night at sea.
Venus is up pretending to be another boats’ tricolour light. It is so bright and is shinning just above the horizon trying to confuse me!
This time yesterday we were less than a mile from Sec.Hayai as we both beat into 10 knots of wind in the Gulf Stream while surrounded by thunderstorms on every side. At around midnight local time Sec.Hayai tacked away from us, towards the north. We held on to the port tack for about an hour longer, hoping to find a bit more Gulf Stream, and our strategy seemed to pay off as we soon made a few miles on Sec.Hayai.
In the early hours of the morning we were eventually hit by a thunderstorm with torrential rain and sudden wind shifts making it very difficult to maintain a steady course, but as the dawn broke the wind died and the thunderstorms cleared up.
Since then we have entertained ourselves with ship-spotting and wild life viewing as there has been very little wind to speak of and progress has been exceedingly slow. Between sunrise and 09H00 local we had five ships pass by, but all too far away to be identified. At 10H00 the “Tamerlane” appeared on a parallel course to us and she eventually passed about 4 miles away. She was later followed by the “Hyundai Glory”, the “Libra Leader”, the “Sealand Racer”, the “Akinada Bridge”, the “American Highway” and one other unidentified ship.
On the wild life front the first to appear was a White-tailed tropic bird, followed later by a Skua and a Shearwater. There are still a few Flying fishes about, and one landed on deck last night. There is also some Sargasso weed, but not nearly the same quantities as on leg 4.
During Phillippa’s afternoon watch she spotted a fishing buoy drifting past the boat and later on I saw a school of Striped dolphins.
By mid-afternoon the wind was down to under 4 knots from the ESE, and then it gradually filled in from the north leaving us beating upwind once again until around sunset when it died away and settled at just over 4 knots from the NNE for a time. Right now the wind is around 6 knots from the WNW, which contrasts rather interestingly with the latest weather forecast which calls for 10 knots from the south! Anyway, Tropical Storm Alberto is still lurking to the south of us and forecast to make a reappearance in the next day or two, so perhaps it is no surprise that the predictions are a bit topsy-turvy!
As the sun set this evening Sec.Hayai has also reappeared, her lights showing faintly on the horizon to the west of us.
We are now about 60 miles east of Cape Hatteras, which is sometimes known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic as tropical storms meet high latitude depressions and the swirling currents of the Gulf Stream to create a dangerous mix of conditions off the extremely low lying headland. Many cruising yachts prefer to use the lagoons, rivers and canals of the Intracoastal Waterway rather than run the risks of sailing around Cape Hatteras, but that is not an option that we have and instead we wait patiently to find out what the next shift of the wind will bring.
This is our second night at sea on the last and final leg of the GOR and we are back in offshore mode. The first 24 hours were horrible to say the least. We were thrown around the boat like we were in the Southern Ocean. Waves crashing over the deck and the boat bouncing and slamming over the waves once more. By midday today things started to ease off and blue sky and sunshine enlightened our day.
This afternoon we have been sailing alongside Sec Hayai. Frans called Nick up on the radio for a quick chat. They also had a horrible first night with Frans not feeling great. I have to admit I did not feel wonderful either. But then who does when the rig is shaking around when you slam over one wave after the next.
When we made our first tack to go inshore Marco called us on the VHF to ask us if we were OK. He was very worried that something had gone badly wrong. I emailed Marco today to thank him for his kind gesture. He said that they saw up to 48 knots of wind. We were lucky being inshore, we only saw up to 33 knots. But we never came out of the Tropical Cyclone clean, we have damaged our Solent. Nick and I hope that we can repair it later today.
Tonight we have been weaving our way through the thunder and lightening and trying to get into the Gulf Stream. We are finally into it and have 2.4 knots of current with us. The sheets of lightening and rain squalls have surrounded us all night keeping us on our toes. Fortunately the wind has gone more south now and we are able to do a better course towards the bluQube scoring gate.
With a rather bleak weather forecast for the first part of the final leg of the Global Ocean Race, Phillippa took the precaution of gathering together lucky mascots before the start to ensure good luck! In the photo are Pippa Potamus and Monkey from Phesheya-Racing, as well as Skippy, from Cessna Citation, and Moose, a well travelled good luck mascot belonging to Hannah Jenner!
At first the strategy seemed to work and we had a great start, leading the fleet across the start line under mainsail and staysail. After rounding the #4 Channel buoy Cessna Citation overtook us so we changed from the staysail to the gennaker for the run out of Charleston harbour entrance.
Once into the open sea we changed sails again, this time to the solent jib.
As we got out to sea it was soon clear that conditions were already rougher and windier than forecast and we put a reef in the mainsail. After a short time we noticed a problem with the solent jib, so dropped it and went back to the staysail. We hope that we will be able to repair the solent when conditions settle down a bit.
As the seas built and it started to rain we were not particularly surprised to hear that we were on the fringes of Tropical Storm Alberto, the first storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season! What is surprising, though, is that it has formed nearly two weeks earlier than the official start of hurricane season!
With the new forecast information to hand we decided to avoid heading into the Gulf Stream for a while and instead have spent the night short tacking up the coast of South Carolina, first under double reefed main and latter under triple reefed main, as the seas are very steep and uncomfortable.
