Transatlantic: Day 17 [Day 38]

As promised, the winds returned. Our little break from sailing was much needed as we were a bit tired from all the watching and movement of the boat. Just the act of sitting in a sailing vessel is strenuous as you are constantly moving your core to maintain yourself straight and steady. Sleep is not as deep because you are listening for the on watch person should they call out for you to assist them.

Having a break in the middle was actually really nice because it let us recharge and regroup. We ate, we rested, and now we were ready to go once again.

With the winds back, we were moving along quickly at our old pace, covering more than 100 nautical miles per day.

Friends on shore were giving us coordinates for where the wind is located, and we had plenty of time to play with the symbols on the screen.

The skull and crossbones is the location of a Hurricane, the windmill is the waypoint where the wind is located (based on weather routing software), the little boat is our Australian friends who left Bermuda a few days before we did and were a few hundred miles ahead of us as a result.

This little map is the closest thing we have to an electronic chart of where we had been and where we are going. You can see the marks as we traveled down the coast of the United States, some of the points off of Georgia were “far out to sea” in our opinion at the moment. Now when we look at this map and see how we just rocketed away from the shore and shot straight out to sea, we begin to wonder what we were thinking.

What changed in our minds that let us point directly away from land and head straight out towards an empty horizon? We have charts and know that land is out there, but what about the first explorers who were setting out blindly? They had no idea what or where land was located, and simply ventured out over the horizon to lands unknown.

With all this knowledge, we were still scared to actually let go of land and head out to sea. Now we are out in the middle and not even thinking about looking back. We are cruisers and we are crossing the ocean; the best way to do that is to head straight towards your destination!

Transatlantic: Becalmed in the Middle of the Atlantic

Imagine being out in the ocean without a diesel motor. Imagine that you don’t know when the wind will come back. Imagine that you are in the middle of the ocean. What would you do?

Wait!

Wind will always come back, in the meantime, you can just relax and eat a good boat cooked meal!

We were becalmed for a few days and drifted along with the currents in what looks to be the rough shape of Texas! We did drift backwards some, but then regained some of those miles when we drifted eastward again.

In that time, we celebrated my birthday, watched marine life float by, and enjoyed not worrying about anything!

You always picture the ocean as being full of waves, but the truth is, it is very peaceful out there; you just have to get the weather right!

Being becalmed with an electric motor might sound like a death sentence, but it isn’t that bad. The winds will return and we will once again continue sailing. In the meantime, we are forced to relax and rest because movement and weather are out of our control. We are at the mercy of the elements and when they say, we can then do. Until then, we just have to wait for the signal to go.

Transatlantic: Day 16 [Day 37]

My birthday was yesterday, and the lack of wind continues.

The rest from the race across the ocean was nice, but we are now rested and ready for some wind again.

Maddie has a bit of a melt down because the voyage is supposed to take 18 days (roughly) from Bermuda to Faial, Azores, and we have no wind, no motion, and no idea when the winds will return. To top it off, we are still 800 miles away from the Azores, so if the wind comes back right now, we will still be looking at another 8 days of sailing to make landfall.

If the winds came now, we would be making landfall in 24 days instead of 18 days. And, that was if the wind came right now, but we don’t know when it’s going to come, and that part was hard for Maddie as Day 18 was fast approaching.

After a good cry to vent her frustration, we were able to relax and enjoy the sunset. The tranquility of the ocean would be short lived and we would soon have wind again.

Transatlantic: Day 15 [Day 36]

As an introvert, I like to be either alone or with a small group (preferably one person) of people. Large crowds and big to-do’s just aren’t my cup of tea!

This year, for my 31st birthday, I had an introverts dream birthday party! I was as far as possible from any other person or stranger, and the only person there to share my birthday with was my wife.

This is our second day of being becalmed, so there are no waves, no winds, and no direction. We have nothing to run into and no one around us to hit us. We are alone and immobilized, aimlessly drifting where the currents take us. We spent the whole day relaxing, reading, watching movies, and cooking. No effort was made to move us faster as there was nowhere to go!

The clouds around us spoke of isolated regions of slight winds, but nothing that would be far reaching enough to be appreciable, so we just sat back and relaxed. Getting frustrated or angry will not make the winds change, so why waste the energy on such feelings. Instead, moments like this are wonderful for teaching you to relax and appreciate what is around you.

As a kid, Man-O-War would wash into the southern part of Puerto Rico every year. It was always late fall when it became dangerous to swim. Thankfully, the reefs would cause these siphonophores to retract their tendrils instead of having them stretched out into a web of pain. I always feared them and became very VERY good at spotting them, but I never really got to appreciate them.

These creatures are so unique, intricate, and delicate. I have always avoided them like the plague because I was either windsurfing, kayaking, or swimming. We are both merely visitors on the surface of the water in the reefs around Puerto Rico, but out here, here is their world and we are merely tourists passing through.

We would use what little wind there was to sail over to them and get a really good look at them. The intricacies of their sail, and the way they flop it up or lay it down into the water. Once you have a safe vantage point to observe these killing machines, these creatures really are quite beautiful.

My birthday has come to a close. We are still about 800 nautical miles from the Azores and have no way of knowing when we will start moving again. Yes, we are bobbing around on the surface of the ocean, but we are also relaxing and enjoying the respite from all the speed we had leading up to this.

Sailing fast is nice, but it makes daily life difficult. The boat is heeled over and you are constantly riding up and down waves. Cooking, cleaning, eating, and sleeping become rather difficult when you are skimming the surface at hull speed! This loss of all wind and speed was a wonderful gift from nature on my birthday. It let us relax and actually enjoy ourselves on this day out in the middle of the ocean.

Transatlantic: Day 14 [Day 35]

July 21, 2018, the winds vanished. The approaching high pressure system has come over us and we were not able to escape its path. We have no wind and no motion. Our speed through the water is generated by the current of the water we are in, and not by the winds.

Since the winds disappeared, the sea calmed until it looked like glass! On the surface of the ocean is what appears to be a white snowy substance. It was uniformly covering the entire surface, from the boat all the way to the visible horizon. Maddie got a beautiful picture of this Portuguese Man-O-War and you can see the powder that it shares the surface of the water with.

I took up a sample of the water with a mason jar, and the top inch is filled with microplastics. They cover the entire surface of the Atlantic Ocean, as far as we can see, and penetrate down about an inch. It was really heartbreaking to see how much plastic is floating out in the ocean. Out in the middle of the ocean, where you would think humanity hasn’t been able to influence yet; but the reaches of humanity are far and apparently have enveloped the top inch of the worlds surface with plastics.

The day passes on and the Man-O-War are the only reminder that we are not in another world. These creatures, which belong to the Siphonophores family, litter the surface of the ocean with their death traps set. They stretch their tendrils out almost 100 feet from the float, into an almost invisible thread of pain and torment. When something brushes up against it, the surface of the tendril explodes with hundreds of harpoons that deliver a painful toxin to its prey.

Why didn’t we go swimming when the ocean turned into a magical ethereal plain? Because we didn’t want to die a horribly painful death right next to the safety of our boat.