Trip Update - 21st November 2008 Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Canaries

Nutmeg of Shoreham
Ollie Holden
Fri 21 Nov 2008 20:53


Position: 28:07:74N 15:25:56W

 

Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands

 

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 Las Palmas as they were just a week ago.  It is a different world.  The whole atmosphere of the place here has changed, from a small community of similar families and couples who had spent the last few months living on their boats and bumping into one another on the way down from Northern Europe, into one where you are more likely to bump into someone who has flown out from Gatwick that morning.  It has killed off the relaxed camaraderie and replaced it with a slightly more territorial friendliness, as disparate groups of people try to turn themselves into teams before the start, and the focus is on getting to know your own crew rather than others.  People are focused on their boats, and rightly so.

 

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 Cowes.  There are three Nets, with about 80 boats in each, so it could be a bit of a bunfight!

 

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:

  • Watch system & log–keeping – agree & print out
  • Perform Boat briefing – sailing, housekeeping
  • Perform Safety briefing – situations & equipment
  • Perform First aid contents briefing
  • Chandlery –
    • Bucket for kedge chain
    • New reefing lines
    • New starboard pole topping lift
    • Elastic for netting
    • Neoprene tape for engine hatch covers
    • Shackles
  • Rig check with Jerry:
    • Tape split pins on mizzen runners
    • Replace gate wires both sides
    • Replace split pins on both goosenecks
    • Replace split pins on aft guardrail
    • Tape genoa car split rings
    • Mouse all shackles not already moused
    • Tape spreader ends
  • Sort chartplotter voltage issue – Raymarine engineer
  • Put up more netting in saloon for fruit & veg storage
  • Make cockpit cushions
  • Go for a sail!
  • Do fresh goods shop
  • Stow dry provisions (tins & packets & water)
  • Stow fruit & veg
  • Check battery electrolyte levels
  • Plug Falmouth MRCC + Dad/Sarah/Will numbers into Sat phone
  • Design & fit mizzen preventers

 

Not a bad set of tasks – could be a lot worse.  When you are making cockpit cushions, you know you are ready!