Transatlantic: First Week

We spent a week sailing across an ocean, but all we did was circle the northern part of the Bahamas. This is like turning on a Roomba in a room and shutting the door; when you return 5 hours later, expecting the room to be fully vacuumed, you find that everything is still dirty and the Roomba got trapped in a corner!

In this full week, we sailed 398 miles, or an average of 56 miles per day. That is a far cry from our anticipated 80 or hopeful 100 miles per day! Worst of all, this was sailing 24 hours a day. With a crew of 3, we were able to do “4 on - 8 off” watch schedule. Everyone got plenty of sleep while the unlucky person had to sit in the cockpit and stare at the stars reflection in the glassy water!

This is not what we expected when we thought about crossing the ocean. All we have been doing is biding our time as we wait for the right weather to launch our trip, but instead of leaving from a port where we have access to food, water, and entertainment; we are leaving from the middle of the water, where there is no access to any of these things and all our provisions need to be conserved as we appear to be in for a VERY slow crossing.

Transatlantic: Day 7

We could not catch a break! The winds that were supposed to occur down south ended up happening up north, back where we were! We quickly turned around and began making our way back to where we were yesterday.

What about the winds that we were told would happen? Nope, nothing, nada. We were bobbing around with no wind in sight.

To make that day even better, I couldn’t get a single weather fax to come in! Everything was gray and static!

When we planned our transatlantic voyage, we were planning on covering 100 miles per day since this is average. Being how we are a bit slow, we were expecting to cover 80 miles per day. We are now a week out from shore and still hanging around the Bahamas! That is where people go because they don’t want to sail far away from land go!

How are we supposed to cross an ocean if we can’t even break away from land?

Transatlantic: Day 6

Despair, hopeless, lost? Yes, this is how we felt. We have been sailing for almost a week and we are bobbing around about a hundred miles from the Eluthra Island chain of the Bahamas. We are not moving, we are not sailing, we are just floating around aimlessly!

The winds that were supposed to come, didn’t come. We are so far away from the Gulf Stream that it feels like it would take another week just to float our way back to it. When puffs of wind come, we get a little speed, and our angry crew member seems mildly apathetic as our speed could be better if the winds would improve. When the winds die away, he becomes belligerent as the lack of wind must be someones fault. Morale is waning as time slips away.

Maddie and I used to play card games in the cockpit in weather like this. The lack of wind means that our cards won’t blow overboard! Instead, we tiptoe around our crew member, trying to avoid setting him off. This eventually leads to Maddie also becoming frustrated, and that makes me frustrated.

Now we have three frustrated people bobbing around in the ocean with no land in sight. Being close to the Bahamas, we encounter a fair number of fishing vessels that motor past us. The larger ones are courteous and gave us weather reports. The information they had was much more detailed than the ones we received with our weather fax, and it would all promise wind tomorrow.

When we tomorrow become today?

Transatlantic: Day 5

A front is supposed to be rolling in, so we make a straight line shot away from it for two reasons:
1. Bad weather is the opposite of good weather.
2. According to our friends on land that were texting us to the boat via our sat phone, the winds were supposed to be blowing out of the West tomorrow down there at a steady 20 knots!

The 1020 line is far away, but if we are supposed to have wind, we will take it!

Looking further out at the weather map of the Eastern Atlantic, it appears that the gales have toned down. At this point there is only one gale hovering west of the Azores.

We head south as we wait for the beautiful winds tomorrow is supposed to bring!

Transatlantic: Day 4

We are still moving slowly. The winds are light, but to the north is supposed to be bad storms, so we begin heading South East towards what should be better wind.

The winds are supposed to be blowing us South, so we begin beating South East. The southern component of the route is not ideal, since we are trying to head North East, but at least we are moving East.

Looking further out, the 1020 line seems to be stationary! It is hanging out at the longitude of the BVI! We are a bit concerned because this is mid June, and hurricane season will be starting soon. Heading towards the Virgin Islands right before hurricane season is a risky move, but the winds are being weird and not following the normal routine, so this is what we do as we wait for the weather to improve.

Why are we doing this again? Why didn’t we wait in port for better weather?

We were asking ourselves this same question. Back in the Exumas, when we picked him up, we were waiting for better weather; then the weather started to improve so I gave him a ballpark estimate.

At that time (early June) I told him, that we are still waiting for the Azores High to form and mature. This usually happens in early May, but it hasn’t formed yet, so we are just waiting. Around June 6th, it looked like it would be formed and stable soon, as it had begun its development. I gave him a ball park schedule of: We leave Staniel Cay on June 8th, arrive in Florida on June 10th, and have two days to provision, leaving Florida on June 12th.

Well, we left Staniel Cay on June 8th, but we didn’t arrive in Florida until the afternoon of the 11th. WE WERE BEHIND SCHEDULE!! To appease him, we left on the 14th instead of waiting for the weather to actually be better.

So out here we drift, as we slowly make our way towards an imaginary line in the ocean that should have wind and carry us safely to our destination!