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Since it is not too often you receive a letter from the middle of the Atlantic, I thought I would give you a progress report. Today, we are eight days out of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands and are starting to turn more westerly. This is more or less when we are supposed to catch the famous northeast Tradewinds which normally blow steadily and evenly all the way to the Caribbean. We started out with a bang the first night out of Las Palmas. Nice winds all the way down the southeast coast with one reef in the main. According to the pilot charts, there is supposed to be only one gale per month in this area at this time of the year. And when rounding the end of the island, we got it! By that time, it was too dark and heavy going to put another reef in the main, so we barreled away downwind till daylight. Only then, we managed to get the main down altogether and continue with a little piece of the genoa. In the process, we managed to half fill the cockpit, get water in both sail lockers and even a good splash down the small hatch in the starboard stern cabin. We may not need to use the main sail again on the trip. With the wind always almost behind, we find it better with the genoa poled out on the leeward side and the small staysail poled out on the windward side. After that first blow the winds have been rather variable, from fairly strong to very light ñ not what the trades are supposed to be at all. We are now 1,035 nautical miles (1,914 km) on our way towards our goal of Trinidad and have "only" 1,810 nautical miles to go according to the GPS, i.e. the Rumb line distance. Over the ground it will probably be a couple of hundred miles more, since the wind changes force us into a slight zigzag motion all the time. So far, we have seen only two ships and nothing else. No birds, no dolphins. It is totally dead ñ not quite right, Pieter tells me. He saw a few dolphins this morning. The boat, the rigging and sails are covered in orange dust from the Sahara desert, and it is into everything. Yuk! You can even smell Africa 1,000 miles out! So far, we have used the engine only 12 hours including an hour for charging batteries every second day. My back is holding up all right after the disk operation 6 weeks ago in Casablanca, although the constant rolling and heaving are a bit hard on it. We have calculated that we will roll a total of 5 million times from side to side before we reach Trinidad - some as much as a 35 degree angle! With this kind of constant motion, the best place to sleep is on the floor in the main cabin. The rolling also makes a hell of a racket from dishes, pots, equipment, you name it, in cupboards, drawers etc. So I, who am such a light sleeper, spend a good portion of my off watch trying to locate noises and stuffing socks, underwear, towels, etc. all over the place. All this is great amusement for Pieter and Anne, who sleep through everything, it seems. How lucky! They call me "The Noise Brigade"... We should now really be well into the Tradewinds but still haven't found them. Last night, we had gale No. 2 (one too many according to the statistics for this month), but this time we were prepared for it ñ more or less. We flew only a tiny piece of the genoa poled out, which we obviously shouldn't have done, since we broke the pole in a 45 knot gust. After that, it went fine with huge waves coming from astern. They must have been 5-6 meters high and most of them were breaking. Several times it looked like one was going to poop us and crash over the stern into the cockpit. But every time, good, old NOR SIGLAR lifted herself up in the last minute and the wave just slid underneath us, pushing us high up along the crest of it, and then took us skidding down with her full speed on the other side. Wow, what a sleigh ride that was! On these wild rides, we hit a speed of up to 12 knots! Today, we passed the halfway point and celebrated with Anne's homemade cheesecake and a glass of wine.
We are finally in the steady "trades" and haven't touched the sails, or the self-steering windvane, ("Styrmann") for two days. This is what tradewind sailing is supposed to be like - sunny skies, and steady winds from the same directions day after day! We haven't seen any more ships, but had some other excitement just a little while ago. We suddenly noticed a large brown shadow, about 10-15 feet long, glide by just under the water surface at a terrific speed. A few minutes later, we saw this enormous creature jumping clean out of the water several times. Was it a fish? A shark? A whale? We can't figure out what it was. It looked like a fish but was really too big for that. And it definitely was not a whale, a killer whale, nor a dolphin. I got a picture of the third jump, but it was probably too far away to be able to identify it later. So we will probably never know what it was.
Today we caught a beautiful Dorado (dolphin fish or mahi-mahi). It weighed abt. 6 kilos and will give us at least four dinners. We now only have 670 nautical miles to go and only one million rolls left to suffer. The winds have been a bit light the last 5-10 days, so it looks like we will need 23-24 days for the whole trip. Today, it is actually fairly smooth, and Anne even has the sewing machine out and is sewing a Trinidad flag for our arrival. It is getting terribly hot now - abt. 30 degrees Celsius in the cabin. And we can't have the hatches open due to splashes from freak waves slapping up against the sides in a bad roll. We haven't had a chance to swim on this trip, so we have had to ration the fresh water. That means that we had to cut back on showers, so now we sure are looking forward to a nice, long and cool one! Spotted the northeast point of Tobago early this morning so we will come in to the anchorage at Port of Spain in the middle of the night. Not so nice since it is very dark now with no moon. The entrance is quite tricky, we don't have good charts so we may have to drift around till daylight. Anyway, the crossing is just about over and we are all, the boat and us, in good shape. The only casualty is a broken whisker pole. The most amazing thing, I think, is that we didn't see any ships or other boats, apart from the two freighters near the Canaries. Otherwise there was absolutely nothing except the one Dorado which we caught and the big unidentified sea creature - in about 20 days - unbelievable! We didn't even hear any airplanes above. Also, we didn't see any birds this time - no swallows visiting us for a rest like we had between Morocco and the Canaries. We are not looking forward to the next couple of weeks as we will be totally absorbed in getting the boat, engine and equipment cleaned up and ready for a six-month lay-up. First we must find the right yard, the right people to help us, etc. etc. Anyway, we made it, and that's the main thing.
Copyright © Anne Brevig & Martin Vennesland. www.norsiglar.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NORWEGIAN 
Surfing down the waves at 8-10 knot speed