We played a more traditional game with our approach to Grenada. Would the wind qet us there in daylight?
The night before the wind was a whisper and I was fatalistic. What would be, etc. Then the day a perfect palace of light - the tropical sun's thousand-fold brilliance, making objects either glow or burning them back to some essence that can't be revealed by more temperate light. The only "object" around us the occasional ship. Everything else being either ethereal - the towering thunderheads of squally weather brewing - or liquid - the marble-blue sea.
Not wanting to either glow or be burned back to our essence, we Galactics huddled in the shade.
A squall came sweeping through at lunch time. Here's us, half a jib and no main, making 8 knots. Nothing could be finer.
And then after the squall, the wind settled in to do its tradewind business. We boomed along, Grenada firmly in the bag.
But then! Who expected zephyrs by evening? The wind died and died as we closed the shore. The current that has been helping us along since before the equator did its final bit.
Through binoculars we marveled at the thickets of yachts crammed into every anchorage. We have heard about such things, of course, but never had seen the absolute numbers before on display.
As we made the final turn into our chosen bay the wind left us completely for a long long moment while the current kept rocking us along. If it stayed like that we dasn't approach the shore. The sun now was frankly closing the horizon.
The wind rallied, and just enough of a breeze saw us shooting in towards the floating condo field that is a Caribbean anchorage almost safe from hurricanes during the season. I laughed at the thought that a couple hours before we had been discussing whether we should sail in with one reef or two.
A quick assessment of the scene - look, there's a channel marked through the anchorage - look, there's some room behind that black hull just behind the cat - then a luff, followed by a tack and a short board and another luff and, "let it go now"!
Followed by the inevitable reply from crew to captain, that age-old response that is carven in the salt-stained oak of nautical tradition: "let it go now?"
"Yes, now!"
And, we cold-cocked it. Easiest thing in the world, really, if you're happy with the outermost spot in a very open bay. After we had settled down against the wind an attempt to set the anchor revealed that we now have neither forward gear nor reverse.
And so now we've crossed the Atlantic twice. In one year, mind, which makes 2016 a great capper to our year spent in the south. Twenty days out of Ascension, and 45 out of South Africa. Thirty-eight or 39 days at sea all up.
We had cheese and olives and drinks in the cockpit while a very spectacular sunset played itself out. I allowed myself a second beer, even though I knew the risk in terms of migraine, and sure enough paid the price this morning. If this were fiction I could be someone's uncle, exasperatingly predictable in their less respectable behaviors.
And now! Once more into the marine engineering breach, this time re. the gear box.
(Pelagic, if you see this and are nearby, we're the outermost boat in Prickly Bay. Would be great to meet you!)
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
Monday, September 19, 2016
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
By the Numbers/Is Life Better In Reverse?
I think it might be because of the way that my day job is so number-intensive, but I tend to be pretty relaxed about quantifying various aspects of our life afloat.
Our fuel consumption, in liters per hour? The size of our water tanks? Our average daily run?
These are numbers that most of our traveling tribe of global gallivants, our fellowship of cashed-up (or not) misfits, our fellow full-time sailors, that is, can readily rattle out. These are reasonably important numbers, after all, if you're gonna go a-cruisin'.
Of those three questions, I can only answer the middle with a rough sort of certitude. Six hundred liters, and no, we don't have any way of gauging them at sea. To the first question I can offer a dumb look, and to the last I can only say that we more or less guesstimate 150 nautical miles if we're doing something so gross as trying to plan a passage. But really we don't know. Most of the time, I don't even calculate our daily run. I think it might be that the little corner of my psyche that is given over to the poetic rebels at all the time that I put into the scientific endeavor, and that poetic crumb of me vigorously defends sailing as its turf.
Bugger off, it says to my over-developed science side. Who cares how many miles we made? We'll get there when we get there.
Recently, though, we have all been having fun at guessing the daily run. It's enjoyable when we're putting up numbers like we have been - a string of oddly regular 178-mile days, interrupted by an occasional 180. This in spite of light winds, and thanks to the booming current off the northeast corner of South America that our mate back in Tassie has kindly been steering us into thanks to the magic of online current mapping.
Here's a startling set of numbers. Looking at the chart to pass the nightwatch hours, I see that from our current position off the coast of Suriname, we're actually closer to Kodiak (5,550 nm) than to Hawaii (5,930). The magic of a spherical globe!
And, there's this number: 40,000. We've kept the odometer on our GPS running ever since we set out from Alameda on this boat, and we passed over that notable number a few days ago. That's a lotta saltwater, I can tell you.
Oh, and this numerical correction to my post about the equator. Alisa points out to me that we were in the Southern Hemisphere (bless it) for five years and change, not four.
And, finally, this number: in a bit more than a week Alisa and I will have been married for 15 years. Those of you who were there for the party will doubtless marvel at how quickly the time has gone since.
So that's life by the numbers. As for living in reverse, which is not the Galactic way, I can tell you, that is a bit of grudging acknowledgement of the fact that we are now without a operating gearbox, and cannot engage the motor in forward. I say our acknowledgement is grudging because, at least at sea, it's no consideration at all. Who cares about the bloody gearbox out here? True, its demise did lead us to forego a visit to French Guyana and our friends on Oberon. We sorely felt that missed visit with long-lost friends, but it's hard to stay down long when you're on passage.
And we all seem to be thriving on this passage. Except occasionally for poor six-year-old Eric, who can't yet engage himself by reading for hours, and dearly wishes his ten-year-old brother, who can and does, would agree to play with him a lot more often.
But aside from that one little hiccup, we are thriving.
To whit: Alisa and I sat in the cockpit today, marveling that the sea could be so flat. We had honestly forgotten how gentle and easy tradewind miles can be.
Eric reeled in his first-ever tuna yesterday, a sardine-sized skipjack that did us well for lunch. You should have seen him, with the fighting belt strapped uselessly around his little waist. He was so pleased. And he is always so eager to see if a fish I am butchering is a male or female, and to see what's in its stomach. Definitely the child of biologists.
Elias, meanwhile, reeled in a blooody *marlin* the other day, with a little help from me. Needless to say, we released it. And the quiet smile that graced Elias' face for the rest of the day came from somewhere deep within.
Alisa occasionally mutters something along the lines of, "this is the best of life", or "I'm so happy".
The sea is blue, we are completely on our own and glad for it, and the days go so fast that it's hard to hold onto them.
Who could argue with her?
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
Our fuel consumption, in liters per hour? The size of our water tanks? Our average daily run?
These are numbers that most of our traveling tribe of global gallivants, our fellowship of cashed-up (or not) misfits, our fellow full-time sailors, that is, can readily rattle out. These are reasonably important numbers, after all, if you're gonna go a-cruisin'.
Of those three questions, I can only answer the middle with a rough sort of certitude. Six hundred liters, and no, we don't have any way of gauging them at sea. To the first question I can offer a dumb look, and to the last I can only say that we more or less guesstimate 150 nautical miles if we're doing something so gross as trying to plan a passage. But really we don't know. Most of the time, I don't even calculate our daily run. I think it might be that the little corner of my psyche that is given over to the poetic rebels at all the time that I put into the scientific endeavor, and that poetic crumb of me vigorously defends sailing as its turf.
Bugger off, it says to my over-developed science side. Who cares how many miles we made? We'll get there when we get there.
Recently, though, we have all been having fun at guessing the daily run. It's enjoyable when we're putting up numbers like we have been - a string of oddly regular 178-mile days, interrupted by an occasional 180. This in spite of light winds, and thanks to the booming current off the northeast corner of South America that our mate back in Tassie has kindly been steering us into thanks to the magic of online current mapping.
Here's a startling set of numbers. Looking at the chart to pass the nightwatch hours, I see that from our current position off the coast of Suriname, we're actually closer to Kodiak (5,550 nm) than to Hawaii (5,930). The magic of a spherical globe!
And, there's this number: 40,000. We've kept the odometer on our GPS running ever since we set out from Alameda on this boat, and we passed over that notable number a few days ago. That's a lotta saltwater, I can tell you.
Oh, and this numerical correction to my post about the equator. Alisa points out to me that we were in the Southern Hemisphere (bless it) for five years and change, not four.
And, finally, this number: in a bit more than a week Alisa and I will have been married for 15 years. Those of you who were there for the party will doubtless marvel at how quickly the time has gone since.
So that's life by the numbers. As for living in reverse, which is not the Galactic way, I can tell you, that is a bit of grudging acknowledgement of the fact that we are now without a operating gearbox, and cannot engage the motor in forward. I say our acknowledgement is grudging because, at least at sea, it's no consideration at all. Who cares about the bloody gearbox out here? True, its demise did lead us to forego a visit to French Guyana and our friends on Oberon. We sorely felt that missed visit with long-lost friends, but it's hard to stay down long when you're on passage.
And we all seem to be thriving on this passage. Except occasionally for poor six-year-old Eric, who can't yet engage himself by reading for hours, and dearly wishes his ten-year-old brother, who can and does, would agree to play with him a lot more often.
But aside from that one little hiccup, we are thriving.
To whit: Alisa and I sat in the cockpit today, marveling that the sea could be so flat. We had honestly forgotten how gentle and easy tradewind miles can be.
Eric reeled in his first-ever tuna yesterday, a sardine-sized skipjack that did us well for lunch. You should have seen him, with the fighting belt strapped uselessly around his little waist. He was so pleased. And he is always so eager to see if a fish I am butchering is a male or female, and to see what's in its stomach. Definitely the child of biologists.
Elias, meanwhile, reeled in a blooody *marlin* the other day, with a little help from me. Needless to say, we released it. And the quiet smile that graced Elias' face for the rest of the day came from somewhere deep within.
Alisa occasionally mutters something along the lines of, "this is the best of life", or "I'm so happy".
The sea is blue, we are completely on our own and glad for it, and the days go so fast that it's hard to hold onto them.
Who could argue with her?
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
Friday, September 9, 2016
An Awful Lot of a Good Thing
We left South Africa 37 days ago. Take away the three days we spent at St. Helena and three days at Ascension, and we've been at sea for a month.
I'm writing this as Galactic is making her way past the mouth of the Amazon River. True, we're more than 300 nautical miles off, but it is nonetheless legendary territory that we are transiting.
But, you'll notice that we aren't stopping.
The sad truth is that we spent too much time in South Africa. In our defense, there was the month(!) that we spent driving around South Africa and Namibia, which was a month of family time that will go a long way towards easing the memories of my old age. And there were bouts of science work that engaged my time and kept Galactic tied to the dock.
(Various efforts have been made with the best of intentions to somehow integrate science and religion. My recent thinking along these lines has been informed by Christopher Hitchins. Whatever he might have gotten wrong, he seems to have been spot-on about the various monotheisms. Buncha ideas scribbled down by illiterate goatherds in the desert, he would tell you. Their god never heard of microbes, nor of any beast that they hadn't seen with their own eyes. God is created in man's image, after all. Try integrating *that* with the 21st century understanding of the universe.
But! I have come to an almost fetishistic regard for the research work that has kept the voyages of Pelagic and Galactic going and going and going. I might make an altar in a corner of the saloon, under the diesel heater, come the next round of proposal writing, so that I can propitiate the responsible spirits. I may be retracing the natural history of religion here. Consilience achieved.)
But while the demands of wildlife viewing and making a living and spending time with simpático South Africans are the reasons why we stuck around, a sailor does have to occasionally be firm about these things. Time tide and cyclone season wait for no family sailboat. There are times in this life afloat when you simply have to put to sea, no matter the thousand niggling reasons why not that land always offers. We should have left a couple weeks earlier.
You see, we have something of an artificial deadline in hand. In the normal course of things we would just hang out in French Guiana and Suriname until the cyclone season was over, and then make our way up to the really excellent t-shirt stands of the Lesser Antilles in time for Christmas.
But I have various scientist tasks that will require my presence in the States in October and November. Alisa doesn't like to move the barky when I'm not aboard. So that means the boat has to be somewhere where we're quite sure it won't have to be moved when I pack my white lab coat and my tweed jacket with the elbow patches into my sailor's duffel and hop on a plane.
Now, it's gotten quite fashionable for yachts to hang out on the fringes of the hurricane zone, in Grenada. As a place to leave the family aboard sans captain/marine engineer/deck monkey, we aren't at all tempted. Ditto Trinidad. Enough South Africans warned us of dodgy travel conditions there for us to take notice. South Africa was about all the dodgy that we can handle for this ten-year stint.
So by the process of elimination, that leaves us moving all the way onwards to the Dutch Antilles. Completely out of the hurricane zone, and we get the impression that rape and muggings aren't as much a part of the tourist experience as they might be elsewhere. (Our rape and mugging risk tolerance is lower than just about anyone's whom we've met.)
It's a long way to go. And we now have plane tickets to honor, which given our endlessly contingent view on the question of how long it takes to get anywhere on a sailboat, must of necessity give us pause. So, even as we hear delightful things about Surniname and French Guiana via radio email, we resolve to keep moving. You can't do everything, we remind ourselves.
We did make contact with our friends on Oberon, our very oldest yachtie friends whom we haven't seen since Elias was in diapers. They are just south of Cayenne in French Guiana, and very conveniently located for a flying visit.
But! I put the engine in gear a few days ago and heard the most alarming noises from the gear box. A river entry and a narrow dredged channel might not be in the cards. I'll get brave enough to put the engine in gear again and we'll see where we're at. Where we're at might be sailing nonstop to our final destination. Which I make about 1,650 nautical miles from us. No problem. But it would end up being quite a long time spent at sea.
Luckily, this passage is right now living up to every wonderful expectation that I have developed over years of hearing other sailors' stories. A booming current (more on that another time), steady winds, good company, and all the fish we can eat.
All is well with us.
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
I'm writing this as Galactic is making her way past the mouth of the Amazon River. True, we're more than 300 nautical miles off, but it is nonetheless legendary territory that we are transiting.
But, you'll notice that we aren't stopping.
The sad truth is that we spent too much time in South Africa. In our defense, there was the month(!) that we spent driving around South Africa and Namibia, which was a month of family time that will go a long way towards easing the memories of my old age. And there were bouts of science work that engaged my time and kept Galactic tied to the dock.
(Various efforts have been made with the best of intentions to somehow integrate science and religion. My recent thinking along these lines has been informed by Christopher Hitchins. Whatever he might have gotten wrong, he seems to have been spot-on about the various monotheisms. Buncha ideas scribbled down by illiterate goatherds in the desert, he would tell you. Their god never heard of microbes, nor of any beast that they hadn't seen with their own eyes. God is created in man's image, after all. Try integrating *that* with the 21st century understanding of the universe.
But! I have come to an almost fetishistic regard for the research work that has kept the voyages of Pelagic and Galactic going and going and going. I might make an altar in a corner of the saloon, under the diesel heater, come the next round of proposal writing, so that I can propitiate the responsible spirits. I may be retracing the natural history of religion here. Consilience achieved.)
But while the demands of wildlife viewing and making a living and spending time with simpático South Africans are the reasons why we stuck around, a sailor does have to occasionally be firm about these things. Time tide and cyclone season wait for no family sailboat. There are times in this life afloat when you simply have to put to sea, no matter the thousand niggling reasons why not that land always offers. We should have left a couple weeks earlier.
You see, we have something of an artificial deadline in hand. In the normal course of things we would just hang out in French Guiana and Suriname until the cyclone season was over, and then make our way up to the really excellent t-shirt stands of the Lesser Antilles in time for Christmas.
But I have various scientist tasks that will require my presence in the States in October and November. Alisa doesn't like to move the barky when I'm not aboard. So that means the boat has to be somewhere where we're quite sure it won't have to be moved when I pack my white lab coat and my tweed jacket with the elbow patches into my sailor's duffel and hop on a plane.
Now, it's gotten quite fashionable for yachts to hang out on the fringes of the hurricane zone, in Grenada. As a place to leave the family aboard sans captain/marine engineer/deck monkey, we aren't at all tempted. Ditto Trinidad. Enough South Africans warned us of dodgy travel conditions there for us to take notice. South Africa was about all the dodgy that we can handle for this ten-year stint.
So by the process of elimination, that leaves us moving all the way onwards to the Dutch Antilles. Completely out of the hurricane zone, and we get the impression that rape and muggings aren't as much a part of the tourist experience as they might be elsewhere. (Our rape and mugging risk tolerance is lower than just about anyone's whom we've met.)
It's a long way to go. And we now have plane tickets to honor, which given our endlessly contingent view on the question of how long it takes to get anywhere on a sailboat, must of necessity give us pause. So, even as we hear delightful things about Surniname and French Guiana via radio email, we resolve to keep moving. You can't do everything, we remind ourselves.
We did make contact with our friends on Oberon, our very oldest yachtie friends whom we haven't seen since Elias was in diapers. They are just south of Cayenne in French Guiana, and very conveniently located for a flying visit.
But! I put the engine in gear a few days ago and heard the most alarming noises from the gear box. A river entry and a narrow dredged channel might not be in the cards. I'll get brave enough to put the engine in gear again and we'll see where we're at. Where we're at might be sailing nonstop to our final destination. Which I make about 1,650 nautical miles from us. No problem. But it would end up being quite a long time spent at sea.
Luckily, this passage is right now living up to every wonderful expectation that I have developed over years of hearing other sailors' stories. A booming current (more on that another time), steady winds, good company, and all the fish we can eat.
All is well with us.
~~
This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!
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