I arrived in Horta early yesterday morning. It’s beautiful and inspiring to be in a place with such rich sailing tradition. After a big lunch and a sleep, I went out in the evening with my friend Mike Rothery (more on him later) and Dave ‘Rustler’, another single-hander and all-round interesting character who I met a few months ago in Lanzarote, and whose combination of great experience and relaxed attitude (he couldn’t remember how many times he’d sailed across the Indian Ocean) made an impression on me and others around at that time.
This trip was harder than my earlier crossing. On the other hand, I felt better equipped to deal with it, and the fact that it wasn’t a totally new experience meant my approach was a bit more practical perhaps. Although it didn’t have the magic of my first crossing, the seas were more interesting on the whole, with far more marine life, and the weather was much less predictable, so it was a more varied experience overall.
I left Antigua very late, around six weeks later than I had intended. I was the last boat to leave for the crossing back, possibly the last to leave for any significant voyage. However, the engine repairs were totally essential and were to stand me in very good stead. It is no exaggeration to say that I could still be drifting around in the mid-Atlantic now but for the fine work done in Jolly Harbour by David and Brandon. I had to cross the great calm belt running roughly from the Azores to Bermuda, and also motor through calm areas that commonly develop around the Azores, so the engine was destined to put in a serious shift.
Conditions on leaving Antigua on 7 June for the 929 mile trip to Bermuda were initially good, and I made good progress. After a couple of hundred miles or so, however, the pattern became squall then calm, squall then calm, with little consistency. I still made a few good 24 hour runs, but by 12 June I was dodging squalls and thunderstorms, and having to motor for extended spells. My log book on 13 June illustrates it nicely:
1530 – Reasonable wind at last! But for how long?
1705 – Engine on
I motored over 12 hours that day, which would have been pretty unthinkable before the repairs. At midnight I stopped and got a good night’s sleep drifting on a glassy calm sea. I took these photos at dawn before refueling and motoring on:
Nearing Bermuda the wind picked up again, indicating that I had crossed the calm belt, but the squalls were increasingly frequent and thundery. One of my abiding memories from that trip is of sailing towards a belt of thunderclouds in a pretty exhausted state, passing out on the cockpit bench, then waking up to find myself on the other side and strangely dry, Suzerain having apparently picked a gap and gone through without any help from me.
One of the big differences between the return trip and the east to west crossing was the far more regular encounters with other ships. I haven’t gone back and checked but I think I only saw three or four going to the Caribbean; I seemed to see container ships and tankers most days coming back. These included the mighty Maersk Kobe, which crossed my stern at around two miles distance the day before I reached Bermuda:
That’s 300 metres of ship traveling at 18 knots. Best avoided.
21 miles South-South-East of Bermuda I hove to for a couple of hours or so in order to arrive in daylight. I got underway at 0245 on 16 June, so well before dawn. As it turned out, this was unwise. I sailed straight into a very strong squall, close-hauled with 35 knot winds on the nose. I tried to heave to but couldn’t get the bow around, so ended up screaming along, hand-steering with torrential rain pouring over me, hoping that the rig wouldn’t give out.
On approach in daylight but still in bad conditions, I called up Bermuda Radio and gave them my details. We stayed in touch throughout, which was reassuring. As a final insult, the wind swung into the North as I was heading for the channel marker, making the final few miles quite painful and very slow as Suzerain ploughed into a heavy chop. As you can imagine, the harbour was pretty blissful after that:
A very nice border control man welcomed me to the customs dock on Ordnance Island. Bermuda Radio had notified him of my approach and, I imagine, likely condition. In his office I spied a notice confirming that there was a small craft warning out due to strong winds and thunderstorms. It would probably have been sensible to email Bermuda Radio for a forecast while hove to the night before I suppose.
Bermuda was a nice place, but a little odd. If you mention it to a sailor, the response is likely to be ‘expensive’, based mainly on the prices in the bars (8 dollars for a pint). Its history is clearly very British, but in the present it seemed more an outpost of America. New York is only a two hour flight away, so there were a lot of American tourists, and the local accent and culture seemed American to me. It was very pretty though. I only stayed four days, but found it relaxing, and would probably go back. St George’s harbour is very well-protected, and there was plenty of interesting stuff to see. I’ll put a few photos on my ‘see’ page.
After four days, I set off again for what was to prove the most challenging trip so far, 1794 miles to Horta. The anchor windlass failed, so I had to haul up the chain by hand, but I eventually got away, only slightly outside the window allowed by the border control chap when I checked out. The belt of westerly winds had come south to Bermuda, so lots of other boats left the same day. I’d briefly chatted with the owners of SY Saturnin, and she came flying past me on day two. I should have some good footage, which will see the light of day at some point no doubt.
The wind angle was varying a bit, which meant I was swapping between a broad reach and goose-winged. I left the pole out to windward though, so it wasn’t particularly arduous to swap once set up. However, after only three days I hit calms, which I found disconcerting. I think I set off with the innocent notion that this trip would be like the first crossing in reverse, wind-wise, and it really wasn’t at all. The pilot books do say that the direct route is likely to involve calm patches, and that you should head for higher latitudes on leaving Bermuda if you want better wind, so I shouldn’t really have been surprised. I duly motored North East until the winds returned.
On 24 June, I cleared a bit of plastic caught in my Duogen water turbine (incidentally, it’s immense – my batteries were fully charged practically the whole way). I also cleared what I assumed to be a length of purple elastic. There’s a lot of plastic waste across the North Atlantic I’m afraid, so this wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. It turned out to be a Man o’War tentacle. There’s a lot of them around too, and I’d obviously run one over. I can report that the tentacle does not need to be attached to the body in order to sting. It’s something like a nettle sting but a bit more painful and prolonged.
On a brief tangent, a few years back I came across a photographer who rescues stranded Men o’War, takes photos of them, and then uses those photos to make really amazing images, which you can see here. I believe he releases them back into the wild afterwards, so everyone’s a winner.
I also saw my first sperm whale that day, lying at the surface around 60 metres or so away, presumably after resurfacing. His / her bulbous head and forward pointing spout were unmistakeable. I was particularly wary of sperm whales, as my friend Mike had recently got too close to one while making the same trip single-handed and got hit pretty hard, damaging his boat badly. You can read his account here. I certainly had no intention of making closer investigation anyway. Adults would generally be about twice the length of my boat I believe. Over the three hundred years or so we spent massacring them for candles and corsetry, they presumably developed some suspicion of small boats sneaking up on them, so although they’re generally pretty peacable by all accounts, it’s understandable that they might want to apply the great paddle occasionally. Mike was very unlucky though, but conversely lucky to survive to tell such an interesting and scary tale.
I continued to see a lot of shipping, including the US Navy ship, the Leroy Grumman, a 206m ‘replenishment oiler’, whatever that may be. And the Pacific Dongying, which raised a laugh. This was the last laugh for a while though, as things went a bit downhill at this point. My brother Tom had agreed to help by providing weather information, and he emailed me on 25 June to say that the wind would be switching direction in two days and blowing from the East for the best part of a week. The pilot chart indicates that East winds do not happen in July in that part of the ocean, so this came as something of a shock. Suzerain does not sail at all well upwind, so this was very bad news, as I was pretty desperate to get back home after being delayed so long.
Sadly the forecast proved to be correct. After being pushed to the south trying to keep making gains to the east, I eventually decided that the best thing I could do would be to sail north to 38 degrees, in order to give myself a good chance of favourable winds without committing too far, then heave to and wait. This was on the afternoon of 28 June. I then ate the best meal anyone has ever eaten while hove to at 38 degrees north:
That’s a Fray Bentos (Scottish company – didn’t know that) steak and kidney pie with potato and sweet potato chips and peas. The following day I repaired my sprayhood and found the loose wiring that had stopped the windlass working. But mainly I read (Nicholas Timmins’ biography of the welfare state, ‘The Five Giants’) and slept. It was surprisingly peaceful, if rather surreal and very frustrating.
You may wonder why I didn’t motor East. I could have done in patches, although the wind was generally fairly strong and it would have been hard work. But the main issue was that I was the best part of 1000 miles from my destination, and I only had a motoring range of 500 miles or so. I wanted to conserve fuel for the run in to the Azores, so it seemed to me that using up a lot of my fuel fighting East would be unwise.
I took my now traditional halfway selfie:
The beard went shortly after, so I look less like Stig o’the Dump now, I think.
After lunch on 30 June, the wind veered round to South-South-East and we set sail. I started to think about heading for Flores rather than Horta, as it is 130 odd miles closer. The pilot book made the marina and anchorage sound difficult, but I decided to give it a go. I also saw another sperm whale, this time swimming quickly and then sounding. And I encountered an Azorean fishing boat, which was nice to see although I was still over 700 miles out.
I made some ground to the East, but was also pushed North, above 40 degrees. My chart put the Grand Banks iceberg limit at around 40 degrees, so this was concerning. However, Tom checked the current position and I was apparently safe up to 45 degrees, albeit somewhat cold. I hit a flat calm on the morning of 2 July, and spent some time dismantling my anchor windlass.
I have good memories (and hopefully good footage) of that morning; I knew the favourable winds would be returning that day, and the dawn was utterly beautiful, with petrels and dolphins playing around the boat. Overnight one of the petrels had ended up in the cockpit and had been unable to escape. I nearly stood on him when I got up. They are absolutely astonishing flyers, but stumbling drunkards on land, in fact they can’t really stand up. He shuffled round to the far side of the cockpit while I tried to reassure him, thought about things a bit, then came round and sat on my boot. I picked him up without any protest and put him on the sprayhood so he had a clear flightpath. Thankfully he proved to be undamaged, and off he went to join his pals.
The wind came in fairly weak at first, and I ended up motoring for a spell, but from mid-afternoon it blew hard and I greatly enjoyed my first proper sailing for a while. Suzerain clearly enjoyed it too, bowling along at over 6 knots, 7.5 at times, even hitting 8 knots twice, which is unheard of in my ownership. I have learned to trust the rig more, so am probably sailing less conservatively in general. I suppose I also had the escaped prisoner’s tendency to run as fast as possible. The biggest shock of the trip came at almost midnight in the dark, when the foot-switch for the windlass shorted and it pulled the chain hard against itself before the clutch slipped. It seems to have been installed without a breaker switch, so I had to pull the fuse. I need to rewire the whole thing I think.
The log on 3 and 4 July reads:
2013 – Tanker sighted 9 miles port bow, heading opposite…
2112 – Ship astern 15 miles. Torrente 300m. Got out of way.
0320 – Passed Golden Opal c. 4 miles during 2 hour sleep.
Perhaps that two hour sleep may have been unwise. The tanker and Golden Opal were the first ships I had seen travelling the opposite way to me, which opens up more dangerous possibilities. However, the AIS was obviously working well, and its alarm is pretty loud and insistent. It has been suggested to me that I should invest in a device that sends my details as well as receiving other ships’, and I may well do that for the next trip, as it will cross the western approaches to the English Channel, the busiest shipping lane in the world.
Conditions got more blowy with 250 miles or so to Flores. The South West wind died with about 40 miles to go, then came back from the North. I had been told this would happen, but it meant that approaching Lajes on the south coast of Flores would involve possible acceleration zones and some calms.
I had a beautiful approach to the island, which looked absolutely stunning, but when I started the engine, the gearbox wasn’t spinning the shaft properly. This had happened once earlier in the trip in less benign conditions, but I hadn’t diagnosed the problem that time. The clutch was evidently slipping in forward gear. After a fair bit of revving and swearing, it finally engaged, and I moved in.
SY Saturnin was in the anchorage, and they shouted that they thought there was some space in the marina. However, it has a high seawall, and you can’t see how busy it is until you round the wall after passing through a very narrow, rocky entrance. I found it truly scary. There was a bloke snorkeling in the entrance and people diving in off the wall. I couldn’t see any space, so I spun the boat around, coming far too close to the rocks for comfort and headed back out. I considered anchoring, but the depth was about 10 metres and the anchorage is quite open and blowy, so it didn’t feel safe to me. You will also have realised by now that my windlass is a piece of s**t. So I decided to continue on to Horta, 130 miles or so to the East.
I was really sad about this, as Flores looks absolutely stunning. In fact, although a boat is probably the best mode of transport when exploring these islands, time and the state of my boat are really against me, and it’s clear I’m not going to be able to do them justice, so I plan to return for a holiday as soon as possible. This is the first place I’ve visited that I could definitely imagine myself living in. I think it’s a virtual certainty that if my mum had come to the Azores in the early 80s, I would be half Azorean now.
Getting back to the story, I left Flores and sailed straight into a pretty bad storm. I ended up heaving to three or four times in high winds and torrential rains. If I’d known this was coming I probably would have risked anchoring, but once into it I decided to just push on. It finally abated about four the following morning, and I got an hour and a half’s exhausted sleep. Unfortunately the wind also moved into the East, so with about 80 miles to go I couldn’t steer for Horta. I tacked to the North, then tried running the motor on the morning of 8 July, but after a couple of hours found the sea a bit too rough for my liking. I also couldn’t hope to make Horta that day any more, so decided to do a bit of tacking. I ended up sailing up and down until the evening in beautiful sailing conditions before attempting a final motor to Horta.
I encountered further clutch problems. I eventually tried sailing as fast as possible with the engine in forward gear, with the prop spinning the gearbox rather than vice-versa, so that when I started the engine it was already spinning fast. This did the trick. Overnight the sea was glassy calm and we made about 4 knots at my preferred cruising revs of 2400. I don’t try to sleep when the engine is running, as it’s pretty loud. I also worry that, if I do get to sleep, I might not wake up for an AIS alarm. There’s some sort of AIS boosting station here, so I was now picking up targets at over five times the normal distance, which was reassuring. So I ended up doing an all-nighter. Coming along the south coast of Faial at dawn, I took this beautiful photo of the iconic view of Pico:
Horta harbour proved to be pretty busy and there was no room on the reception quay, so I ended up coming to a halt on the fuel dock after 14 hours of solid motoring. After I had checked into the country (it does feel weird to be back in Portugal, where I started!), I untied to motor to my allocated berth. You can probably imagine what happened next – no forward gear. I sent a distressed yelp in the direction of the marina manager and a border policeman before the clutch engaged and I moved forward, laughing like a madman.
There’s a regatta coming in on Thursday, so I have to be out of my berth on the morning, and would either have to raft up against the wall or anchor. I don’t particularly want to do either, so Mike and I are planning to sail our respective invalids to Sao Miguel, 130 odd miles to the East, which has a large, spacious marina. This will be Mike’s first sail since he was whaled upon, and I will no doubt have gearbox problems, so it might be interesting. I’m going to order a new clutch cone to be delivered from the UK, and will try to remove the gearbox while in the water, unless someone more experienced in such matters tells me this would be mad. Hopefully there should be enough room if I move the prop shaft aft, obviously without pushing it out of the boat altogether. I will also try to get my anchor windlass working properly, and seal up a few leaks that the Caribbean sun opened up in the deck. So I’ll probably be there for a couple of weeks, and I will definitely be getting the bike out and exploring properly, so there should be a lot more photos forthcoming.
England also appear to be in the process of winning the World Cup, adding a further layer to an already highly surreal experience. I will be watching the games tonight and tomorrow with great interest. I can only imagine the sheer terror that must be enveloping Scotland right now. Cheers!
You must be logged in to post a comment.