Steve has finally shared the videos he took of crossing the Gulf Stream and the next day. I came up only once, because I was seasick. Usually being above decks is better than being down below, but in one of the videos you can see me sleeping in the salon with a blanket over me. I felt it was better to be horizontal and close my eyes, than to watch the waves pummeling the boat. Steve is talking during all of them, but many times the howling winds whisks his words away.
Another Day, Another Rainbow
I’m on morning watch, the day before we’re supposed to arrive in Nanny Cay, Tortola. The seas are quite choppy and because the sun is so low in the sky, the waves are slate gray. The wind is blowing between 10-15 knots and is supposed to build during the day. We’ve been motor-sailing a lot. It will be nice to give the engine, our ears and our bones a break.
(We had a brief shower and I ran below to close a portlight. When I returned on deck, the shower was history. In its place was a yet another rainbow.)
I’m torn (I can’t believe I’m saying this) between wanting to arrive in Tortola and staying on the boat. I know I’ve complained about living on a slant and always moving. Still, there’s a peacefulness on the boat in the middle of the ocean that can’t be duplicated on land. There’s no Internet, no television, no cell phone service. It’s very easy to be mindful on Sirius. I could easily spend an hour just looking at the waves. As I’m writing this, another rainbow appeared! Wow!
Yesterday there were white clouds just above our boat. I felt I could simply reach up and grab one, they were that close. With the sun higher in the sky, the seas are already turning blue. In the distance I can see dark clouds connected to the sea below by bands of rain. You just have to look to see the various weather patterns. You can see storms approach or how the wind is shifting.
Living on a boat going to the Caribbean, there’s a lot of moisture in the air. Everything below decks is damp from the humidity. We can run our air conditioning to dry things out, but since we’ve been doing a lot of motoring, we want to be sure to have enough diesel to get where we’re going. We’re 130 miles from Nanny Cay. We should arrive early tomorrow morning
Because my watch starts at 6 am, I get to witness amazing sunrises. In the evening I get to see spectacular sunsets. Here are some of the best. Please enjoy them. I certainly have.
Beautiful Ocean
As I turn around in a circle, there is nothing but sea and sky in varying shades of blue. No buildings, no cars, no people (except for the three of us). The planes overhead look like stars at night, they’re so high up. And I certainly can’t hear them. This is my world, for the time being
We are in 19,000 feet of water. That’s over 3 miles of depth under our keel. They say that space is mostly empty. I think the sea is that way too. We’ve seen no dolphins or whales yet, just small flying fish skirting the waves.
Except for the sound of the wind and the waves, it is eerily quiet on our deck. Of course, Sirius makes noise groaning, straining under the wind and we can definitely hear the engine when she’s turned on. But there are no birds cawing as they fly overhead. There are no bugs buzzing in my ears, no dogs barking—none of that ambient noise that follows us around from place to place. It’s as if the world doesn’t exist. Jeff and I look to the horizon, believing we see land. But they’re only moveable mountains made up of large swells that disappear from sight entirely, as they get absorbed back into the sea.
There’s very little ship traffic out here as well. We are all alone. But I don’t mind the solitude. In fact, I find it comforting. I look to the right in the middle of the day and see a trail of stars, glistening and sparkling just like the stars at night as the sun reflects the texture of the water. It mirrors the Milky Way. There’s an odd symmetry to this light showcase.
Sirius gently climbs the large swells and effortlessly glides down the backside as if she’s trying to tame this breathing, mighty beast. There is a rhythm to our days. I’m on watch when the sun comes up and we all gather to watch the sun set in the evenings. We ponder the moon, a sharply white crescent suspended on an invisible chain. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, but not at appointed times. We all take naps during the day. We marvel at the clouds and discuss whether a squall, many miles away, will reach us. We read, spend long hours just watching sea and do some boat chores, but not too many.
In the first few days, I hated being on Sirius, but I attribute that to my seasickness. After that, I only get slightly annoyed that I live on a slant. But in the cockpit, as I write this, I’m so grateful for this opportunity to experience this journey. Now if I could only see some dolphins!
Living on a Slant
When Sirius takes to the wind, we heel, which means the boat is on its side. Even under motor, there are frequently large swells in the ocean, which means we are never level. Consequently, Jeff and I have our share of bruises and stubbed toes. Doors swing wildly below if they are not held. Often stuff gets knocked off the counters and frequently there are scattered papers on the floor, sometimes even a computer.
It is hard to walk below, navigating the slant constantly. Even dressing, using the toilet or taking a shower are problematic. And just forget about opening cabinets that open in the direction of our heel. Needless to say, the contents become missiles. We have a gimballed stove, which gives us a level place to cook, but it’s moving to adjust to the heel and the large swells in the ocean and I find it very difficult to take something out of the oven. The last thing I want is a bad burn, or any burn for that matter. So, I fasten the stove in place when I cook.
Sleeping and staying on the bed are also a problem. We have lee cloths on each bed, but on our bed, which is a queen, it only works for one person.
It occurs to me right now that since we’ve left Portsmouth, VA a week ago, we’ve never been still. Landlubbers take this for granted. We’re moving when we eat and bathe. Even while we sleep, we’re still moving. Just once I’d like to be still. Sailing and motoring are all fine, but I miss the stillness. Can’t wait to get to Nanny Cay. With my luck, I’ll get seasick after I step off the boat!
Night Watch Continued
I used to fear night watches. The dark sky and water seemed threatening to me. But I’m glad to say that I’ve adjusted. I actually look forward to my night watches.
For several days I listened to audiobooks, with absolutely no distraction. When I finished all the books that I had downloaded, I then switched to music. I play heartrending tunes, old blues and samples from the movie, The Piano.
During night watches, I sit behind the wheel. I need to check the chart plotter or the compass to be sure we’re still going on our designated course. The chart plotter also displays if any boats are nearby—don’t want to crash into a ship! We have the radio set to channel 16, but it mostly works with line of sight so for most it remains silent. Every 10 minutes or so, I look up and around. Since it’s night and there’s no light pollution, all I can see is the white water produced by Sirius crashing through the waves.
Last night there was a crescent moon which lit a trail of light on the black water. It didn’t stay up that long, however. The stars were spectacular. I can clearly see the Milky Way. There are so many constellations, I think about how the cavemen would have made up tales about the stars, how awed they would have been to see the black velvet sky studded with glittering gems. When I look at the Milky Way, it actually looks cloudy or gauzy. It’s so hard to believe that that effect is produced by millions of stars!
I was staring at the sky, taking in its beauty when I saw a meteor. It was red and white. At first, I thought someone had set off a flare gun. But its trajectory was all wrong. It was a meteor. A while later, I saw another one. This one was totally white. I think I saw a few airplanes, given their green and red lights. I used to think that the stars, moons and planets were all white, just their brilliance distinguishing them. But there are colors there, too--blue, yellow, red and green. Once I thought I saw a satellite. Not sure about that one.
Yes, night watches are special.
Night Watch
I began my night watches almost a week ago. Once I got over my seasickness, I was happy to contribute to the watch schedule. It was already dark when I took the wheel. The sun usually sets by 6:30 pm, but the sky stays light way beyond that. I don’t even know what time zone we were in. The rally people use AT, Atlantic time zone, which is an hour later than EST. I hadn’t heard of AT before, but it makes sense.
As I said in the previous blogs, we have a watch schedule, both day and night. Unfortunately, my night watch is from 9 pm-midnight and then I’m on again at 6 am. That allows me 6 hours of sleep a night. However, I’m used to sleeping 8-10 hours during the night. Needless to say, I’m a bit sleep deprived. In the first few days I didn’t nap. After a few nights, I’ve started napping.
What happened a few nights ago? About an hour before my shift ended, I was looking around the cockpit. We have two winches on the portside of the boat, and two winches on the starboard. The two on the starboard are quite large with line wrapped around each one. I looked at them and saw two furry Cossacks complete with brown overcoats, hats and beards. As I stared at the one farthest from me, I saw it move. It now looked like a Russian Cossacks squirrel, with little hands that were moving. Its lips were moving too, but I didn’t hear a sound.
This was crazy. My mind told me that none of this was real, but there they were, right in front of me with fur-trimmed hats that almost covered their eyes. I looked away to the wind instrument. The instrument dial, which kind of looks like a clock, lets you set your sails properly. What I saw was the face of a chubby old man. The numbers highest on the dial looked like eyes. And the place lower down which displays the wind speed, looked like a mouth.
All of a sudden, the whole deck came to life. Line coiled and hanging by the mast became a man standing there (which really freaked me out). The antenna mast on the stern looked like a robot from Stars Wars. I closed my eyes for a minute or two, then opened them again. All the various creatures were still before me.
I finished my watch and went to bed. The next day I told Jeff and Steve that I would be napping today. Then I went onto explain my hallucinations last night. Steve said it was a very common phenomenon and I shouldn’t worry about it. Jeff volunteered that he often sees things outside of the boat, on the dark water. I feel so much better now, but I will continue to nap during the day regardless!
Our Sail So Far
I left off the last blog with we’re still motoring. Well, we continue to motor. Steve appeared in the companionway saying he caught a fish. It was a flying fish of which several littered our deck. He threw this one and several others overboard.
In the days ahead, Steve did catch a fish. I was napping when you could hear the line run out. I jumped out of bed and went above to see what was going on.
I stopped the blog here because I’m on watch now and I need to look around. I’m astonished to see yet another rainbow! I think the Atlantic Ocean has more rainbows than Hawaii!
Our watch schedule is as follows. Starting at 9 pm, I go on watch from 9-12 am. Steve relieves me at midnight and his watch is 12 am to 3 am. Then Jeff relieves him until 6 am. During the day, I do 6-8:30 am, Steve does 8:30 am to 11 am. Jeff comes on again from 11 am- 1:30 pm. Then I do 1:30 pm to 4 pm, Steve does 4-6:30 pm and Jeff does the last day watch until 9 pm, when I come on again. On watch means that you make sure the boat is okay and you’re not going to hit anything. We have a chart plotter that tells us when other boats are in the area. During my night watches, I’ve been listening to audiobooks. However, I’ve listened to all I’ve downloaded and since I don’t have internet now, I can’t download more. Oh well…
Back to the fish story. Steve got the fish very close to the boat and let it swim to tire itself out. Then he asked Jeff for the gaff to bring the fish up onto the deck. When he started pulling it out of the water, I could see it was a blue marlin perhaps four feet long. When Jeff tried to hand Steve the gaff, a gust of wind rocked the boat and we lost the gaff overboard. We forgot the fish and steered back to where the gaff was floating in the water. Jeff snagged it with a net while I hung onto his shorts to be sure he didn’t end up overboard. They say on any long sail you have to do a man overboard drill. I guess we accomplished that task by retrieving the gaff!
Was the fish still on the line? Yes, it was. We pulled it on deck and Steve showed Jeff how to retrieve the hook and fillet it. For lunch we have blue marlin and mango salsa. We have many more filets for both lunch and dinner. I shouldn’t have bought frozen fish at Trader Joe’s! Here’s a link to the video of our blue marlin adventure and after, our lunch:
Finally Leaving Portsmouth!
We left Portsmouth, just as we had planned. I didn’t finish everything on my to do list and neither did Jeff. Steve was joining us as crew, but his wife Wendy couldn’t make it since she had been sick and was just getting over the ordeal. Too bad. I’m sure Steve will miss her. We motored to the start line which was in the Elizabeth River. This river has a huge military presence with tall gray ships towering above us. The Elizabeth River is also an entrance to the intercoastal waterway, which Sirius can travel through because she’s too tall and draws too much.
I guess we were entered in the racing division for this rally. I thought cruising meant just cruising and the open division was for racing. I got it backwards. But Steve did the steering and we were one of the first boats off the start line. All things looked good.
The weather was very rough getting to the Gulf Stream and I got seasick. So, for the first night, just Jeff and Steve did the watches while I lay below. Then we turned to enter the Gulf Stream. I’ll always think of it as witch’s caldron as she stirs the boats about with an invisible spoon. Once I came up to get some air and we saw two boats bobbing next to us. Each boat was pointed in a different direction. Jeff spoke to one boat and they said they were detouring to Bermuda. Jeff responded, “If that’s the case, then you’re going the wrong way!”
Our boat bounced with the others. The sea was very choppy and everywhere we looked, were various shades of gray. It might have been raining too, but I couldn’t distinguish rain from the wave spray as we crashed through to the other side.
Click on this link to see the sea state after the Gulf Stream.
It took us about 8 hours to traverse the Gulf Stream. I woke up to find we had left it behind. The seas smoothed out and I got better. The weather changed immediately. On the way and through the Gulf Stream, we were wearing warm clothes under our foul weather gear. But after crossing the Stream and being out in the Atlantic Ocean, it was quite warm and humid. There were also crystals of salt everything on the decks, the canvas, the wood and the glass panels. Sirius will need a good wash when she arrives in the Caribbean.
We still had a few squalls in the days ahead, but after each one we could see rainbows! I hope you can see them in the pictures below.
Steve and Jeff changed into shorts and eventually I did too. The winds have been very squirrelly lately, coming directly from the south, which means we’ve been motoring most of the way. I made a major mistake when we filled our boat with fuel. I didn’t fill one tank because I thought it was full. Turns out there was very little fuel in that tank and we’re wondering, if we have to motor the whole way, will we have enough fuel. Such a dumb mistake. Let’s just hope winds from the east or north show up soon. These are the trade winds and blow pretty constantly, for but now there are absent.
More on Portsmouth
In this blog I’ll try to summarize our week in Portsmouth. Steve doesn’t join us until a week from now, the day before we sail. Unfortunately, his wife couldn’t make it because she was quite ill. Our to do lists have multiplied like rabbits. The Rally put on several seminars and each one increased our lists tenfold. We ordered from Amazon daily. Still, the boat is coming together nicely, and we have had fun too.
One night we took a couple to dinner at the Café Europa. The food was very expensive, but we paid the entire bill because we owed them that much (they were the couple who owned the boat that we slid into). They brought wine and food quickly but couldn’t seem to keep my water glass full!
Another night we went to an old-time movie theater to see “A Star Is Born”. Our seats were at a table with moonglow dome lamps. There were murals on the walls and everyone could see the screen. I’ve included two pictures of the inside of the theater below. Unfortunately, they couldn’t keep my water glass full either. What is it about this town and drinking water?
We Ubered to stores and ordered homemade lasagna from a local yacht club. We dressed up the outside of our boat with signal flags and she looked very festive. Once the catamaran was off the fuel dock, we managed to fill up our tanks and safely get Sirius back into our slip.
The people in the rally were very helpful. Several came aboard to teach Jeff how to do things, like change the engine impeller (thank you, Paul and forgive us Monica for stealing him away from you!). There were families on boats who decided this was the way they should live for a while. There was a beautiful gunboat called Moonwave. Actually, there were many beautiful boats and everyone was excited to be off.
The weather in Portsmouth felt like early fall. Many sailors were wearing shorts and flip flops. I continued to work below decks and Jeff continued to work above. Slowly our lists shrank. And finally it was Sunday morning and we embarked on a whole new adventure.
A Week in Portsmouth, VA
We are staying put in Portsmouth at the Ocean Yacht Marina for a whole week. We’ve met some of the people on our rally and liked them all. Tonight, we had a meal at a pub and though the food was great and the waitress was very attentive, some guy in the bar was yelling at the top of his lungs and that ruined the experience for us. Too bad. We noticed that “A Star Is Born” is playing at the local theater and we might go see it in the evenings ahead. We also want to visit the German beer garden (Jeff’s favorite dive!). We have a week to stay put, get safety inspections done and go shopping before we head out onto the ocean. Love the fact that we’re staying in place for a week! I can finally catch up on my sleep. More later…