Life on the Ocean Wave

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Wed 21 Jul 2010 17:39
Firstly a quick apology for the long delay in posting this log, but sadly my computer died during the first days of this last trip and so I was unable to post daily updates via the satellite phone. The good news is that this means that you have been spared a daily blow by blow account of our travails!

The slightly edited version therefore of what happened is as follows:

We set of from Herzliya Marina in Israel around 8.00 am on Saturday 10th July heading for Malta which was a mere 1031 miles away which we had hoped to do in around 8 days, unfortunately the weather had other ideas and we ended up taking nearly 11 days to cover 1173 miles.

We set off in company with Scott Free (Contest 43) and they showed us up by sailing right from the start, whereas we decided to motor out to the 12 mile mark as directed by the Israeli navy before starting to sail in the light breeze. The principle problem for the next 6 days was that the wind blew remorselessly from the North West which is exactly where we were trying to sail. This means that we had to tack upwind all the time and this was made a great deal harder by an adverse current and surprisingly heavy seas with big waves that kept battering the boat to a standstill which meant that it was almost impossible to make decent ground on either tack. It is depressing enough at the end of a day?s sailing to have to tack back up a river or whatever, but to spend 6 days heading either for Libya or Cyprus/Crete instead of the very distant island of Malta became very wearing. Constant wind shifts meant that we needed to be vigilant otherwise we could easily spend several hours sailing nice and fast, but actually losing ground by the minute! For the most part we had good 20 knot winds but at times we were facing just a few knots and progress was very slow and frustrating. We were also very surprised how the wind got up every night which is the exact opposite of what usually happens out here. Many nights found us with a full cutter rig hurtling along at 7 knots into a completely black night (there was no moon at all for the first 6 days) which can be a little disconcerting.

On the port tack with full fuel tanks, we unfortunately get a bit of a diesel smell in the galley and aft cabin. One night, Sarah in need of sleep, in desperation to relieve the smell and to try to lower the positively steamy conditions below, stupidly opened the aft hatch about 1?. The inevitable happened: just the one rogue wave shot across the stern (having given no inkling of this before) delivering approximately at least a gallon of salty water across the bed, Sarah and the sofa thing in the cabin. Luckily swift action saved the mattresses and cushions ? the lovely mouldy bedding is being seen to by the local laundry as I write this!

Scott Free is not quite as fast as Serafina and so we lost sight of them at the end of the first day, but we were still able to talk on the VHF and as a back-up had agreed to talk at 7.00 pm every night on the SSB (short wave) radio. By the fifth day we were some 70 miles ahead and no longer could talk on the VHF, but sadly our SSB still failed to transmit so although we could hear Steve and Chris, they could not hear us. However they continued their SSB transmissions every night and we were able to plot their progress and hear how their day had gone, although this was frequently not good news for one reason or another. We too suffered gear failure and the old adage of ?show me something mechanical and I will show you something that will break down?? is so very true of small yachts. First casualty was of course my computer then during the third night with the wind blowing 23 knots, the furlex with the ?twins? on got a ?riding turn? and this meant that we were unable to put these sails away and had to continue flying along at 6 to 7 knots through the darkness until dawn when I was able to go forward and sitting astride the bow with my legs dangling over the side, I dismantled the unit and released the jam. No big deal but the waves were very large at this stage and so Serafina?s bow would climb and climb into the sky before plummeting down the back of the wave and burying her nose into the following one. Fortunately I did not actually get submerged during this excitement but the huge rise and fall resembled one of those fairground rides that I NEVER go on.

Radio traffic during the first few days was dominated by the Israeli navy challenging every ship regardless of where they were and when we came across Rainbow Warrior (Greenpeace) acting very strangely around midnight on the second night we did wonder if there was something going on.

By the third night our AIS system started to play up. This is a brilliant bit of kit which places the nearest 100 ships onto our chart plotter and is invaluable for helping us to avoid being run down by the huge amount of traffic streaming through the Med. It was particularly important on this trip as we were having to tack back and forth across the busy shipping lanes and so it was with some concern that we watched as the ships began to disappear off the screen to the extent that we were sometimes only seeing one or two, when we knew of course that there were 50 or more within range of us. This fault came and went for the rest of the journey but we had of course the back up of the radar...... ah yes, the radar that has been playing up all this year! Sure enough when we most needed its services, it decided that this would be the best time to down tools and simply fail altogether for up to 24 hours at a time. Not to be outdone the E80 chart plotter at the chart table started to ?slow down? during day 4 and ended up freezing its screen altogether by day 5. We disconnected it and left it turned off for the rest of the trip. During the 5th night we put the engine on for a while to help charge the batteries and give us a bit of a push upwind, but we were greeted by a new and alarming whine that was something new above the usual sound of the motor running. I suspected one of the alternators but some exhaustive investigations finally revealed the Black jack shaft bearing to be the culprit, or rather I was guilty of not bleeding this unit more regularly during this journey. (This is something I do before we set sail each day usually, but it never occurred to be during all the excitement of non-stop sailing that I still needed to do this whilst we were sailing along as well.) Finally we never quite got to the bottom of some very loud sounds of creaking from two locations in the hull which indicate movement in the hull which is causing distress in a joint somewhere. We will be investigating this quite urgently before we leave Malta.

On the plus side on day 5, I managed to cobble up a system that enabled me to connect Sarah?s laptop to the internet via our Satellite phone and so we were able to download a weather forecast at least which was a great help in planning the rest of the route. The basic problem that we were experiencing with the weather and sea state was due to a Meltemi storm blasting through the Aegean Sea at gale force 8, which explained the huge waves that were making our lives so miserable and partially explains the curious wind patterns by night. It also showed however that we needed to head north from the African coast to avoid the worst of the weather to come and that on day 7 we should find the wind dying away altogether and that the final 300 miles of the journey would have to be done with little to no wind at all which is almost exactly what happened!

On the wildlife front we had our moments. Fishing has become a bit too easy.... well the thing is that we became a bit cocky during the rally having caught a couple of fish, but then I discovered that one of the French boats (Pasha) was distributing fresh tuna to people at EVERY stop, so I had a little chat with them at the end to discover their secrets. They were extremely helpful and without giving too much away, a lot came down to the lure and style of hook. They said that their luck had changed dramatically once they had discovered this and I suggested that this was something of a magic lure. Josie replied. ?Oh no, it does not work every time, some days we only catch one fish!? So I bought one of these lures in Israel and told Sarah that I had it cracked now! So when on day 2 she announced that fresh tuna was required, the pressure was on. I launched the gear and in less than one hour we had landed a magnificent 8kg tuna. We are also getting considerably better at the landing, bleeding and filleting etc. and this was all done with the minimum of fuss and mess. We learnt quite a bit from Lesley which has helped this along. It was not until day 8 that we agreed that we needed another fresh fish and bingo... we caught one again within the hour. The only excitement this time though, was that we had been listening to a British warship challenging ships as part of some NATO operation and we assumed that drugs are one of the issues here. The classic exchange of these goods is done by the packages being thrown overboard from a ship and picked up by a small boat (or yacht) which then takes it ashore. We noticed on the AIS (which was working rather well at the time) that the warship had altered course and was heading directly to our position although they were still 40 miles away. It was at this point that we caught the fish and stopped dead in the water to bring it to the boat and land it. This would have course looked VERY suspicious to the navy from where they were and so we spent the next few hours as they closed in on us, preparing for a visit from a boarding party. (This actually involved Sarah rushing round tidying up to make it look less chaotic) but in the end they just steamed straight past us and took up station around 20 miles south of us and proceeded to announce on VHF channel 16 that they were about to undertake some gunnery practice and that all ships should keep a reasonable distance. One ship called them and quite sensibly asked what was a ?reasonable distance? to which the reply was a reassuring ?10 miles?!

On day 5 we were joined by a fabulous school of 12 Risso?s dolphins. We have never come across this type before and they entertained us by playing along with us, diving under the bow and riding our bow wave for over an hour. On day 7 we were joined briefly by 4 Common Bottlenose dolphins and these athletic creatures put on a terrific show of acrobatics, diving out and turning over on their backs before re-entry, synchronised swimming, but quickly swam off. Finally on day 9 we started to come across increasing numbers of turtles in the sea around us and whilst the sea was mirror flat we would be alongside them before they realised and could see them up close. Sadly a significant swell started as we got closer to Malta and the noise of our bow plunging into the waves alerted them and they would dive from view just as we got close. And Sarah would like you to know that she found a small flying fish on the deck after one windy night.

So that was the brief version of events. We certainly had a good trip and learnt a lot about ourselves and life aboard a boat on an extended journey and hopefully useful lessons have been learnt and will continue to be learnt as we get ever closer to our first ocean crossing in December. 1173 miles is nearly halfway across the Atlantic but technically we should not have head winds then, we very much hope! Interestingly, after night 3, we found that the watch system of 3 hours on and 3 hours off really worked rather well; our bodies seemed to have adapted and with a quiet doze of an hour or so each in the afternoon there was no struggling with awful sleepiness while you are ?in charge?. And that over-rated activity of washing? Nasty big seas are not conducive to covering oneself in soap and remaining upright, or even on the boat! So we resorted to the heaven sent baby-wipes and eventually to heaving to (stopping the boat under sail) and showering off the back ? Sarah even had a couple of swims at this stage, despite Rob?s disapproval at the potential for lost ground and worry about being stopped in the middle of the shipping lanes .... but it is the breeding ground for the Great White Shark, so there was always a chance of something more dramatic......