Bermuda to Flores, Azores 2, Jen has her say!

36:01.76N 57:29.768W

13^th  June 2015

426 Miles from Bermuda

9529 Miles from Ramsgate by log.

Captains bit:

            Progress has been frustratingly slow so far. We had a good first 24 hours and then ran into a big hole of nothingness. After downloading a Grib file  (weather report) I found wind developing to the North of us and so we turned our  nose towards Greenland and motored for 24 hours to get us up above 35 degrees of latitude and we did indeed pick up a light westerly wind but it was not to last. After 18 hours of slow sailing to the North East the wind died again and so on went the engine. On the bright side, now that we are above 36 degrees the contra current has switched in our favour, the crew are all disgustingly happy, well fed and there have even been reports of people enjoying themselves, which is a worry!! I will from today instigate a routine of meaningless tasks, hard tack and regular beatings in order to bring morale down to a level that makes me look like the happy one.

            That’s it from Paul, now onto Jen’s bit:

Jens First Ever Blog! Day 3 of our journey from Bermuda to Azores.

Firstly ‘Hello’ from me! I was a stray that was rescued by Norma and Paul, actually to be more precise I’m an escapee from another sailing yacht in Florida that wasn’t at all ready for her planned voyage across the Atlantic. Luckily my friend Georgina (whom I studied my day skipper theory with) put me in touch with Norma and Paul. By pure fluke I found that they were sailing right near me, and I managed to get my previous skipper to give me a lift to meet them. Now I find myself about a month later surrounded with a Ramsgate crowd (except Adamant). I can sail with Spectra all the way home and have a drink in the Royal Temple Yacht club! How amazing life is sometimes!

As I’m a beginner, I have learnt so much already and still much to learn. Norma, Paul, Steve and Adamant all have a weighty bag of knowledge and experience, so I couldn’t have wished for a better crew. My favourite shift is the night ones, after doing my first checks for other vessels, check all gadget readings, checks sails and then inspect the sky for clouds that may cause us a problem. I then find the stars Steve taught me such as Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, he hasn’t shown me Uranus yet! Following the Plough to find the Northern star. There’s nothing better than admiring the vast amount of stars in the sky, watching Spectra glide through the water, and then seeing the waves we created sparkle with Plankton. It is magical.

Last night I saw what looked like a burning red light on the horizon… it seemed so close I wasn’t sure how I missed it. I was so concerned, I changed our course 20 degrees N and ran to wake Paul from his deep sleep and comfortable bed. As I came up again on deck I saw the red had grown in size very rapidly and made the shape of a sail. Once Paul was on deck, I calmed and looked at the shape again… and to my embarrassment I realised what it really was! I turned to Paul and said ‘oh no! it’s the moon isn’t it!..I’m so sorry!!!’ He laughed it off and went back to sleep. Phew! 

The last few days we have been playing with the sextant… later Paul is going to help me plot my reading on the chart. Adamant is working it out the hard way whereas Paul is using his app!!! Haha! Adamant seems to know so much information and it turns out he taught himself, and seems very dedicated to learning. Puts me to shame.

At the moment we are heading NE with the engine on (to our dismay) as we found ourselves in the middle of a high pressure system with no wind, and the weather forecast informed us that we would have been stuck for 5 days until some wind came to us. So 100 nautical miles NE should help us pick up the westerly winds and then we can put all the sails back up. 4 is normal, foresail, staysail, main sail and mizzen sail! We put the cruising sail up for a bit this morning when we still had a breeze, but it didn’t last long.

We still have not caught any fish! I joked that we should write to the manufacturer of the lures (the colourful things we have on the end of the fishing line, for people like me, that have no idea about fishing terms!) and tell them to rebrand it for birds. As so far we have caught 3 birds and 0 fish. My heart sunk every time a bird got caught in the line, and then I was so relived when Steve and I managed to set them free with no damage done. Poor things…sore wings and Steve telling them that they are stupid!

We usually make bets on our ETA of our next landfall, and also how many miles we have achieved over the last 24 hours, Paul seems to have won twice in a row…do you suspect anything?!? I was accused of being a pessimist when I guessed that we would arrive in Bermuda at 3pm on Sunday 7^th June…. But again by a bit of a fluke I won (I should have lied and told you I spent many hours working it out!), we didn’t realise that Bermuda was one hour forward from American time (so that helped me out)! Snickers bar for me! Yay! So our next landfall is Azores… again we made our bets… So we all guessed around the 21^th-22st except for Adamant who guessed 27^Th! And he would have been right if we had stayed on our previous course and not acted on the weather report. If you are reading this blog why don’t you make a bet for when we arrive and treat yourself to a special drink or a chocolate bar if you guess right?

Norma has now fully recovered from her tummy bug/ food poisoning you’ll be glad to hear and her spirits are high again. I’m looking forward to seeing Norma’s next piece of artwork, the last one was lovely and I’m trying to coax her out of the cabin when she practises her ukulele so I can listen to her on my shift. She is a very talented person and inspiring to be around.

Day 4- What a fab day! We have wind! Whoo! So we put up some sails I’ve never seen on Spectra which were the cruising chute (asymmetric) and the mizzen stay sail. These two sails are brightly coloured with purple, green and white and are made from a lighter weight fabric, than the main. They look stunning! I just wished we had some other boats to make jealous, but we don’t! We have seen three tankers over the last few days, but in the far distance. We managed to get up to 6.5 knots, which was a great sense of achievement considering our last few days.

At 2pm I started my ‘mother’ watch and started preparing fishcakes for dinner. I came up for some fresh air and just like perfect timing, 6 dolphins came swimming next to us, two made a small jump out of the water by the bow, showing their light grey smooth bodies with speckles on their heads. It made my day! Paul commented that they were different to the others he had seen as they were usually dark slate grey.

I just found out that I missed the 24 hour mileage competition my 2 nautical miles!  Steve guessed 115 and I guessed 114, the correct answer was 116!!! Damn it! Tomorrow… I’ll try again!

P.S I was reminded by Paul how to spell two things correctly…. ‘Russell’ and ‘Brilliance’ and he commented both have two ‘ll’ so I thought I had just make sure everyone else knows how to spell those two words too, as they seem very important!

I’m being warned by Steve that I’m going to block up the system with my essay… so I better stop now. It was nice writing my first blog and I hope I didn’t bore you