Logbook

The knuckle of South America at this latitude acts as a splitting point for the west going current created by the SE Trades. Above here it bends more to the north and below here it tends to follow the coast and is turned more southerly. So it should be running more in our favour soon.
The wind, which had been fresh all night, eased slightly around 0830 this morning and I got the Genoa back up again. There was one flying fish onboard the size of a canned sardine. It was too small for eating so it got thrown back over the side again.

The stars were brilliantly clear last night. Each one seemed to have switched to an extra large wattage bulb and they were putting on a rare display. The Pole star is below the horizon now and the Plough is getting lower with each night that passes. Familiar groups of stars are giving way to new constellations. The Toucan, the Crane and the Dolphin are all coming into view and it takes a bit of time to try and recognize them all.

At 1130 the wind suddenly picked up fresh as if a squall of rain was coming through but there was really no change in the sky at all. I was in the middle of getting a bread ready for the oven and had to leave it to get the Genoa down and Jib up. Even that wasn’t enough and I had to take in a reef in the main as well with spray lashing over the deck.
An hour later and the wind had fallen to lighter than it had been before. It might have reached a F3. I went on deck to set more sail. The dough was in the oven by this time and when I was at the mast shaking out the reef the wonderful smell of the bread baking came rising up out of one of the for’ard vents.

When I was doing this a tanker passed by our stern about a mile away. She was the Cape Bastia bound for Singapore for orders and due in on Jan 19th. While I was watching her I saw we had passed what looked like a marker buoy of some kind. If I’d seen it earlier I might have gone a bit nearer for a closer look. Then two minutes later we passed a decent sized Portuguese man o’ war. From having seen nothing for days it was all happening at once! Back home you wouldn’t think it worth writing about to see a boat, a buoy and a jellyfish all at one time but it was seemed significant here.

After all that excitement I sat down in the cockpit with my lunch of warm crusty bread, canned mackeral and a drop of red wine. I was half expecting to see something else but that was obviously enough distraction for one day. We’ll see a bit more as we close the coast I imagine.

What the NE Trades lacked in wind is being made up for here in the SE Trades. We sailed fast all last night with a press of wind on our beam. I was up several times in the night thinking we were over canvassed but each time I got on deck and looked around we didn’t seem too bad. Elsi was throwing up arches of spray from her bow from every wave she dipped into and our lee rail was well down.

By late morning though the wind had increased that little bit too much and I had to drop the Genoa and set the Jib. We might have dropped half a knot in speed but we are still pounding along. By the time I got back below I was pouring with sweat. Heavy oilskins in 30ºC heat isn’t a good combination! But it was either that or get drenched. Too much spray around for me to get my hams out but Alyson has been in contact with the producers and they say there should be no problem with them.

We got set farther to the west overnight than I would have liked. The west going current is stronger here but maybe I put Elsi’s bow too far off the wind as well. So, I’ve altered course more S’ly again so that we don’t close on the land too soon. The wind will back around to the north of east as we get farther south but I’ll try to keep a bit of distance between us and the land for the time being.

Our day’s run is 123nm but we are nearer 150nm between noon positions. The current will be responsible for a lot of that. A fine clear day here with blue skies and scattered white cloud. Sunlight glinting off the water.

For a while now there have been fewer contacts available for the connections I need to send these updates for the website. Around northern Europe there is really no problem but as we have gone further south the quality of the signal has decreased the further away we get. It also takes a longer time to send each email with the weaker connection so I’m not sure how much longer I will still be able to keep sending. It might all change as we go further south and open up new contacts but I think there aren’t that many in this part of the world.

Either poor signals or too many people on the frequencies have hampered my contacts with the local Shetland Radio Club as well.  The quality depends a lot on the 11 year sunspot cycle. Right now it should be at a high and contacts should be good. But, maybe the chance of getting a good contact brings more people on air and the frequencies get swamped with people calling up. Whatever the reason it has been very difficult to hear anything from home over the radio for a while now. In 2006, when the cycle was at a low point, the contacts were much better. But there are numerous reasons for good and bad signals, time of day, aurora, interference all play a part and it can be a combination of many things.

Before midnight last night I was woken by a clack clack clack. The lashing, which holds the port side steering line for the Aries, had chafed through and the chain, which provides for adjustment between the two lines, was clacking around on the deck. I cut off a new length of line and we were back in business in no time.

The wind picked up for a time around 0300 and I had to take in a reef but it only lasted half an hour before lulling back down again to a F4.
We are in a position now to bear away a little more towards the coast of South America so that we are taking the wind and sea more on the beam rather than ahead of us, as has been the case for the past few days. It makes for a more comfortable motion and better day’s runs as well as the sea is helping us rather than knocking us back and slowing us down.

Today is the solstice, mid-winter for those in the north and mid-summer for those of us down here. The sun is at the farthest south it will be this year and the Antarctic has 24hrs of daylight. From today it will start climbing north again. Slowly at first and speeding up as it crosses the equator then slowing again as it reaches the top of its bounce on 21st June next year. The Simmer Dim in Shetland. It will pass overhead of us somewhere off the South American coast in January and from then on, until we are back in the South Atlantic next September, we will have to look to the north to see it doing it’s daily round.

I spent the morning putting some whippings on the ends of the halyards. There wasn’t too much spray coming over us so I could get the Spanish hams out again to try and dry off some more. There’s not much wildlife around apart from flying fish. I heard one land on the deck last night but he slipped out through the scuppers while he was still flapping around. I’ve seen them out of the water for about the length of a football pitch and there is some evidence to say they can glide upwards of 300 metres at times. As we get nearer to the coast we will probably see a bit more activity.

For something to mark our passage across the equator I got my two Burra Bear crewmen Tirval o’ da School and Andrew o’ Fuglaness, which the Hamnavoe Primary School and my sister put onboard, out on deck. We wrote out a message, stuck it in an empty wine bottle, wrote, “Open Me!” on the side and threw it overboard. The winds and currents should carry it to the north coast of South America or the Caribbean but who knows where it will end up.

Well, that’s us in the Southern Hemisphere. We crossed the equator about 0330 GMT this morning at around 25º 25’W. There would have been about 3500nm on the log at the time. This will be our fortieth day out from Falmouth so that’s roughly 87.5 nm per day of an average. So far everything has been going very well really. I haven’t had to do any sail repairs yet. The mainsheet horse developed a crack and one of the headsail leads broke off but apart from that it’s all been fine.

As a treat Alyson bought two legs of Spanish ham for me to have onboard. They are a couple of real big trotters, one is 7kg and the other is 10kg. I had been saving them and to celebrate crossing the line I thought I would open one of the hams and have a good feed tonight. But…..they have been in plastic inside the linen wrapper and have gone damp, I wouldn’t say mouldy, but damp. I actually thought they were shrink wrapped inside the linen and they would last longer to keep them in their original wrappings but that’s not been the case.

They don’t smell too bad, a sweetish smell almost as if they had been coated in honey. I have them out on deck right now trying to dry them a bit but I’m not sure if direct sunlight is good or bad for them. I cut off a slice to taste. Instead of being dry inside the fat was still glistening and moist and so was the meat. I tried a bit. It was tough but didn’t look or taste too bad. The meat was still a fine reddish colour and I’m hopeful I’ll be able to salvage most of it.

I won’t keep them in the plastic any longer. I’ll put it them back in the linen bags with maybe an extra pillow case over the top.

For lunch instead I had a tin of tuna salad. It was all carories and will keep the life in me but it was as wet and tasteless as you might imagine a can of tuna salad to be. Thankfully I only have four of them onboard so I might eat them all over the next few days to get rid of them.

The wind picked up a bit now to become a SE F4 most of the time. I’ve set a staysail along with the Genoa and we are making about 5kts just now. The old square-rig men used their older gear in the Trade winds and saved their heavier canvas for the higher latitudes of the south.
To an extent I’m doing the same here. The headsails sheets I’m using are the original ones from when Elsi was first launched. I’m fairly careful to watch them for chafe and to be sure they are not perfect now but they are still holding the strain of the two headsails.
I’ve end for ended them a few times and cut off some bits but they will do a few miles yet. My new sheets are below waiting for their turn.

The halyards are different. They were all renewed in 2006 and they have all been renewed again before this trip. The spare ones I carry with me. It’s easy enough to see wear on a sheet and sort it but not so easy to re-run a halyard at sea, especially if it breaks.

There may not be many sail changes in the next two weeks as we will probably be on the port tack all that time and should have the reasonably steady winds of the SE Trades to blow us further south. But then…the NE Trades were all feet up and fickle so we won’t take anything for granted just yet. It’ll be what it’ll be.

Today is a much better day than yesterday in many ways. We’ve had a N’ly swell which has been running into a fresh wind for the past few days creating a lumpy motion. But during the night the wind dropped to about F3-4 and the swell crept round to flow with the wind so they are both from the SE. The current here is flowing to the west as well. As a result the sea is a lot flatter today and more regular. For the first time in quite a number of days I can go on deck without oilskins. There is still some spray coming over the rail but it is a thing of nothing. The horizon is a straight line again and that always makes it easier for taking sights.

The sky has cleared a lot as well and the sun is burning hot again. It was 30º C in the cabin this morning. From our noon position today we have 52 miles to go to the equator. If this wind holds, which it looks like doing, we should be across tomorrow.

There was still a bad smell coming from the saltwater pump so this morning I shut off the seacock, disconnected the pump and poured bleach down the length of the line. I’ve shaken the hose around a bit to disperse it and I’ll leave it overnight to see if it’s any better.

What I said a day or two ago about how I deal with the fresh water is similar to what happens with all the food onboard. All the grub I need for a year is stored in separate lockers and while I was stowing it in Alyson was taking a note of where everything was. How many cans of mince, what weight they are and so on for everything. Enough for 400 breakfasts, lunches and dinners. So, I have a folder detailing all the quantities of food onboard and where to find it. When I take out a tin of corned beef or a packet of biscuit it gets stroked off the list and so I have a running total of what’s left and where it is.

I am very aware that everything onboard is finite. Once something is used that’s it. It’s gone. Fresh water I can replenish but food, no. I have enough onboard to keep me living for a year but I do have to ration the “treats” I have stowed away. As much as I would like to fill the boat with an extra case or three of Guinness or Coca cola there came a time when putting stores aboard that we had to stop.

When I left Falmouth Elsi was well down on her waterline and there comes a point where enough is enough. It’s always the problem with a smaller boat. If Elsi were 40′ long I could fit an extra half-ton of stores no problem. If she were 50′ long two tons of stores spread round the boat would be barely noticeable and would make little difference to the speed. But a ton of stores and supplies on a 31′ boat makes a definite difference to her waterline and to her performance especially going into a head sea. So I’ll have to resort to rationing and have my treats as and when.

But maybe when you can only have one can of beer or one Mars bar a week then you enjoy it all the more and savour every mouthful. When I get back I’ll either be a complete convert to rationing or else pig out for a week!

Imagine your house is suspended from a giant bungy cord. The cord isn’t in the center of the house but to one side so your house isn’t flat but hanging at an angle of 30º. It is continually being jerked from front to back and from side to side. Every few seconds it is lifted up then dropped down suddenly and every now and again it is lifted a bit higher and dropped so that it hits the ground with a bang and everything shudders and shakes.
You can’t move at all without holding on as your world is never still for a second but you somehow have to go about your everyday duties, cooking, reading, writing, trying to get your cursor steady enough to hit a particular dot on the screen…
The movement isn’t predictable at all but completely random and chaotic. You make a cup of tea but you can’t set it down anywhere and all the while someone is throwing bucketfuls of saltwater over your windows.
You are lucky enough though to have a cooker that is gimbaled i.e. the top stays reasonably flat while the house swings around. So cooking is possible once you get to the stage where everything you’ve prepared is actually in the pot. Then, of course, you have the fun of trying to eat it without ending up wearing it.

If you can imagine that you will have some idea of what life is like on Elsi right now. We are battering to windward in a F5-6 a couple of hundred miles north of the equator. The equator can be stark calm with blue skies or it can be like this. For all the movement though I would far rather have that than have nothing at all and be going nowhere. At least we are moving albeit in every direction as well as forwards.

The wind was more or less steady all night at around F5-6 and I slept through most of it. At first light there was little change but by late morning the wind had eased a bit and I could set the full mainsail again. The sky was more blue than anything else with a warm sun shining through. The upper cirro clouds appeared almost static and sentinel. The lower broken of bits of cumulus were fast drifting across us but as smooth and steady as a hand passing over sheaves of corn. Down on the water there was nothing smooth about it and we were still being pitched about as much as ever.

I’m not sure if these winds are the N’ly limit of the SE Trades. They feel steady enough and the sky is taking on a Trade wind appearance but we are still north of the equator so we’ll wait and see what happens over the next two days.

When the change came it happened quickly. I was up in the cockpit around 1400. I’d seen some whales and was keeping an eye on them. They were about a mile away and there were at least three of them as I could see three plumes of spray at one time getting carried away on the wind like smoke from a firework. There may have been more, as the sprays seemed to be coming up pretty frequently but they never came any nearer so I couldn’t tell what they were or how many.

We had been sailing in a NE F3 and suddenly the wind dropped almost to nothing. To the SE I could see the water darkening and I suspected something was up. I went below and pulled on my oilskins and was not long back on deck when the wind came in gusty from the SE. I dropped the Genoa and pulled up the Jib. I thought the wind, when it did change, would maybe veer round slowly into the south over a few hours. But that was it over and done in five minutes. The swell was rolling in from the north and because it was now running into the wind it made for a lumpy motion.

Once or twice Elsi got knocked down by a sudden punch of wind but always got right back up again and carried on. It was heavy going though and at times it felt like we were trying to slough our way through soft sand. A racing boat would have kept the Genoa set but I was unsure of how strong the next gust was going to be and as night was coming on I sacrificed speed for more peace of mind.

The morning again was overcast. Squalls were all round us. I counted five at 0700. From an outstretched hand a dark line of cloud one thumb width above the horizon marked each squall. Below each one vertical grey sheets of water poured down to the sea. I caught some more of it as squalls came across us. One bucketful I caught I dipped in a cup and filled it up, then poured it down the inside of my neck. It was fresh and clean and refreshing. The water that had been two minutes before in a cloud in the sky above us was now making it’s way down to my stomach. There’s so much rain but so few rainbows. I think the light can’t get through the dense cloud to make them. We did have blue skies and white clouds this morning for an hour but it was soon back to grey again.

Some squalls brought wind and some didn’t. At 0930 I had to get on deck quick to get a reef in and it was slipped out an hour later. That is the way here with the wind, very up and down and rarely steady for long.

We still have goose barnacles growing and getting bigger. I’ve scraped them off before, and I did again this morning, but they keep coming back. They will be with us now for the duration I fear. I’ll have to go under Elsi at some point and see how bad it is. We spent a lot of money on good anti-foul but it doesn’t seem any better than what I had last time. Disappointing.
Still we’ve made what is a good days run under the circumstances. We might have been becalmed or even drifted north of where we were yesterday with the current. We’re a degree south in 24hrs and I’m happy with that. The wind now (1400) is about SE F4 and we are beating into it. It’s never easy to make good speed to windward but we’re plugging away.

The wind is upside down here. We should be beating to windward in a S’ly and instead this morning we were running goose winged before a fine NE’ly. I’m not complaining, the shift of direction in the Trades was against us but here it works in our favour so it’s evening out not too bad. The wind had been very up and down the past 24hrs and more down than up. At times I thought it was going to fade away completely but there has always been enough to keep us sailing.

It’s been very damp though and over cast. The only lighter patches of the sky seem to highlight how dark the rain clouds are. There’s been either drizzle or rain on and off most of the time. This morning we had a heavy shower. Before I got oilskins on and got out it had mostly passed but I still managed to collect over a gallon of rainwater. I keep a close eye on how much water I use. The fresh water I use is never just pumped into a cup or pot or sink. Instead I have a litre bottle and pump water into there each day. Then I mark off in a notebook that I have taken a litre from whichever tank, I have two tanks. Any rainwater collected and put into a tank gets marked in a different column. So I have a running total of how much I have left in each tank.  If I didn’t have some kind of system I could end up with a dry tank when I’m parched for a cuppa!

When we crossed the equator last time we had more water onboard than we had when we left Shetland two months before. We had torrential rain north of the equator and I filled all the tanks, the kettle, pots and pans and buckets. I remember Terry and me doing the same in the Marquesas during a real tropic downpour. We filled everything but still it kept on raining.

All the rain is caught from the mainsail. I top up the sail so the water all runs to the mast end and have a bucket there to catch it. If there’s been a lot of spray the mainsail is salty and I have to let it run off some before using. Usually I’ll run some into the bucket scoop some up in my hand to have a taste. If it’s too salty then pour it out and catch some more till it tastes like it should. I can catch as much in two minutes, at times, as it would take me an hour to pump up using the watermaker.

There seem to be no dolphins here. I’ve seen plenty of flying fish but with the moon fuller now there is less chance of them coming onboard at night.
We’re less than 300nm to the equator now. But I’m not even thinking about an ETA for crossing the line. We might be less than three days but the wind might fizzle out to nothing and it might be a week before we get across. It’s that kind of place. For now though we have a fair breeze around a F2-3 and are continually moving so I’m thankful for that.