13:00.412N 52:56.328W

Heading West Sixth Blog, Special moments, S:@t, Ships, Sails and Soda bread

7^th December 2014

Sixth edition of the going west blogs and we are in the home stretch, we dropped below the 400 miles to go point this morning on Norma’s watch. In the last blog I commented on how it is a bit ground hog day at the moment well I had no sooner finished the blog when the fun started.

Special moments

Dolphins have been noticeable by their absence of late, in fact we haven’t seen any since our approach to the Cape Verdes so you can imagine our surprise when Tony near jumped out of his skin as a dolphin vented right next to the cockpit. Soon there were at least 50 and probably a lot more all around the boat. You could see waves of them coming in from the starboard side leaping clear out of the water and spinning in the air. Pretty soon it was like dolphin soup under our bows as they all vied to be next one to ride the wave. Tony managed to take some great pictures with his camera and even put it onto the boat hook and dipped it under the water. We have actually got some pictures of a group of dolphins swimming under Spectra’s bow from below the water and some of us sailing towards the sunset with dolphins jumping in front of us. Sorry but that is teasing as I can’t upload pictures until we hit port. But trust me they are good and I will update as soon as I can. We also have some videos which Tony has agreed to put on U-Tube so I will post details when that has happened.

S:@t

The aft heads (toilet) stopped flushing and so the joy of boat ownership was complete. I discovered that the outlet pipe was completely blocked and so it was dismantle the toilet while bent double in the smallest room, remove the pipe, pull it through two bulk heads and all in 35 degrees heat and a rolling sea. Then on deck to bash it against the side and force water through it with the deck pump until it was free. Sounds a bit unpleasant but manageable? I did mention the heat and the rolling sea, by the time the pipe was clear both Tony and myself had been sick over the side more than once while the rest of the crew watched from outside of the fallout zone. Put it all back together again clean up the mess and job done. 3 hours that took and I want to go on record officially as hating toilets and all things plumbing related I will certainly never use one again, ever.

Ships

Towards evening we picked up a ship, the W-Eagle a 754ft tanker, on the AIS,  some 20 miles astern and doing 14 knots in our direction. We watched it approach on the plotter and within 45 minutes it was just visible on the horizon. Checking the plot it looked like it would pass pretty close and so I radioed up and asked his intentions, no reply. We waited 15 minutes and tried again, no reply. It was now pretty clear that it was going to come too close for comfort and as we were the stand on vessel we continued to call. We tried Ch 16, ship to ship, DSC on both VHF radios and finally I got Peter to 5 flash our search light at his bridge, no reply. Finally with 20 minutes left until the closest point of approach I changed our course 30 degrees to port to get out of his way. The W-Eagle carried on totally unaware of our presence right through the patch of water we had previously occupied.  As he drew level with us Norma noticed his navigation lights switch on. I tried the VHF again and he replied immediately so I can only surmise that someone had just woken up on the bridge to turn the lights on and noticed us calling, or maybe it was half time on the football. When asked why he had not responded or kept clear of us he said they had been monitoring VHF and heard nothing. My reply was short sharp and brought his professionalism into question which elicited no reply so I assume his radio had gone into silent mode again. First ship in 4 days and he tried to kill us the bugger.

Sails

During my night watch (2 AM on my own) I was happily sailing along with full foresail, Stay sail and full main when we were hit by a bit of a squall. The wind went from 15 Knots to over 35 Knots in a heartbeat and I frantically wound in half of the foresail. That accomplished Spectra stopped showing off by doing 9 plus knots and settled down to 7-8 knots and peace was restored. 10 minutes later the wind died and the rain came down hard and I mean stair rods. Not being in sight of the yacht club balcony I shamelessly put up my umbrella and sat miserably in the corner thinking of the others sleeping below. All was not well with my world and it didn’t get better when bang the main halyard broke and the main sail slid gracefully down the mast and settled into its lazy jacks. There was nothing much to do about it at that point and with 30 minutes to shift handover I decided to wait until Tony got up and then we could sort it, (we have a rule that no one leaves the cockpit at night alone). Sailing with just the foresails up Spectra rolled like a drunken dog which woke Steve up and so I now had a fully formed and keen working party. By 3 AM we had run the topping lift in as a spare halyard and got her sailing again and were all sitting in the cockpit drinking a cup of tea, honestly just how British are we sometimes?.