This Porridge is Rather Hot
Leslie was attempting her off-watch sleep when the wave hit and powered its way through the seals of the galley hatch. With adrenaline pushing the speed button on our minds, time stood still. On the back -rest of the wave, I tipped to my right side, placing the electrical panels at the foot of the latest waterfall installation in the galley.
Leslie screamed as she watched the water fall toward the switches and cords that power our navigation equipment, navigation lights, autopilot...everything.
Water rolled around my salon floor until it dropped through the cracks, into the bilge and the bilge pump undertook its duty. Leslie had been sleeping in her foulies, knowing she may be called to assist at any moment. So, she grabbed her harness and looped it over her head, calling Andrew through the companionway.
“Andrew! There is water pouring through the kitchen hatch!”
Andrew leaves his post and scrambles down inside. While repeating, “It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.” A second wave hits, pours through the hatch, and we lurch toward the electrical panel again.
“It’s. NOT. FINE!” Leslie says over the din of roaring monsters kicking the side of my hull.
Andrew fiddles with the hatch. Whatever odd angle those two waves hit from shifts and no more waves board for another minute or two. Then, it happens again.
This time, just as Andrew insists “It’s fine!” the power cuts out completely. All the red lights in my cabin go dark and obviously, the autopilot is no longer functional.
Leslie grabs her headlamp and moves directly to my steering wheel knowing the autopilot is no longer engaged. She clips her leash on and squats in the footwell behind the steering wheel. The night is pitch black, there is nothing to see, and we are being tossed around in all angles. My sails lose their draw, set for an angle different from the one we are on now. My bow is rounding up. Leslie hauls in on the jib sail to trim for an upwind angle, and then she slowly lets that back out again as we regain momentum. She hand-steers to realign our desired heading. We swing wildly in the waves, and the usual red light atop the compass is now dark. Leslie is dizzied while trying to read the heading pin; the compass dial swings 90 degrees at a time.
Andrew, is pulling my stairs away from the engine room door, readying himself to go inspect the breakers. His face peeks out and looks at Leslie’s face through the spokes of my wheel. A wave crashes into my cockpit and splashes into the footwell. Leslie looks outward in the direction the wind and waves are coming from. There is nothing out there but pitch black darkness.
“Don’t panic!” Andrew says, an instruction to himself as much as to anyone else.
Leslie holds our course while Andrew fiddles with my power system. Everything in there is dry. The switch board was also (magically) dry. There was no visible reason why the power went off at that particular moment. And then, as suddenly as it all went out, it comes on again. The red light on the compass flickers to life, the autopilot alarm blares its notes to inform everyone it is not engaged. We all breath a sigh of relief.
With Auto back on, Leslie joins Andrew below where they look up at the hatch. “I just re-did these seals in South Africa!” Andrew says. And, therein lies the problem: the hatch seal he used wasn’t quite up to snuff.
“You have to butyl tape it closed.” Leslie says.
“We won’t be able to open it, then.” Andrew says.
“Do you want to open it?” Leslie asks.
With this, Andrew agrees to butyl tape it shut.
The weather remained “sporty” for another three days, with wind gusting to 37, but never falling below 30. The waves stayed uncomfortably large, but my butyl tape seal held and we had no more water events. We did have a second power-down event at 0300 on Day 4. This time, we were charging the batteries with the engine when the alternator bearings gave up their gusto. Leslie returned to her hand-steering post while Andrew yanked the alternator off and swapped it for a spare. This brings back musings about the day Andrew had to tear apart two alternators in a seaway to combine the most operable parts into one functional alternator. That was more than 4 years and 15,000 miles ago.
Time moves so fast and so slow all at once.
This Porridge is a Bit Too Cold
By 0900 the morning of Day 5, the wind started to back off and the waves dropped to more normal conditions. Leslie ended her nap-time watch to the sound of Dophins singing through the hull. She emerged on deck to find Andrew already leaning over, talking to them.
All through that day, the wind slacked off and the waves fell. We shook out reefs, unfurled our tightly rolled sails, and I could breathe better...for a moment. But the wind just kept falling.
“Here comes the lull!" Leslie says as my bigger head sail loses support and goes limp.
“Should we put up the spinnaker?” Leslie asks.
Andrew and Leslie consider. It’s sunset, and sometimes the wind dies at sunset only to come back with gusto after dark. Running the spinnaker at night is nerve wracking as it can be a bear to wrangle if a squall sneaks up on you in the dark.
“Probably," Andrew says. “We need to squeeze out some distance.”
This passage is about 1300 miles, and my motor range is only 500 miles, tops. So, this means we have to sail most of the way. There are many considerations around how Captain Andrew doles out my fuel supply. Usually, if the wind lightens for a moment and it looks like it's a temporary lull with more wind just over there, we will motor until we find the wind and then the sails go back up. That decision is far easier on shorter passages where we know if worst comes to worst, we can motor to our destination. But on a passage like this, Andrew is nervous to expend fuel until we arrive within motoring range of our destination. Until then, my fuel supply isn’t really for motoring; it's to supplement our solar charging capacity to make fresh water if necessary and maintain radio communication. While we have big water tanks and we are conservative with water, the fuel supply is a comfort when it is still full and an anxiety when it is too low.
You tend to hoard resources when the map of your surroundings looks like this:
And so, up went the spinnaker - even in the dark.
We spend all of day 6 fighting to keep that spinnaker filled. We cross the prime meridian - which is 0 degrees longitude or the Earth's “vertical equator” - at 1330h (1:30 p.m.) on June 4, 2022. 117 degrees left to go to return to San Diego! Shortly thereafter, the wind left us completely and the sea flattened to a glass calm.
“We may sit on the prime meridian for the rest of our lives." Leslie said as she toasted the gods of the wind and sea.
Just moments after crossing the 0 degrees of Longitude. See the West coordinate at 000’02”601
We make 1 knots westward, but only thanks to current. The swell is still rolling up from the South and I swing gunnel to gunnel having no momentum with me. Leslie pulls the jib across my bow and tightens it on both winches. The sail is now a tight wing centerboard, and Leslie swears it slows my rolling. Andrew turns on the engine and we motor for a couple hours until the anxiety of using up our fuel outweighs the anxiety caused by my rolling.
We sit.
We wait.
This is the Southern Atlantic Ocean. The whole thing, totally calm.
So flat calm, the pattern of the clouds look like an oil slick.
No wind from straight behind us.
The slapping of the one limp jib makes Andrew crazy, so he rolls it in.
Leslie swears it makes us roll more.
Andrew and Leslie take turns swimming, then shower on deck just before sunset. This is perfect to cool off just before the night watch. There is not a cloud in the sky as the Atlantic rainbow sunset puts on another show.
That night, the sky was completely clear. Leslie watched mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, and saturn rise in a oerfectly straight line.
“Isn't that amazing, Sonrisa?”
Leslie is laying in the cockpit with the center piece of the bimini unzipped. The stars could be falling on us like snow, landing and floating in the glassy reflection of the sea. “This is what I love about being at sea. Would I be laying around looking up at the planets aligned on any random night living on land?" She asked. “Probably not.”
I agree, this is nice.
“When there is nothing you can do, it also means there is nothing you must do. If you accept that, you can relax.” Leslie says while existing as her own demonstrative exhibit.
Katherine Hepburn never minds a slow passage, as long as there is delicious food aboard.
“That's good,” I say. We accept and we relax all through that night watch.
The morning of Day 7 dawned with hot sun flashing off the flat-calm sea. Leslie dangles her legs overboard and looks 10,000 feet into the depth. “Thar be dragons out thar!" She calls out as Andrew barbeques a piece of the Snoek fish for lunch. This definitely feels like Kraken territory.
Giant squids live down there for sure.
Andrew pulls a forecast which finally says wind is “just over there.” This is the encouragement we needed, so he flicks the key and we motor forward. A couple times, we think there might be enough wind to sail, so we launch the spinnaker and turn off the motor, only to find the spinnaker hanging like a snotty hankie. The goes motor back on.
Around 3 p.m., Leslie can see the ripples take on a finer edge, their rumples more crisp than glossy. “We have wind!” She says while moving forward on deck to launch the spinnaker for the seventh time that day. This time the wind held and my spinnaker inflates in all its red, white and blue glory!
“Whooohooo!” Leslie says as we cut across the water at 5.5 knots of boat speed.
Soon, the wind freshens and we can use our normal sails. My wings unfurl like the white of a gull, and I dip and skip across the ocean surface. All our faces are turned toward the spray, eyes on the horizon, looking toward St. Helena.
This Bowl of Mac & Cheese is Just Right
“LAND HO!” Andrew calls on the morning of Day 9.
Slowly, St. Helena takes shape before us. First, a haze in the distance that moves less ephemerally than the clouds. Later, a grey mass looming out of the ocean, and finally, as we round her North Eastern point, a volcanic crag with colors of black, orange, red, and cream swirling together until they are covered by a blanket of green.
We sail along a sheer cliff wall until we arrive in the mooring field along side. This does not feel like an anchorage, and it is not. It is a mooring field clinging to a singular, tiny rock in the middle of the South Atlantic. But, a rainbow hung over a gorgeous little town as we sailed in, and it we can smell land right over there. We’ll take it!
We struggle in the open ocean waves to haul the mooring line up on deck, and then my crew tucks into a post-passage bowl of instant macaroni and cheese with a glass of South African bubbly to pair with it.
“Heaven!” Leslie says.
