Passage Summary and Pictures - Walvis Bay, Namibia to St. Helena
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 12 Jan 2013 08:56
| 15:55.464S 05:43.626W December 29, 2012 - January 6, 2013 Well, that was pleasant! Exactly as advertised: a consistent 10 to 20 knots of wind from the southeast, no rough seas, very little ship traffic, only one or two large fishing boats, and warming temperatures. If it weren't for the first couple days of feeling lousy (always an issue for both of us - although only one of us tends to be sick in a more uninhibited fashion), and a general overabundance of cloud cover, we would think seriously about proclaiming this passage nearly perfect. There's a good possibility our next passage will come even closer to perfection, so we are looking forward to that. This is especially true now that our freezer is fixed. Yes! The freezer is freezing. As I sit here and type, the thermometer in the freezer is reading 12.4F. What a lovely sight. With the help of Adam, a St. Helena refrigeration technician, we've determined that the freon Don used to top up both the freezer and fridge/freezer had some type of lubricant in it that freezes below 32F. When the lubricant in the freon froze, it blocked circulation of the freon, causing cooling to stop. If the label on the freon bottle indicated 'lubricant added' or some such, Don would not have used it for our freezers. Instead it was labeled as proper freon, with a small note 'for automotive air conditioning'. Who knew? After three hours, a freon purge, a vacuum pump out, and a freon re-charge, the freezer was cured (and the nasty oily lubricant caught in a plastic bottle for later inspection). As for the back-up fridge/freezer, ever since we switched it back to fridge mode, it's been very merry. If we ever want to run it as a freezer again, we'll have to put it through the same rigamarole as the freezer, but for now, it's happy as is. Now, here's the big question: how did our large mound of semi-thawed meat fare? Not too badly. Aside from the calamari and shrimp sacrifice thrown to the sea gods, the rest was rescued by an extremely accommodating Aussie family on a very large catamaran with lots of extra freezer space. They took the entire meat pile and stored it for us until our freezer recovered. The three young kids on board seemed very pleased with the oatmeal 'biscuits' baked for them as a thank you. In fact, one very forthright seven-ish year old wondered why there weren't more. Maybe there should have been given that they saved us from having to eat pounds and pounds of red meat over the course of a few days. We could almost say they saved our lives. Geez, the 7-year old was right - they deserved more. Let's see…in other boat news, the water maker seems to be chugging along nicely - the salinity of its output (fingers crossed) is decreasing slowly. We don't know exactly why this is, but over the years we've learned that when something is going well on a boat, it's best not to mess with it (or ask too many questions). New Year's. Ah yes, New Year's Eve. Aside from cleaning up the drunken dead flying fish, there wasn't much celebration on Harmonie that night. Night watch change occurred at midnight, so our New Year's exchange went something like this: Anne: "Wake up it's twelve o'clock!" Sleepy Don: "What?" Anne: "Wake up! It's the New Year!" Sleepy Don: "What?" Anne: "Happy New Year!" Don: "Oh yeah. Happy New Year!" That's about it. Intended Route (blue) vs. Actual Track (purple). We sailed the entire way, so when the wind tracked more to the east, but not quite east enough for us to use the downwind rig, we turned south of the rhumb line to keep the wind forward of 120 degrees (off the bow). This allowed us to keep our speed up, especially when the wind dipped down to 10 knots. After we put the downwind rig up, we turned straight for St. Helena with the southeast wind directly behind us. Passage Statistics: Total nautical miles traveled - 1,250 (20 miles longer than the straight line distance, but had we followed the rhumb line the entire way, our overall speed would have been significantly lower) Total time - 7 days, 16 hours Total time sailing - 7 days, 14.5 hours (99%) Now that's more like it! Total time motoring and motorsailing - 1.5 hours (1%) Just enough time to pull up our anchor in Walvis Bay, and motor into St. Helena's James Bay anchorage. Average speed - 6.8 knots (7.8 mph) Degrees of latitude traveled - 7 to the north (toward the equator) Degrees of longitude traveled - 20.5 to the west Highest wind - 24 knots (28 mph) (only for a brief time on day 3) Highest cabin temperature - 85F (day 7, approaching St. Helena) Number of near-calamities - none. Well...maybe one - nearly losing a heap of meat probably qualifies as a near-calamity. Number of major milestones achieved - one. Crossing the non-sexy prime meridian. Number of drunken dead flying fish found on deck - 18 Number of evenings actual cooking took place - four. Possibly a new record. Crossing the prime meridian. The photographer was a bit too quick on the trigger, but catching the GPS reading within one-thousandth of a longitude minute (less than 6 feet from the prime meridian) isn't too bad. Besides, we were sailing at 8.9 knots at the time (and if you can read the true wind indicator above the GPS, we had 18 knots from the southeast - see? we aren't lying about the wind.) So much for lush mountains like those of the Marquesas! Ok, so when you arrive in a place at 3am with just a sliver of moon, no one can blame you for thinking the coastal mountains have a lush covering of tropical foliage. Imagine our surprise when we awoke to barren rock cliffs covered with rockfall netting and very old stone forts full of gun emplacements. Up next: more about St. Helena's challenging harbor and fascinating history. Anne |