Trip Update - 21st November 2008 Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Canaries
Position: 28:07:74N
15:25:56W Countdown to the
Transat… Well this week has been very
different from the previous five months.
Nutmeg has been transformed from a family boat, with all the homely
accompaniments (toys, dolls, Lego on the floor, childrens books everywhere),
into a boat for four adults. I have
to say that I preferred her as she was, but that is just the way things have to
be for the next few weeks. I find it really hard to visualize
Sarah and the girls on the pontoon, walking around here in The emotions run high at a time like
this. I have moved from being
stressed about the job list, to being excited about the preparation, to being
deeply sad at seeing my family leave.
This week has seen me move between a form of homesickness (wanting to
return to the life we’ve been living for the last five months) and a mix of
slight dread and curiosity and, occasionally, excitement about the trip
ahead. I just want to get
going. We were broadly ready by
Thursday this week, and if we were going independently I would have considered
leaving then. Rob & I picked Pam up from the
airport on Sunday night, and Sally moved aboard on Monday so we now have our
full crew. I think we have a good
crew although we are undoubtedly light on experience. We’ve discussed & agreed a watch
system, which we’ll change after the first couple of days with an aim to move
from 2-person to single-person watches once I’m happy that everyone is able to
stand a watch on their own. I’ve
put together a set of rules/guidelines on everything from watch- and log-keeping
to water usage and when to wake the skipper. We’ve also run through all the systems
on the boat so everyone knows how everything works, and where it
is. Our provisions arrived early in the
week and our eyes were opened to how much stuff we had really bought. Where were we going to put it all? When you see it on the dock, it looks a
lot bigger than it did in the supermarket!
All packaging was removed on the dock and tins marked with permanent
marker, then the whole lot was stowed into Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 provisions in
the saloon. I think we have enough
food for about 6 months!! The fruit
and vegetables will arrive tomorrow morning and I think I’ll need to put up a
3rd netting hammock to store it all… Loading the dry goods – Rob, Sally
& Pam The rest of the fleet is in
different states of readiness, and there are certainly some boats who are not
going to have a relaxing last few days as I hope we will have. There are even rumours that a few won’t be leaving on
Sunday. We had our rig checked by
Jerry the Rigger, who pronounced that we were in good shape, which was a
confidence-booster. There are
people rushing about getting various things fabricated and carrying various bits
of boat to the repair yards. The ARC office has published ratings
for all the boats and I am proud to say that we are fifth from the bottom – ie
there are only four boats rated slower than us!! Needless to say I have appealed against
my rating and expect to see us drop to fourth or possibly third-slowest. Hee hee! It means that we have nothing to lose
and everything to gain – anyone we beat on the water is a bonus. I’m still in shock at how big, shiny and
new everyone else’s boats are. We have volunteered to be a Radio
Net Controller. Each day there is a
radio “sched” where every boat tunes into a certain frequency on their SSB
radios and you get to find out everyone else’s position. The Net Controller has
to manage these sessions and email the positions of those boats without email
through to the ARC Office in Yesterday, we scheduled an afternoon
sail, partly as an exercise in forcing us to be ready and to make Nutmeg
shipshape, and partly to allow the crew to get a feel for the boat and to do
some exercises. There was 10-12 kts
blowing and a 1m swell, so it was perfect for a first sail. We put all the sails up, rigged
preventers & took them off, put the pole up and goosewinged and practiced an
emergency turn (for a MOB situation) from a goosewinged position. Then we put in a reef and shook it
out. Nutmeg felt very sluggish as a
result of all the additional weight she is carrying. I look forward to eating and drinking
the weight out of the boat! We saw
a couple of large dolphins, ponderously checking us out. I took it to be an auspicious
sign! When we got back in, there was a
strong smell of diesel, and there was some diesel in the engine tray. One quick panic later I discovered that
it was a schoolboy error – both tanks were full to the brim and I had the fuel
feeding from one tank but returning to the other, which was already full… Durrr. However I was very happy that it was
just down to skipper stupidity and not some serious leak. And very glad that I found it out on
Thursday not Sunday or later. Looking forward – the weather looks
OK for the start on Sunday. The
trade winds don’t look particularly established further South, but it looks as
if we will have favourable winds at the start, with a risk of them dying off on
Monday or Tuesday. I think, unless
the forecasts change, that the route for the first few days will run parallel to
the African coast, towards the Cape Verde islands, with a hope that later next
week the winds will allow us to get more Westing. We will be looking for 15-20kts, ideally
from the quarter but otherwise astern.
It’s hard to set waypoints on a leg
this long – 2800 miles – as it will depend so much on the weather. If you sail the Great Circle route (if
you stretched a piece of string on a globe from Las Palmas to St Lucia this
would be the Great Circle route) then you risk being becalmed in the Horse
Latitudes – where in olden days they used to chuck the horses over the side
because they were running low on water.
So conventional wisdom means heading South before you head West. It used to be “Head South ‘til the
butter melts” but these days the weather GRIB files help you decide when to turn
right. Current GRIB for Sunday. Blue = too little; Dark green = OK;
light green = fresh to frightening; Red = Ooh eck! I really look forward to getting the
first 3 or 4 days out of the way because these are going to be the most testing
for me as a skipper, with crew inexperienced to the boat, more shipping /
navigation to be done, and the usual anxiety and sleeplessness that every
skipper gets for the first few days at sea. I sometimes wonder if I am mad to
have put myself and others in this position. Why didn’t we settle for a nice relaxed
year in the Med, or something less challenging? But I can only answer myself with the
objective statement – this is always how you feel before doing something
worthwhile. It was three and a half
years ago that this ambition moved from idea to planning, and if I can pull it
off it will be one of the biggest achievements in my life to
date. I will probably not get to post
another update before we start, but I’m aiming to send out a brief update each
day starting Monday. You can also
follow the fleet’s progress via http://www.worldcruising.com/arc - it should be updated
each afternoon as we send in our positions by 1400UTC each
day. To give a flavour for what needs
doing, here is my job list for the last week. Note – this is only a subset of the
jobs:
Not a bad set of tasks – could be a
lot worse. When you are making
cockpit cushions, you know you are ready! |