Willie's Adventures Sailing and Fishing

As a team we are settling down and beginning to ‘norm’ in the framework of ‘forming, norming and storming’. As minister for communications and water, I have introduced the concept of an ‘aggravation meter’ . This has been remarkably well received. Aggravation on a boat is the ‘dead elephant in the room’. It lies there festering until, after a while, it erupts. In a small place, it can be unpleasant. We are relatively aggravation free, especially now that I have dealt with the ‘snoring police’. My snoring is now talked about affectionately in some quarters. ‘Careful now with the aggravation meter’ has been heard on occasion , with a corresponding decrease in tension.

I did the 6 to 9 shift this morning and commenced fishing operations early with much futile expectation. In desperation I dug out Jeremy’s lure he brought me safely from its own personal circumnavigation. It consists of an imitation squid being chased by an imitation fish. You can get the idea from the picture.

It might not look out of place on a Christmas tree and it would probably catch as many fish there. Whilst I was drowning his lure, I decided to rig my biggest brightest squid imitation. Being as though there isn’t much to do on a boat in the doldrums , this attracted quite a crowd and various comments on my dexterity and general technical ability in this department. I burst the bubble by explaining that I had learnt it all on You Tube a week or two before I left. There was much, ‘small but perfectly formed’, stainless steel shackle envy. They don’t have any as small as mine on the boat but they come in useful. One of mine has already been purloined to repair something on the dinghy. Anyhow, feeling generous, I donated the said lure to the owner’s wife who insists on fishing with a cut up washing up glove called ‘ Marigold’. Unfortunately,bloody Marigold has outfished all my expensive hi tech lures with a trolling score of 1 – 0 to date. Hence my secret desire to level the playing field. Owner’s wife is suspicious, but having accepted my newly christened offering called ‘Daffoldil’ she felt obliged to give it a go. Result. The opposition’s main striker was off the field for most of the afternoon. Enjoy the rest Marigold.

By this time the sun was above the yard arm and cold beer was summoned with a few freshly made drop scones plus canned cherries ( for my gout ) for lunch. It is pretty sweaty here in the doldrums and my German crew mate ( he is the hygiene minister) was commenting on my slightly smelly travel towel. The water minister has taken it as a serious duty to set an example to the hygiene minister on general conservation of water by not washing much and drying sweat off with said towel. In fairness, the towel was a bit off. Anyhow, feeling industrious, I set about doing some hand washing. You get a bucket, fill it with sea water chuck in some powder and either dance on it ,if the bucket is big enough ,or pound it with a stick. I think it is something they used to do in the old days but has died out now. Then you give it several rinses in more sea water before a final rinse in precious fresh water. Towards the end of this process, I came over all funny. My lips became hugely swollen to the point it was difficult to speak and then I broke out in unbelievably itchy hives all over my body. I was allergic to the washing powder. I knew there was a reason I avoided that department at home and this was clearly why. I took 4 antihistamine , had a shower and lay down and am pleased to say that I am now back to normal. Tomorrow, I am going to put the clothes I washed into a net and tow them behind the boat to get rid of any residue before a final rinse and a new fragrant me.

I am sailing the boat as I write this. She is being nursed along at a sprightly 4.7 knots in just 9 knots of wind, in the pitch dark broken by a beautiful moon. We will cross the equator tomorrow with wind and luck and Galapagos by Sunday or Monday.

More later …..

My watch tonight is 3 am to 6 am. Personally, I like it. I get to see the dawn. The moon has set by 3am presently so it is very dark with brilliant stars. When you look up on our left hand side, it looks as though some very thin clouds are obscuring the sky. Then you realise that they are not clouds and that you are looking at the Milky Way. Literally billions of other stars just like our sun that make up the galaxy we live in. I have an app on my phone that helps you find planets and stars. One of the things you can see is Andromeda. Andromeda, is the closest other galaxy to us and can be seen by the naked eye. It is as big as our Milky Way by itself and there are billions of other galaxies out there also. When you think about that, it makes our little planet seem special. Just like this boat is special to me right now.The full moon nights are something else I am looking forward to.

Everyone else is fast asleep so the boat is very quiet and dark. We are in the doldrums so there is not much wind. The waves are making a sort of sloshing gurgling noise and the previous watch keeper reported hearing dolphins playing around the boat. We still have hundreds of miles to go in any direction to reach land. I have been listening to my i-phone music. I tend to make different choices and experiment. Guggenheim is still right up there Trevor and , sorry Chris and St John, so is Leonard Cohen. However,a few others are starting to make the list. The Snowman wouldn’t seem to fit the temperature but all the flying about in the sky fits well with the vista of the stars. David Bowie’s Space Oddity and Starman are also two that I don’t seem to tire of. It may be though, that the best music is the stuff that goes on in your head when you just sit still, look, listen and try to take it all in. The picture doesn’t do justice to the sunrise, but you get the idea.

It is the same day and I have just finished my 5 to 9 pm stint. It has been a fairly happy boat all round today. I wangled a fried breakfast. With all the rocking about it is not possible to weigh myself accurately, even though there are scales aboard. I have been estimating the erosion of my one pack by which belt hole I have been using. Things are headed in the right direction, I think, and on that topic my sunburn has been getting better. We were much better at putting up all the various poles and sails today. We still made a few goofs although nothing serious. The generator and the water maker both worked as advertised and our water reserve is back up to around 800 litres from 580. For some reason, I have been appointed as the water minister and water police. My big idea, which has actually worked, was simply to do the first pass at the washing up in sea water and just rinse with fresh. Water consumption is probably down to a total of about 25 litres a day from 70. I dread to think how much we use at home by comparison. Living on a boat is a fairly ‘green’ affair.

On the downside there are two issues. We have been going for 6 days now since leaving the Las Perlas islands. We made great progress at first but we are now firmly in the grip of the doldrums. We have about another 250 miles to run to our anchorage in the Galapagos. In decent wind that is two days at an average of 5 knots. Today we have spent long hours coaxing the boat along at 1 or 2 knots. At that speed 250 miles could take another 5 to 10 days. We don’t want to motor because the fuel in the Galapagos is both expensive and of dubious quality which could lead to engine and generator issues further down the line. Patience is a virtue. On that topic, fishing has not been going well. It is far too long since I had a proper tug on my tackle. I noticed a small fish called a ballyhoo today right beside the boat. It jumped out of the water twice and as it entered again there was a big splash and no more ballyhoo. It had been trying to escape a predator but didn’t make it. The fish are there but I think we are not trolling our lures fast enough to fool them. Anyhow, tomorrow is another day but. Are just about out of red snapper and I want something fresh to have a Sushi party as we cross the Equator.

More later….

Hi all. The generator was repaired late last night. There is a little gizmo inside called an impeller. It looks like the wheel on a water mill and it pushes cold sea water around to cool things. It was replaced 10 days ago in Panama and had fallen to bits causing the generator to overheat and cut out. It should have lasted about a year . Fortunately we have several spares for it. The other happy news was that our attempts to get the sails up correctly today were much smoother and as a result we have made a much better mileage. We plan on about 120 miles every 24 hours. As I write, we have approximately 350 nautical miles left to run to the anchorage in the Galapagos. We need to speed up a bit. That is about 3 days and it just got dark so we want to get in while it is light , otherwise we hang about offshore until first light.

The third piece of really good news today was that we got the water maker going , again after a couple of teething problems. We had gotten down to 580 litres from a thousand when we set off. Running it today for two hours created 90 litres so in a few days we should be back up to nearly a full tank and more normal washing can resume. The temperature today was 33C in the shade. Without the sailing breeze it is very uncomfortable. I managed to get mildly sunburnt a couple of days ago so was wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt all of today. The winds are really light force 3 or 4 at best. The sea is calm and there are virtually no other boats around. We have seen 4 since leaving . The Pacific Ocean is a very big place.

More later….

Having completed my watch at midnight last night, I was enjoying resting in my bunk when I was awakened and brought into the cockpit at 0530 to admire how someone had managed to keep the boat sailing at a steady 5 knots despite the wind steadily dropping off. I won’t bore you with the details but you can do it at the expense of not maintaining the same direction. I tried to look impressed but suspect I didn’t do a great job of that. Anyhow, I got to see a very impressive sunrise for my troubles as you can see in the photo.

If you don’t skedaddle off back to your bunk other stuff starts happening that you get dragged into. The next watch came up to a ‘no wind’ situation. It is uncomfortable lying there wallowing in the swell with the sails banging and going nowhere. This started a long debate about what to do. First, I helped define an appropriate weather forecast request which we sent off and received back. The idea was to try to organise our course where we would benefit from the best wind. The plain truth was there was not enough wind to sail but that didn’t stop a couple of futile attempts and a few red herrings about wind and current. About 10.30 we got a tiny bit of wind which would allow us to sail with the wind directly behind us, albeit not precisely in the direction we wanted to go. To do this required putting long poles out each side of the boat and connecting two separate headsails to each side. As long as you keep the boat aligned directly in line with the wind then you can sail and make slow progress in very light winds. It was a problem repeated from the first time we tried it, that there are far too many chiefs and not enough indians when it comes to these jobs. I counted three separate times when I pointed out that something was not quite right and was either overruled or ignored. Not being skipper, and unlike me, I bit my tongue and watched interestedly until someone else spotted the mistake and corrected the overruling party. All very frustrating and wasteful of a lot of time. While all this was going on, an inquisitive turtle popped his head up about 10 yards from the boat to check us out before going on his merry way. We have also had several other visitations from diffent species of dolphins. We got there however, and we are now happily bowling along at 6 knots in an 11 knot following wind. The boat looks lovely with the twin sails up but the attached photo can’t do it justice because I can’t get far enough away to get everything into the picture.

So just as I am happily about to slink off for a while the generator dies! This is an electric boat with electric winches, lots of sailing instruments, fridge, freezer several computers etc etc. whilst generator failure is not the end of the world, it is an annoyance especially considering that we waited about three days in Panama to have the thing serviced. We think we know what is wrong with it but can’t do any further investigations until the whole thing cools down. We are about 3 degrees north of the Equator and it is approaching a steady 30 degrees day and night. So for now,fixing the generator and finding a way we can sail through the doldrums are the two tasks in hand. I have abandoned fishing because it is a bit complicated to stop the boat with this sail configuration and I don’t fancy trying to drag a tuna, wahoo or marlin in doing 6 knots in the opposite direction to an angry fish.

More later…

We have made very good progress since setting off. Today is no exception. I have been happily sunning myself at the stern with my daily beer ration and watching my fishing line as you can see in the photo. There is a very shallow patch ahead ( meaning it comes up from 4000 meters deep to only 1000 meters deep) and we are hopeful of finding fish there. If not there, then we are transiting past a lonely lump of rock called Malpelo island owned by Colombia. Based on various other blogs that I have read, it pays to let the Colombians know who you are and that you are in their neighbourhood. Others who have not done that, have been chased at night by Colombian Navy boats with no lights on which is a bit scary if you are up there alone on night watch. The island is very impressive. The bit you an see in the photo rises about 845 feet above sea level, but the whole thing is a 13000 foot high mountain rising from the sea bed. Bigger than Mont Blanc in the alps. Imagine what is under the water when you look at the photo. One big surprise about it was that it is incorrectly charted by at least a couple of miles. I have a different GPS and chart from the one on the boat. We transitted the island at least 1.5 miles offshore to the south and west. Both GPS’s showed us sailing right through the middle of the rock! Don’t rely solely on even two independent charts and GPS’s, always find an other independent way to check. Yesterday we did it visually. At night you would have to use the radar or stay away till daylight.

The other great thing that I am appreciating right now is the investment in he satellite phone. It is really great to just dial and speak to Sarah and family. As I write this we have another 500 miles to go to get to the Galapagos which will take at least another 4 days. Having the phone stops you from thinking that you are in the middle of nowhere, even when you are!

I have probably said so before but the stars are stunning when you are on night watch. I am getting much better at orientating myself by identifying the major constellations and working out where north south east and west must be by that. My previous post was garbage, you can see the plough, it is just upside down, with the North star below it close to the horizon. The seafarers of old did that before compasses and sextants were invented. I have stopped short of trying astro navigation on this trip.

Well we need not have worried about any lack of wind. We can easily make 7 knots over the ground with any sort of wind in excess of 15 knots. We managed about 140 miles in our first 24 hours which is good and would make for a speedy passage if we an keep that sort of performance up. We are mainly sailing on broad reaches a or running dead in front of the wind. Depending on whether the wind is above or below 15 knots we pole out the headsail. Above 15 knots or at night we tend not to use the pole. The mainsail is not in use and we balance the boat using the mizzen sail at the rear so that the forces on he rudder are kept to a minimum. We had an experiment this morning trying to fly two headsails running straight downwind which ended badly with an unplanned gybe. Fortunately no one got hurt and nothing got broken. Too many chiefs problem. The co- owner is back fishing with a cobbled together line. I rigged the first 10 or so feet as wire so if all the line is run out now , wire will be chafing and not monofiliment. I also suggested tying a row of empty beer cans to the reel as an audio clue that something has grabbed the lure. Let’ s hope that works. I have been fishing all day but with no success . I may be forced to join the dark side and use a marigold glove as my lure if things don’t pick up!

We are getting our weather forecasts everyday by radio, which although slow and fiddly works well and much better than my satellite phone. Having said that, the voice reception on the satphone has become much better offshore, provided you can get out of the wind. It is great to be able to call Sarah and other friends and family.

The next piece of land we will see is Isla Malpelo owned by the Colombians and which is just a barren rock with no anchorage or landing area. It will take another 24 hours to get there or so and then we should be able to turn right and head directly for the Galapagos with the benefit of more easterly winds. A couple of days after Malpelo we will cross the Equator and have a party to honour Neptune. Wish me luck for a fish that I can land.

More later.