Note to reader: The below updates were originally posted to a group chat that I was using to keep my family and friends updated on the progress of my sea adventure.

Update 15-November

It is hot.

This is day 14 of our planned 3-week ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands.

And it is hot 🌞🫠

In case it was not clear until now, we can definitely tell that we are approaching tropical weather. As long as the wind keeps up that means we will still be comfortable so here’s to hoping that it keeps up 🤞🏾

Yesterday we had a bit of repair work to do for our mainsail. The reefing line for the first reef point of the mainsail got chafed so bad that the line broke, with a big portion of the line stuck in the boom! (the horizontal bar that runs perpendicular to the mast)

Reefing lines are used to maintain control of the boat and sails as the wind picks up– going fast is great, but sometimes if you have too much sail exposed in high winds then you can start to lose control. Also sails are only rated to withstand up to a certain amount of wind speed, and beyond those limits you can see either damage to the sails or even structural damage to the boat’s rigging.

Fortunately the boat has plenty of spare and backup line, so it was only a matter of pulling out the damaged line and running new reefing lines. To prevent this line from suffering the same fate as the previous one, we ran the lines differently in a way to avoid the chafing issue.

After that we had moderate winds, so we broke out our colorful code zero sail again, which performs well in lighter winds. That enabled us to keep sailing at a good clip of 4-5 knots, which is better than what we were getting with our usual Genoa foresail.

Night watch was fine, I was able to spot Ursa Major (Big dipper) and Polaris (the north star), and learned the names of some of the stars in Ursa Major.

Now it is sunny with scattered clouds, and our code zero foresail is still flying high. I woke up pretty exhausted. I think all of these weeks of disrupted sleep due to night watch duty is finally catching up to us….😴 But that is what espresso is for, so I’ll just keep on taking it one day at a time.

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/wGdkVFbuTc9jvcpA9

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Update 15-November

Today is the 2-week mark of my planned 3-week ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. Before the end of the day, we will be less than 1,000 nautical miles from our destination!

As next week is Thanksgiving, we are doing some guesswork to see where we night be when next Thursday comes around. If we are nearing the French Caribbean islands around that time, we may decide to make a stop in Guadeloupe and have a nice meal onshore…to be determined. If we will be onboard we have a nice cut of pork loin that could be a substitute for turkey. So we have some options, but of course this is all just speculation until we get a little closer to arrival time.

Crew morale is hanging in there– I wasn’t the only one  exhausted yesterday, and tempers got a bit shorter, but I think everyone is trying to get a few more nap-times in, to avoid burn-out.

I was complaining about the heat in yesterday’s update, and before the end of my daytime shift, we got some rain to help cool us off !💧💧💧🙏🏾 It’s nice when you can get the rain without the accompanying rough seas and overpowering winds, sometimes.

After my shift I laid down in my cabin to try and catch up on some sleep. I didn’t get any deep sleep in, but allowing myself to just lie there and do nothing did feel like a good rest nonetheless.

During my night shift we were sailing and making some good time. I managed to spot and identify the Aries constellation, which combined with Taurus covers my zodiac sign (I’m on the cusp between the two). I also spotted Cassiopeia and the names of the stars making up that constellation.

It’s a nice sunny day today, and this time we have a cooling breeze so it is looking to be an awesome day!

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/xogk4kwvxYvaZiKK7

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Update 16-November

It us now day 16 of my planned 3-week ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. We are still travelling westerly towards the Caribbean, headed in the general direction of St. Kitts and Nevis. At this point we have only 942 nautical miles left  to go…we are now down to triple digits!

Yesterday was another good day. We decided to fly our code zero foresail again– this time not for any performance reason, but to let it dry off 🤣  The crew had to bring that sail down and stow it in the rain, so to keep the mildew away it had to go back up.

With a fishing line out we caught another mahi mahi! Ezra reeled it in and filleted it, and I made a meal out of it with some aglio e olio pasta on the side. This was a good-sized catch, so plenty of extra fish got packed in the freezer for another day.

By now we are all becoming more vigilant about how much rest we are getting. It’s easy to get set in a certain rhythm, but if you calculate how much sleep you’re really getting and you count less than 5 hours per day, that should be an indicator that you need to figure out how to get some more rest in your routine.

I am on the borderline with my schedule, so that means for me to make sure that after my 12pm-3pm shift I need to go lie down for an hour or two.

Night shift was beautiful, with plenty of stars to see and a very constant wind blowing.

That’s all I got for today. It is starting to feel like the final stretch now, so as long as I make good rest a focus, I am optimistic that I can make it through in good spirits.

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/oVkCwZvo77wK3oDp8

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Update 17-November

Today is day 17 of my planned 3-week ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. We are headed west and hoping for good winds to take us the rest of the way in.

Yesterday was a good day because I think that the different crew members managed to get control of theit exhaustion issues (including me), which meant that morale is back up to happy levels 👍🏾

We had decent sailing, nothing too fast but a good pace and steady. That kept up for most of the night too, with maybe a slight slow down a bit before dawn.

Speed is back up now, but we are anticipating some rough seas starting this afternoon…so we’ll just have to ride it out and see how rough it gets.

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/mrYs8DAMVcP3u8zB9

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Update 18-November

Okay this is day 18 of my 3-week planned ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the Carribbean. The weather forecasts are making us think we can bypass the French Caribbean islands now and head straight towards the British Virgin Islands, so that is where we are headed.

The rough seas that were forecasted never really came yesterday. We do have higher swells and waves today than on previous days but nothing near the 20-foot-plus waves we were expecting.

So the rest of the day yesterday was a calm sail. We actually tried out a new 3-sail configuration, which resembles a rig called a “cutter” rig. This is where you have 3 sails out, all angled in the same direction. The theory is if you have 2 sails out, won’t a 3rd sail give you even more speed? Well in our case the answer was yes, but it took some tweaking and adjusting before we were able to keep all three sails full at the same time.

It is starting to show that we are getting close to the islands now: during our night watches, we are starting to see more and more vessels come within visual distance from us. This we would expect to see as we get closer to land.

But no boats appeared during my shift, so I just scanned the sky for stars and managed to spot the Gemini constellation.

Today started out with a bit of rain, but that has stopped and now we have some moderate waves and we are sailing at a decent speed.

Just taking it one day at a time now…

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/k5PHJReJ46PgHCpHA

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Update 19-November

Today is day 19 of my 3-week planned ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. With only 526 nautical miles left to go, it finally feels like we are on the last leg of our long journey.

Yesterday yielded another fine day sail. It did get hot enough for me to break out my swim trunks, and let my thighs show a little bit 🫣 But we eventually got cooled down by the breeze so it was not too bad.

I finally finished the first half of my celestial navigation course. I’ve made it far enough to understand the process of taking a reading of the Sun’s altitude using a sextant, and then using a nautical almanac and lookup tables to calculate your position. So today we’ll be breaking out the sextant onboard and putting all of this theory to practice!

Of course since we have GPS we don’t need to use the Sun, Moon or stars to tell us our location. And in fact the vast majority of active competent sailors out there don’t know how to navigate by stars. But as I see it, the drill goes something like this: we have been using our GPS chart plotter to track our position, and at 3 hour intervals we record our latitude and longitude position in the boat’s official log book (This we are really doing). Then disaster strikes and all electronics on board are no longer available. Maybe phones and tablets and laptops work for a few days but those eventually go out too. Now what? Trace back to our latest known location (via the log book), plot that location on the onboard paper nautical charts, and start using the Sun to keep track of our position.

Well that is what we’ll try anyway 😀

We have now set our clocks back to be one hour ahead of New York, USA time, which is the time zone of our destination. We are ose enough now that we’ve decided to not let the boat drop below a speed of 5 knots (nautical miles per hour). So we will fire up the engines as needed to keep our speed up. In that way we have the best chances of being able to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner on land. British Virgin Islands, here we come!

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/1T91B6iGGvJmncgY8

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Update 20-November

It’s day 20 of my planned nonstop ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands. We are now targeting to arrive on Thursday, so having a nice dinner onshore on Thursday is a possibility.

Yesterday was my first time taking out the sextant and taking sun sight altitude readings with it. Once you’ve taken it, with the help of some lookup tables and some calculations, you should be able to pinpoint at what latitude you are in. Well after yesterday’s sun sight, our calculations gave us a latitude value that was 3 degrees off. That does not seem like much until you understand that 3 degrees is the equivalent of about 180 nautical miles! So it was good practice, but definitely the goal over the next few days will be to see if we can arrive at a more accurate latitude.

The day was easy other than that. Night shift was also painless, with no other boats crossing our paths and nice steady winds.

The sun is out again today, so looking forward to more great sailing!

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/YSerFCdNJUWEbDe46

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Update 21-November

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, day 21 of my planned ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands.

This morning I showered, washed my hair, and shaved. (I’ll let you guess when was the last time I did that 🤔) I don’t mind roughing it and skipping showers, but it does feel good to be all fresh and clean every now and again. We are definitely all feeling like we are almoat there– we are hoping to make it to the British Virgin Islands  for a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday at a restaurant / bar on shore.

So only 2 days to go, if all goes well!

Since I started taking sextant sightings, it’s become a daily habit now. Hopefully each day I will get better and better at reading the Sun’s altitude…captain and the crew are even looking to

start taking sights and stepping through the process with me. We’ll all be competent celestial navigators before too long!

With our target destination and day/time in mind, we are now doing a lot of motor-sailing: that means your sails are up, but you still have the engine(s) going to make sure you don’t slow down when the wind drops. But that is fine for us, I think we are all looking forward to bringing this chapter in our ocean adventures to a close.

Sun is out and so are my thighs, so you know we are in full-blown tropical weather now!

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/xuLejvrK1tZP6mni6

Update 22-November

This is day 22 of my planned ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands. It is Wednesday, and if all goes according to plan we should arrive at our destination tomorrow, mid morning.

During my night shift we passed just 24 nautical miles north of Barbuda heading west, so we are now officially in the Carribbean.

I sent a pic and video of us stopping the boat and jumping in the water for a bit. We were able to do that because the wind haf died down to almost nothing and the current & waves were also minimal. After we fired up the engines and set off again, we dropped the sails and used the engines for the rest of the day and all night.

As I write this update this morning the wind picked up and we are now sailing again with the engines off. The biggest hazard on th seas now is all of thle floating lobster traps laid out by fishermen of the region. If we don’t spot them and we run over the traps, we risk getting our hulls and rudder caught in the lines, or even worse we could get the lines wrapped around the propellers if the engines wee running. So today is about keeping vigilant during your watch to make sure we steer clear of all of those traps.

Other than that, this is the final countdown to landfall. Almost there now!

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/BK3Mgg8xstCMQe9E9

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Update 23-November-2023, 3:37 AM:

We have arrived at our destination of Road Town, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands!

🥳🥳🥳

We arrived at night and tied up to a mooring just off shore.

So the Atlantic crossing is now officially over!

I’m gonna go to sleep now, more updates tomorrow. 😀

Here is where we are moored:

https://goo.gl/maps/XAf34qpKVTYjQwjVA

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Update after arriving: 23-November-2023

Okay! I woke up this morning to a peaceful, green landscape. We moored just offshore of the island of Tortola, in Road Town, the captial of the British Virgin Islands (BVI’s).

Yesterday was the 22nd and final day of our planned 3-week ocean passage which started in Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, and ended in the BVI’s. We started to see land from not too far away as we made our approach, as I showed yesterday. We managed to sustain about 6-8 knots on wind power for most of the day. This would have been great except for two things: first, we had entered an area where lobster trapping is big– so trying to spot and avoid running over lobster pot lines became a priority, but is very hard because the floaties on the surface are tiny and they pop up unexpectedly and always at the last minute. Second, the seas got very rough and swells very high, which made it even harder to spot those tiny lobster traps.

But we made it through all of that, and at such a good clip that we were able to make it in in just a little after 3am local time.

It was halfway through my night watch when I was joined by the captain, as he is the one who brings us in to port, especially if we are making landfall at night.

Instead of trying to find an anchoring point and dropping anchor in the dark, we planned to go to a spot where there were mooring balls to attach to. If you don’t know what those are, they are floating balls that are attached to some very heavy stuff on the ocean floor, which serve as a very solid and secure anchoring point. So when we show up, all we needed to do is grab the hook attached to the mooring ball, and connect it to a line coming from our boat. It was all over and done in about 30 seconds.

And that was it! There were high-fives all around, but we decided that 3am was a bit late (early?) to share some celebratory drinks 😁 So instead we all went down to try and get some much needed rest.

Now it’s morning, and I am torn between wanting to get up, walk around and expore the city, or just lounging round and doing nothing – just relaxing for the day. But either way, I’ve made it! That’s 2,984 total nautical miles logged on this crossing! Here’s me signing out for now 🤙🏾

I’m still at the same location :

https://goo.gl/maps/XAf34qpKVTYjQwjVA

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Previous Post in series: << 2023 Atlantic Crossing Week 2

( Part of series: Europe to the Caribbean with Abundance, My First Atlantic Crossing )

Note to reader: The below updates were originally posted to a group chat that I was using to keep my family and friends updated on the progress of my sea adventure.

Update 7-November

This morning I am reflecting on those who made this perilous journey across the Atlantic all those years ago. Trying not to cry.

😔

https://goo.gl/maps/pxmMbJiV3zaNQ4t4A

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Update 8-November

Today is day 8 of my 3-week planned sea passage from the Canary Islands to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. So that is one week done !

We are currently travelling in a westerly direction, headed as straight towards our destination as the wind and weather conditions allow. At this point we are 710 nautical miles from the west coast of Africa, 500 nautical miles northwest of Cape Verde, and about 1,940 nautical miles from our destination. So we are truly in the middle of the ocean 🤣

Yesterday started out very somber for me, as I could not help to think about my ancestors making a similar passage, but under drastically different circumstances 😥 . But it is also uplifting in a way, to see that I am here reclaiming the past and making my own story now. And although we don’t see a lot of Black representation in the recreational sailing world, I am still standing on the shoulders of other great men who have already successfully made this or other longer crossings:

Bill Pinckney: circumnavigated the globe

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/sports/sailing/bill-pinkney-dead.html

Teddy Seymour: circumnavigated the globe

https://nshof.org/nominees/seymour-teddy

Now back to the sailing: in the last 2 days, conditions have been up and down. On Monday, the weather that we thought we had avoided caught up with us, so much so that we had to shorten up our sails (called “reefing” the sails) to prevent the high winds from overpowering the boat and enable us to continue sailing on wind power through the storms.

When these squalls pass through, the sailing gets exciting! The wind is literally whipping around you and the sailboat is sometimes cutting through waves, sometimes swaying wildly, and other times surfing down large swells that get your speed up to 11 knots ! And all this is happening both day and during night watch!

The wind finally died on us earlier this morning though, so we had to run on motor power for 3-5 hours, until the wind picked back up and we were able to let our sails back out.

There is currently another squall that caught up with us, so we are sailing again in the light rain. Hopefully once we are through with this weather, we will be able to get back to our steady tradewinds-powered passage.

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/mbCdPFZ2NTqy2mCo9

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Update 8-November

It is now day 9 of my planned 3-week sea passage from the Canary Islands to St. Thomas, USVI. At this point we have travelled a bit more than 1/3 of the way to St. Thomas, which matches up with the planned 3-week trip duration since 1 week has already passed. We are travelling west and slightly south, in a direct path to our destination.

As I said in yesterday’s update, some storms caught up with us late morning. Of course on a long passage such as this, you (I) would always prefer nice warm weather, clear skies, and steady winds. If there is any upside to rainy weather systems when you are under way in a sailboat though, it’s that the winds tend to be strong — so if you are a confident and competent sailor, you can make some great time by keeping your sails out and sailing through the storm.

There are exceptions to this: for example it’s best to avoid lightning storms (the mast can be very attractive), and if the seas or winds get too exciting then you might go from an invigorating sail to hunkering down, dropping sails and riding out the storm inside.

In our case, the winds were dying and we had slowed a lot just before the squalls rolled in. So aside from higher waves and swells, we were helped along by the wet weather.

Dinner was tricky though. Because of the wild rocking of the boat, we had to scratch our original chicken curry plan and just throw some tortilla chips in a pan, empty a bag of shredded cheese over the top and spoon over some canned chili to make a quick casserole of nachos. The nachos turned out fine, and was a good meal/snack given the circumstances.

By the time night watch started, we still had big waves but the major part of the storm had passed and we could see it moving ahead of us. We did make a changeover of sail plan again at night, but by now that is becoming somewhat routine so it’s not a big deal 😎

Now it is Thursday morning, we’re still sailing on wind power at about 6 knots (6 nautical miles per hour) and the sun is trying its best to peek through the clouds in the sky. Maybe we’ll have some pancakes today? 🥞🍳🥓😋

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/5ubX4knsec57i7s26

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Update 10-November

It is now day 10 of my planned 3-week sea passage from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. The original plan was to sail to St. Thomas, USVI, but plans have changed — now we are targeting the British Virgin Islands as our destination. The captain has some business to attend to there, so it makes sense to stop there. Plus it is a bit closer, so there you go.

There are still 1,661 nautical miles left to go on our voyage. The winds have slowed down now, so we have raised our third sail again to try and get as much speed as possible with the wind.

Yesterday we caught another fish, this time a wahoo. It was not as big as the mahi mahi we caught last week, but still big enough to feed the entire crew for a heavy lunch.

It was also crew member Ezra’s birthday, so the first mate whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, stuck a candle through a stack of ’em, and we celebrated his birthday with song and laughs.

The sun is out today, and clouds are starting to thin out. I can tell we are getting to tropical weather because I’ve switched to shorts– even at 7:30 in the morning it is pretty warm out 🌞

The seas have also calmed down, so it’s looking to be a much more relaxing sail today. It’ll be nice to just chill and catch up on my celestial navigation studies.

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/NFFTxLYsXwzwtCr59

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Update 11-November

Today is day 11 of my planned 3-week sea passage from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. If you take our current location and look directly south, you will see that we are aligned with the eastern-most part of Brazil. That puts us in Sao Paolo time zone, or 2 hours ahead of New York time.

Which brings up the question of time: how do you manage time on a boat that is travelling from east to west, crossing time zones as it makes progress? And how do you know when you’ve crossed into a new time zone? Your phone can’t tell you the local time because you have no signal in the middle of the ocean. And does it really matter what time you say it is, until you get closer to your destination?

Well you have two basic options typically. Option one is to never change the clocks and watches on board until you are almost at your destination. Option two is to try to keep up with the time zones changing as you cross through them.

Option one, where you keep your clocks constant, is simpler. But then as you get further and further, the sunrise and sunset times will start to get strange. E.g. sunrise happened today around 6am. But if we hadn’t changed clocks since we left Gran Canaria, we would be seeing that the sunrise is happening at 4am then sunset at 4pm. And later we’d see a 3am or even 2am sunrise.

Option two where you keep up with time zone shifts may make more sense, but then you need to figure out when you’ve changed time zones, keep changing your clocks, and then figure out what the new times are for your day shift and night watches. On this boat we are using option 2.

When out at sea far from land, there is a nautical convention to determine time zones, related to your longitude. For every 15 degrees of longitude that you move west, the time moves back by one hour. So you can write out a table that tells you what the local time is compared to Greenwich, England time, based on ranges of longitude. Then when your logbook entry shoes that you’ve crossed into then next range of longitude, you know it’s time to change clocks again. These nautical time zones don’t always match up exactly with conventional country-based time zones, since most places prefer to not have one city span more than one time zone, for example. But the two time zone systems are close.

So there you have it– I know you were dying to know all of that detail 🤓

Yesterday was an amazing day of sailing! The sun was out, but it was not too hot thanks to the strong breeze. Waves were moderate in size, and coming directly from behind us so they gently nudged us along our course. And we were able to sustain a great pace of 5-7 knots (nautical miles per hour) on average.

Some crew members broke out cards for a game of cribbage, but I was on day shift so I kept with my celestial navigation studies while listening to the sounds of the boat cutting through the waves.

For dinner, I made a new recipe handed to me, called “Down Island Chicken Curry”. It uses an ingredient called “green sauce”, which is apparently very common in stores in the Caribbean…I guess you’re familiar with it, @Yohann ? Well anyway it is a quick & simple recipe, so dinner was on without too much trouble. (Sorry no pics of the meal, the plates emptied out too quickly 😀)

When my night shift started, I noticed that one of our rigging lines (ropes) had caught around the internet/cell phone network antenna, and had nearly ripped it off completely! 😱 Fortunately I noticed it before the mounting  screws had all fallen overboard. So I woke up the captain and we managed to screw the antenna back into place. That was a close call! 🙏🏾We had good winds through the rest of the night after that.

I woke up this morning to another beautiful sunny day, with winds moving well and an update that we have changed clocks again. Looking forward to another great day of sailing!

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/Yznyichi6qLPGA2A7

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Update 12-November

It is now day 12 of my planned 3-week ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands. At this point we are about 1,450 nautical miles west of the Canaries, and only 1,375 miles away from our destination. So I guess that means we’ve crossed the halfway point ? 🥳

Yesterday was another great day of sailing! The closer we get, the more and more tropical it is starting to feel. So my long pants only come out for night watch these days, and my calves and arms are out for most of the day 😀

There’s plenty of time now in the day for me to make good progress on my celestial navigation course, so I’ve been spending a lot of time doing that 🤓

There is an “exercise challenge” we’re doing on board, to keep us motivated to stay healthy and fit. I am tied for last place 😥 due to my initial laziness…but I’ve decided to step it up so that if somebody else starts slacking off, I may have a chance. Loser buys drinks for the night once we land!

I normally like to do about 1 hour per day if walking as part of my fitness regimen. But in the boat that is not practical, so you gotta find some other way to get your heart rate up and stay fit. Enter our daily challenge: 50 push-ups (no knee push-ups for the fellas), 100 squats, 100 calf raises, 100 crunches, and either 2 minutes of planks or 100 hip thrusters/hip bridges.

Not my usual routine, but options are limited on the boat so I’m doing it 💪🏽

Nothing much more to report…captain made a beautiful set of English muffins from scratch, and night watch was routine except for a 10-minute downpour that got my hoodie wet.

It’s yet another beautiful day out today, and we are flying our third sail again hoping to keep our speed up. 🤞🏾

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/tHuXpQZSzwCTPb5V6

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Update 13-November

Today is day 13 of my planned 3-week ocean passage from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands. We are heading west in a straight path to Tortola, with about 1,250 nautical miles remaining to go.

Yesterday was an easy day, with great sunny skies. We hoisted our third sail again to catch more wind and didn’t take it down until sunset.

As we near the 2-week mark, I realized that the days are starting to run together in my mind…was that yesterday that we played backgammon? Or the day before? Did we cut on the engine yesterday? Can’t remember….I guess that is what log books are for 😀

During my night watch, I decided to start learning to identify different stars in the sky. I started with Orion which I know how to spot, then worked my way around to some of the brighter stars: Sirius to the left, Aldebaran of the Taurus constellation in the other direction and Jupiter below that. Not bad for a first night of stargazing…looking forward to learning more.

It is now late morning and pretty warm out. Winds have died down so we are now motoring, hopefully we will be able to get back to sailing before too long.

Here is my current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/nL4fT8D1BggvPADL9

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Next Post in series: 2023 Atlantic Crossing Week 3 >>

Previous Post in series: << 2023 Atlantic Crossing Week 1

( Part of series: Europe to the Caribbean with Abundance, My First Atlantic Crossing )

Note to reader: The below updates were originally posted to a group chat that I was using to keep my family and friends updated on the progress of my sea adventure.

Update 1-November

After following weather patterns the last few days, our weather window for starting the crossing from The Canary Islands to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands starts today!

So the past two days we have been making preparations: food provisioning, refill of gas tank and cans, and various minor boat maintenance tasks.

The maintenance tasks:

• Fix the leak in the water heater (for those nice warm comfy showers)
• Remove all unnecessary equipment from the decks (nobody planning on doing any stand-up paddle boarding in the open seas)
• Lubricate the sliding car used to raise the mainsail
• Re-run the dinghy support line to prevent chafing

After all was prepped, we made one final shopping run before pulling up our anchor and starting our 3-week sea voyage to the Carribbean.

As of 11:35 AM on 1-November we have started our Atlantic crossing!

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/pZMBj1KBAXZDeV3U8

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Update 2-November

This is day 2 of my planned 3-week Atlantic crossing. We are currently sailing on wind power, heading west to southwest, targeting the final destination of St. Thomas, USVI.

Yesterday we left our anchorage in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands at about midday.

After we were clear of the harbor, winds were blowing pretty good! So we quickly put the sails up, shut down the engines, and started sailing.

Because the wind was pushing us from behind, we were able to put the sails out in a configuration called “wing-on-wing”. This is where the sail in front is on one side, and the mainsail is on the other side. In this way, the wind coming from behind literally pushes you forwards.

The seas were very active, with medium sized waves moving us along from behind. If you’re not used to that amount of rocking, it can be a bit scary…but not to a salty sailor like your boy here 😎

When the waves come from behind like that, you get to “surf” the waves, where the wave lifts you up as it passes under, then the boat coasts down the wave as it continues on. We managed to get up to 11 knots when surfing down some of those waves! 🏄🏽🤙🏽That is almost as fast as we can expect to go in a boat of this size, in most cases.

After a dinner of beef tacos, we set about for our night watches. My shift is now from 1am-4am, so I was in bed by 8pm to try to get a few hours rest before my shift.

Night watch when you are sailing on wind power is a bit more active. This is because if you need to alter your course you can’t just turn the steering wheel — there are sails out that will not work if you turn too much in any direction. So you need to be vigilant to make sure the wind does not switch up on you, because if it does you need to react quickly or else you will slow the boat down to a crawl.

At the start of my night watch there was a mystery boat which did not appear in radar nor the AIS reporting system, which we had to figure out how to avoid a collision with. We managed it, but it involved untying and re-tying sails in the dark and a lot of maneuvering. A first for me, but I was able to represent and pull it off like I’m not new to this.💪🏽

It still is a mystery who that boat was, but our bets are on some sort of shady enterprise…why else would you be sailing the open seas at night with nobody able to see you on their navigation equipment?? 🤔

That’s Day 1 in the bag. Plenty more sailing to go, so I’ll be taking it one day at a time.

Here is our current position:

https://goo.gl/maps/hyAnA1i3mkce1AHC8

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Update 3-November

It is now the start of day 3 of my 3-week planned ocean passage from the Canary Islands to St. Thomas, USVI. We are currently sailing on wind power, in a mostly westerly path in a direct course to our destination.

Yesterday was a good day for sailing. Skies were partly cloudy early on and it got clearer in the afternoon. We had a hot breakfast, since in a few days the seas may make it trickier to do serious cooking.

We were able to sail donkey’s ears (a.k.a. wing-on-wing)  all day, with the winds fairly constant. No high speeds, just a consistent steady course.

I volunteered for dinner duty, so I made some curried red lentils with rice and carrots. But that was a delicate process — with the boat rocking around, a simple task like boiling a pot of water can be dangerous! So how do you cook safely with the boat making huge sways back and forth and side to side? Very carefully …

Well to cook with one pot at a time, there are screw-in supports that can keep the pot securely in place above a burner. So that simmering pot of lentils is safe. But for that second pot? There is no magic there, the only strategy I came up with is the “stay close and don’t take your eyes off that skillet” method 🤣 I also paired that up with the “Gumby stretch and reach” method to grab a missing utensil while keeping one hand on that pan 🥴

But I got through the dinner cooking without spills or burns, so I call that a win 👍🏾

The night shift was calm and uneventful, no boats anywhere near us and consistent wind so no need to tinker around with the sails either.

As we get further west and further away from the Canary Islands and the west coast of Africa, I suspect the wind and wave patterns will start to stabilize, so that each day of sailing should become more and more similar to the previous day. Or at least that would be the desired conditions. But I’ll keep giving daily updates anyhow, to let y’all know we’re still doing well and moving forward.

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/SZwrYc6L1RqbVEaK9

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Update 4-November

It’s now day 4 of our 3-week planned sea passage from the Canary Islands to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. According to the GPS projection, we still have 2,450 nautical miles to go…so it’s still early days, but we are well on our way.

We are now travelling on an almost direct west trajectory. We have gone a few days now with the engines turned off, so that is great for fuel conservation. Ideally we would go the vast majority of the trip without firing up the engines at all, but that would also mean that if the wind dies for awhile, that we are okay to extend the trip’s duration by at least another full week. So it’s a balancing act we are playing to sail on wind power alone for as long as we can, without delaying us too much when the wind dies down.

Yesterday was a cool learning experience because in the early afternoon the captain decided that we would raise our “Code Zero” gennaker sail. The winds had slowed a bit, and the extra large sail out in front could help coax a bit more speed in those conditions.

If you look at the common 2-sail “sloop” rig setup, you see one foresail (jib/Genoa) in the front, and one larger mainsail behind. This third sail, our “Code Zero”, is mounted on the opposite side of the Genoa. It takes a bit of work to install the roller furler support, hoist the sail to the top of the mast, and run the control lines to the back of the boat. But once we got everything rigged up, man did that new sail look pretty 😍

In the end we did not get as much wind as we were hoping with that third sail deployed 🤷🏽‍♂️. So after a photoshoot session involving everybody’s camera plus one drone, we dropped the Code Zero around sunset and moved back to our original sloop rig.

Between sail changes, I had been preparing a couple of sourdough bread loaves in the galley. If you saw me from 2013-2017, you will have seen that I was pretty obsessed with bread making back in those days. My first onboard attempt at bread a week ago was a bit lackluster, but this go ’round I managed to pull off an impressive pair of loaves! And this morning that bread toasted next to some eggs was pretty dang delicious 😋

Night shift was calm, with pretty steady winds to keep us going at a good clip of around 6 knots on wind power. Hopefully this keeps up for days to come!

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/BGLpNjWS2YmSH4mU9

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Update 5-November

It is day 5 of our planned 3-week sea passage from the Canary Islands to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. We are currently sailing on wind power alone in a mostly westward course towards our destination. We are also about 420 nautical miles west of the nearest African shore.

Yesterday was a nice sunny day for sailing, with the tradewinds keeping us at a 6-7 knot boat speed — which is our ideal cruising speed to get us to St. Thomas as planned.

With our engines off, that cruising speed made it ideal for trolling, in other words, for putting fishing lines out. As long as the engines are off, the risk of getting line caught in the propeller goes away, so the captain decided to out our fishing lines out again.

And after a few hours, we got a Mahi Mahi on the hook! First mate Vanessa reeled her in, and once inside the boat we were able to see what a beauty the catch was.

That changed our meal plan for the day, of course, so we had an early dinner of blackened Mahi Mahi and quinoa salad — the other half of the fish fillets we put in the freezer for another day.

The fish was about as long as my arm! It was a big ordeal to get the fish cleaned, prepped and filleted, not to mention the work of cleaning up the deck afterwards … I’m pretty sure that if another fish caught the lines that day, we probably would have let her go to avoid all that work a second time that day 🤣

Night watch started off slow, with winds slowing us down to a crawl, but we sped up eventually and kept that up through the rest of the night. So we are going on 3-4 days now under way with our engines off — here’s to hoping that keeps up!

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/s111NE5LfrRV9baQA

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Update 6-November

It is now day 6 of our planned 3-week sea passage from the Canary Islands to St. Thomas, USVI. We are travelling in an almost directly west course towards our destination at this point.

We have been able to harness the tradewinds for the past 3-4 days now, sailing on wind power alone with boat speeds averaging from 5 to 6 knots (5-6 nautical miles per hour). We still have just under 2200 nautical miles to go, so an optimistic 15-18 days remaining if the weather conditions allow us to sustain this pace.

With the winds so steady, the weather relatively warm and the seas (waves) moderately active, the day passes in a very relaxed atmosphere. This is of course thanks to the autopilot! 😃 Currently the waves are 5-6 feet high. But they are not waves craahing over the deck, they are more like large swells tha the boat rides as they roll through.

If you are steering by hand, keeping a steady course while riding waves that come at you from the back, sides, or at odd angles, is a lot of work! I know this because we were hand-steering for the first week of this sailing excursion, before Captain Blaine managed to install a new autopilot module back in Gibraltar. But the autopilot can handle all of this steering with ease, and does not get tired or complain about how long his shift is 🤖

That makes your day shift a lot more hands-off, freeing up the crew for other  important activities such as fishing, playing chess, reading, learning new languages à la Duolingo, studying for a celestial navigation exam, and working on your poker-face during the Texas Hold-em tournament 🤣

This night shift was the first one where the winds kept us going at 6-7 knots throughout the night — with these speeds in that wind it feels like you are zipping along very fast.

It is a sunny day today, I’ve had my morning espresso dosage, and the winds have not let up on us yet. Onwards!

Here is our current location:

https://goo.gl/maps/9AyJAvtmvkBLbk9m7

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