Our second Atlantic crossing

Well, we have now crossed the Atlantic for the second time and I will tell you all about that in a minute but first I want to share with you a few statistics about our 2022 sailing year which was prompted by “Mr Google” sending us this timeframe.

Between leaving Kalamata on 12^th April ’22 and the end of the year, having arrived in Barbados on 25^th December, we:

• Sailed 5,086 nautical miles
• Did 60 “day hops”
• Undertook 13 passages of more than 12 hours
• Spent 36 nights at sea
• Berthed in marinas for 36 nights
• Spent 7 nights on mooring balls
• Went stern-to or alongside [free of charge] on town quays for 11 nights
• Anchored for 175 nights

Not a bad year!

Anyone visiting our blog regularly will know that my previous seven posts cover the time from leaving Kalamata, Greece to leaving Mindelo, Cabo Verde so all that I have left to do is to tell you about the Atlantic crossing and, in the next post, our stay in Barbados.

So, we left Mindelo ….

……. just after midday on 8^th December and headed more or less south. Why south some might ask – as the Caribbean lies pretty much west of the Cabo Verde. Well, the answer, as you might have guessed, was the weather. There were still storms in the north Atlantic which were causing long periods of little/no wind on the direct route but also causing awful swell and waves to be pushed down. Therefore, the further south we went initially the more we would get wind with less chance of big waves.

Whilst we had ascertained this from looking at weather Apps, our friend Steve also has a route plotter linked to one of his weather programmes and this backed up our theories. He kindly sent us the route which we imported into our Navionics programme and away we went.

 We were able to sail for the first six hours but then hit the island’s wind shadow and turned on the engine. Having done so we decided to also turn on the water-maker …. which didn’t work! We tried all the usual things we sometimes have to do such as bleeding air from the filter, depressurising the system, doing a reset – which is sometimes necessary if the last shut down was at a certain point in the pressure cycle etc. After about an hour of this with no change and no water production we concluded the pump must be broken in some way. So, big decision.

We hadn’t made water for a while when in Palmeira due to the nature of the water in the anchorage so we were somewhere around half full. This meant around 100 litres. The minimum recommended allowance for drinking water on passages is 1.5lt per person. We hoped we were looking at a passage between 16-20 days. So it could be that we would need a minimum 60 litres of drinking water. Then there is water for cooking… though for veg etc it is possible to use sea water, as it is for washing up. Not ideal but we know it works as that is what we did on our first Atlantic crossing on “Siga Siga”. However, as we were only 7-8 hours out, we reasoned that the most sensible thing to do would be to turn round and go to the fuel dock in Mindelo, where water is available, and fill the tanks. Some of you might be asking why we hadn’t filled the tanks that way before leaving and the answer is that, because we have a water-maker which makes good quality water, we no longer use dock water unless we have to when we decommission the water-maker during winter or other haul out or marina long stay periods.

Having decided to turn round we radioed “Coriander”, who had left just after us, to tell them what we were doing. Steve’s response was that we didn’t need to do that and he offered to lend us his spare pump as he has the same make of water-maker as us. We then went into a debate about how we could transfer the pump whilst sailing and were assured by Steve that it was possible. So, having agreed to rendezvous when it became light, we followed them during the overnight passage. Meanwhile Mike removed the pump housing from under the sink so that we had completed at least the first stage of fitting Steve’s spare.

Morning dawned and “Coriander” hove-to to allow us to get close by. We dropped the main and approached. Steve had put the pump into a spare waterproof flare canister and attached it to a very long line which he fed off the back of their boat. I was at the bow of “Owl and Pussycat” with the extended boat hook to try to catch the line and haul the canister on board, at which time Steve was to release the line from his end and… My Goodness – it worked on the first pass!

So, with lots of shouts of joy and many thanks we waved goodbye….

At a slower pace we plodded on. We were taking it slowly because, if it wasn’t just a pump issue, we would still need to return to Mindelo.

Saying “just replace the pump” and actually replacing the pump are, as you might realise, two very different things! It took us two hours to get the pump off its housing as lots of other things are around and above it.

The pump goes where the blue arrow shows, with the yellow highlighted cover above it -and a fan on top of that – and the hoses lying loose at the front surrounding it.

Mike then decided to make sure that Steve’s pump was working before installing it [by attaching wires and a cigarette lighter type charger and plugging it in to the 12v system]. It did … and, when he did the same to the pump we had just removed, so did it!!!!

Very strange. What was going on? Was the pump the issue? Reading the manual [again] we debated whether the high-pressure switch that is triggered if – of course – the pressure is too high wasn’t working properly. It is supposed to turn the motor off for just a short time and then back on again. We wondered if this switch had been triggered but in some way the switch had stuck and not therefore turned the pump back on when the pressure returned to the correct operating level.  Had removing the pump released it? Would it now work if we put it back together? So, going step by step and checking things at every stage Mike slowly replaced the parts using our pump.

It worked. The pump started, the pressure reached the correct level, water production followed.

All in all, with an overnight in between when we obviously couldn’t do anything in the dark, it was 26 hours after picking up the pump [ 11 hours of work] that we got it back together and operating properly. Of course, during those 26 hours there was sailing stuff to do as well, like changing the position of a reef line that was in the wrong place, mending the main outhaul which snapped, the odd gybe here and there, sail changes etc. But, by 11.00 on 10^th Dec i.e. 2 days out, by which time we had covered 10% of the route, we felt we were OK to properly continue our crossing and settled down to do just that.

At this stage we had reached a point in the route when we were able to head in a more south westerly direction and for the next 24 hours we made reasonable progress in 10-12kn winds with just the mainsail. The wind then shifted more easterly but we decided against putting the spinnaker pole out in the late afternoon as, although we had used a pole on “Siga Siga”, it was the first time on “O&P” and we didn’t want it going wrong as dusk approached or, even worse, overnight. Bigger boat, bigger sail, heavier pole. We wanted to have had it working for some hours in daylight first.

To our delight, early the following morning, all went well….

….. and 2 hours later we added the jib.

Apparently it’s not “goose- winging” as that has to be genoa and main [or, I assume, jib and main] but whatever it’s called it worked really well.

24 hours later and another wind shift meant jib and poled genoa were replaced by main and “free” genoa and, at last our speed increased from the average 4.8kn we had been doing since leaving 4 days previously to a respectable average of 6.5kn. We stayed with that sail rig for the next four days and made good progress. Whilst we were loving the progress, and the lack of any trauma at all – a very good thing -, it became a case of looking for things to do as, other than reading, the only other activity was to watch the sea….!

We did spot the occasional dolphin but, since waving cheerio to “Coriander” we hadn’t had any sighting of other vessels, at least by eye, though we had spotted one tanker as an AIS target.

Mike decided to make it slightly more interesting by trying to take photos of the sargasso weed as it passed……

 ….and, having spotted some tropic birds I took photos of them….

We also watched shoals of flying fish – all of which managed to avoid landing on the boat during the day, but not so at night.

One morning we woke to 23 on board…

….. and, because some of them had actually landed in or very near the cockpit, and which could be reached without leaving it, I had gathered five fair sized, newly dead, ones on one of my watches and kept them in a box of water.

So, time to liven things up in the galley.

And so the journey continued. We hit the half way mark 9 days out at just after 10am on 17^th December. We celebrated that milestone with a G+T each at sundown that evening – our first drink since leaving Mindelo. I know I say we don’t drink on passage, and usually we don’t, but one treat after 1150 nm seemed reasonable.

At about this time the wind changed again and we were back to dropping the main and using the pole and the jib as the wind was almost completely astern. We had tried other options first but the waves were having none of it, causing us to roll horribly. Fortunately, the “wing” option settled us down again and we went on our merry way…. That is until just over two days later we were hit on the side by a wave and heard a big bang. The clew attachment on the end of the spinnaker pole – where the pole is attached to the genoa sheet – had rubbed the sheet until it frayed and then snapped.

We thought we had prepared for this prior to leaving by sewing a protective sheath over the sheet where the pole attached. However, with use, the pull on the sheet had tightened the knot so the protection was no longer in the right place.

It wasn’t, fortunately, a major problem. We furled the sail, turned the sheet round, reknotted it and then moved the protection so that it was actually part of the knot and fixed it in place with cable ties. That seemed to do the trick.

All then progressed well until the last 36 hours. As well as Garmin messages to each other we had been able to keep in touch with “Coriander” by SSB radio at dusk every evening. As well as exchanging pleasantries and, obviously position and status, we also discussed sailing conditions. They were on a track approximately 100 miles north of us and about 24-30 hours ahead. When we were still 3-4 days out they reported encountering several squalls and increased wave and, it came as no surprise therefore, when we got exactly the same for those last 36 hours. If we could have battled through in 24 hours it might not have felt quite so bad but our timing was wrong. We were in sight of Barbados just before sundown which meant we had to slow the boat totally so as not to arrive until light the following morning. It didn’t help that it was also Christmas Eve and, in my head, I had promised we would have our second drinks treat which, due to the conditions was just an absolute No.

This meant the boat wallowed even more – but hey, if that’s the worst we encountered, we really can’t complain.

In the end we covered 2,317nm in 16 days 21 hours. Our previous passage, on “Siga Siga” had taken the more obvious route as the weather conditions had been more favourable. That first crossing, as reported 11 years ago in this blog, was 1,986 nm in 14 days 22 hours.

Although it took us 2 days longer, it actually didn’t feel like that and, because the passage was 331 nm further, our average speed improved from 5.5kn to 5.7. Not as fast as some boats, but we love our solid tub. Those first 4 days and the last 36 hours perhaps spoilt what was almost a perfect passage – but, then again, if that had been the case you wouldn’t have had all this to read would you!