On passage to Cape Verde

Monday 17th November 2008, day 121. 22° 18’.56 N, 020° 16’.74 W. On passage from La Gomera to Saõ Vicente, Cape Verde Islands, a journey of around 800 miles.

We are three days out from La Gomera, waiting for the half-way point of the passage to come up, in about 15 miles. Yesterday we passed the southern border of Morocco, making the vast sandy hills of Mauritania our landfall to the east. This morning we crossed the tropic of Cancer at 23° N, but the weather today has been almost cool, with a grey haze masking the sun.

Tomia is rollicking along downwind, thoroughly enjoying herself at 7 knots, without disturbing two crew who are taking their afternoon nap, and the skipper reading his John le Carré and just twitching the fishing line every now and then. He is also of course making sure the spinnaker is properly set, and keeping a sharp lookout for passing shipping; from my vantage point at the chart table, I would say John le Carré is winning.

By the third day, the strangeness of going about our normal tasks, while bobbing about on a little piece of glass fibre in the middle of the ocean, is wearing off. It seems quite natural thing to lie, half awake, in one’s berth, listening to the water rushing by, just three quarters of an inch away. Or to sit at the computer at the chart table, blinded occasionally by a glimpse of sun when the spinnaker falls inwards for a second. Or to shower in lovely hot water, with one’s soapy back braced against the rolling of the boat, and the shower gel placed carefully where it can’t fall. We are all bending and swaying with the movement of the boat, unconsciously reaching for handholds, remembering to open cupboard doors with caution, putting things down where they won’t roll, or leap off tables. Everything is a little bit odd; everything is surprisingly normal.

And meanwhile Tomia carries us along, free and willing and exuberant.

For me, the first day or so of a passage is so overwhelming in its alien-ness from normal life, and the sensations and challenges of life afloat are so strong, that only the simplest of thoughts manages to make its way to the surface. Not falling over, staring down sea-sickness, remembering radio schedules, getting food out of the fridge, adjusting sleep patterns to the requirements of watch-keeping, cooking, navigating and just plain sailing the boat are all-consuming. Gradually, though, they become part of the background, and the brain re-emerges, to read and to imagine, to think of friends at home; to practise the guitar, and to try to shoe-horn a few more words of Portuguese in before arriving at the Cape Verdes.

And to write up the blog. Some of you have asked how we manage to use the computer at sea, without it sliding around all over the place. Those who know me well have wondered how I allow a prized possession like my laptop to come to sea at all. In fact, the computer is a key part of Tomia’s kit, acting as photo-storage, CD player, diary, log and maintenance scheduler, as well as being our main source of weather information.

On ocean passages, there are three main sources of weather forecasts: weather faxes, weather broadcasters, and the ubiquitous Web, whose filaments now seem to cover the entire world’s surface. Navtex has a range of about 200 miles, so peters out after the first day or so, and the soothing tones of the Radio 4 shipping forecast have been nothing but a fond memory since we rounded Punta Nariga in Galicia.

The internet is the source of wind forecasts known as grib files, which predict the wind up to seven days out, in an easy to read animation. With a fast enough connection, the internet can be the source of just about any other information one wants, but that’s the problem: how to get an internet connection at sea? SSB radios can work with something called a Pactor modem, which gives connection of a speed, quality and stability that rewards only the calmest and most phlegmatic of operators. They also cost £1,500.

A satellite phone provides quick and reliable connection, but costs £1 a minute on top of the £1,300 initial outlay. They can be used to quickly squirt a grib file into the onboard computer, and upload a day’s position onto a blog. They are effective, but the purchase cost deterred us. Finally, the sickeningly rich can be recognised in marinas by the fat white dome on their boat’s superstructure (as opposed to the fat white belly on their own), which houses an Inmarsat satellite receiver, providing broadband-type connectivity. We could have bought one, but would have had to sell the boat to pay for it, which seems a little counter-productive.

We have chosen to get our weather from a mixture of weather faxes, and weather broadcasters. The faxes are an amazing piece of technology: they come to us in the form of chirrups and burbles from the SSB radio, which a piece of software on the computer downloads and translates into synoptic charts. Pause and reread that, and marvel.

Weather stations all round the world, from Iqualuit to Tashkent, broadcast these charts, together with predictions of wave heights, hurricanes, and iceberg movement at pre-scheduled times; for this passage we are getting the current situation sent out by New Orleans, and forecasts for 48 hours away, from Boston.

I still find it utterly fascinating to turn on the radio, hear the pattern of warbling that indicates the start of a new file, and watch it emerge inch by inch on the computer screen. Still more amazing in a way is that this relatively old technology, now thoroughly overtaken for commercial shipping by satellite communications, is still reliably produced, for free, by so many state-funded weather stations. Long may it continue.

Our final weather resource is the few dedicated individuals who do their own forecasting, for the benefit of any yacht that wants them. The two best known are Herb, up in Canada, and Trudi, in the Caribbean. They both run their own ham radio transmitters. We will sign in with one or both of them, tell them our planned passage, and then call in on the SSB at a pre-arranged time every night, to be told what is coming our way, and to get advice on the best course to steer to take advantage of what is likely to be affecting us.

Off to Cape Verde

13th November - we are just about to set off for the Cape Verdes, so don´t expect any updates for at least a week!

hugs to all

La Palma to La Gomera

Sunday 9th November 2008, day 113. 28° 18’.1 N, 017° 21’.4 W. On passage to San Sebastian de La Gomera.

Canarian Food The good: rabbit in mojo, tasty little slices across the rabbit’s spine, with the skin making a slightly chewy, bacony contrast, and tiny kidneys attached every now and then, casseroled in pimento and olive oil, with almonds added for a treat.

The bad: bienmesabe (literally “tastes good to me”) a wonderfully unhealthy and unfinishably delicious pudding. Imagine melted turkish delight, add some golden syrup, and then mix in chopped nuts. Eat very slowly, ideally chilled, while watching old black and white films.

The ugly: pulpo alla Canaria. I love octopus, but prefer it chopped up into manageable slices and, frankly, with the suckers decently disguised. The Canarian octopus tastes just as good as its Gallician cousin, but is served with no false modesty; just a purple, eight-legged dollop, complete with eyes and beak.

We left La Palma at 5 in the morning, in order to arrive at our destination in daylight. The sky was clear, the first time in a while, and we could see the Plough – which has moved! It’s rotated 90° anti-clockwise, to stand like a question mark in the sky. The two stars that indicate the Pole Star are now pointing downwards, to a point hidden behind the island.

6th November

Thursday 6th November 2008, day 108. 28° 40’.4 N, 017° 46’.0 W. Santa Cruz de La Palma.

Ooh! Aah! Ow! We went for a wonderful (oof!) 18k walk up the central volcano yesterday and (aah!) today can barely move. My volcano climbing muscles (that’s the fat ones at the top of my legs) are not used to this sort of thing, no more are the volcano climbing down muscles in my knees, and together they are doing a good job of suggesting that a day writing emails and gently ambling round shops is just what’s needed. Except that, having sat down to do a bit of writing, I can’t get up from the chair!

Anthony, of course, being so young and fit and agile, finds all this creaking and groaning highly amusing – but even he is moving a bit gingerly, when he thinks I’m not looking.

The volcano in question is Taburiente, whose pinnacle collapsed aeons ago, leaving a massive crater 8km wide, and surrounded by sharp-edged peaks and ravines, worn down by thousands of years of erosion. Its slopes are covered in Canary pines, with almost nothing else growing at the very top apart from a wiry, slightly aromatic relation of the sage plant.

The road up has been blasted through volcanic rock; here it is a dark brown, and has the lumpy texture of soft friable earth, but is hard like iron, and as coarse as steel wool. As you climb, the plant-life gets less and less varied until the pines and sage take over entirely. The Canary pine is made for this sort of harshness, with the ability to force its roots down into lava as solid as steel, and to withstand forest fires. Judging by the growth of the unmarked trees, the last fire had passed through about fifteen years ago, leaving the trees with their bark charred and blistered into thick, many-layered, scales.

The path climbed steadily for three hours, giving spectacular views down to the plain below, while we breathed in the scents of warmth and damp and green living things. The sense of smell gets atrophied on a boat for lack of variety, so we revel in the scent of forests and flowers whenever we come across them.

The top of Pico Bejenado, at 1,854m, looks north across the cauldron to the peaks on the other side. When we arrived, they were just visible above the cloud filling the bowl, and then, in the space of time it took to turn round, almost all the cloud vanished, allowing us to look down to the bottom of the giant ravined, pine-filled hollow. By the time we started to come down, the cloud level had dropped again, giving us a cool soft light for the descent back down – and, amazingly, we timed it so that we arrived five minutes before the hourly bus left – worth yomping that final mile.

Crackling sounds

Well, according to several fellow sailors, the sound that might have been the boat falling apart is just fish and, believe it or not, sea urchins. Something to do with the excellent sound conducting properties of water - and their noisy table habits! Thank you all for your replies.

5th November

Tuesday 4th November 2008, day 108. 28° 40’.4 N, 017° 46’.0 W. Santa Cruz de La Palma.

Santa Cruz, which we have just walked round quickly, seems to be a really pretty little town. Masses of lovely shops … a pasteleria selling doughnuts rellado con chocolate … bars, palm trees, pretty squares, interesting “Canarian” architecture – a really nice place to end up. So often we choose our next stop because it is sheltered from the wind, or because of the chandlery or the boatyard – or simply because it has a launderette! But here we seem to have come to a destination which is worth visiting in its own right.

La Palma is the north-westernmost island of the Canaries, and not to be confused at all with Las Palmas, the touristy town on Gran Canaria. Its volcanoes are still quite active; the last eruption was in 1971. There is a self-contained maturity to the town, which is chic without being flashy, and seems to cater to the local population rather than visiting tourists.

In the end we stayed two weeks in Tenerife, having a really good go at all the maintenance jobs which have been building up – as well as those which didn’t get done before we left. I think we have finally got the upper hand on the LIST, which up till now has been growing as fast – or sometimes faster – as we can cross things off it.

We also did our victualling for the Atlantic crossing – quite a major logistical exercise to sort out food for five people for three weeks, in a fairly limited amount of storage space. First of all there was the estimating of just how many teaspoonfuls of coffee or bowlfuls of cereal the average crew member would get through happily in a day, then the Spreadsheet, which multiplies all that up, and allows for contingencies (or extra hard-working and hungry crew members) and adds just a leetle bit of extra chocolate for emergencies …, then the village fête game of guessing just how many teaspoonfuls of coffee there are in the average jar, then checking what we have already to produce the final list of requirements. Right at the end, as a reward for all that hard work, we get to spend 2 hours trudging, utterly lost, round a supermarket the size of Woodbridge, and then get it all home, filling the boot and the back seat of the taxi. Then the fun starts! Anthony gets rather miserable, as he is convinced it won’t all fit; I am stimulated by the challenge. (Which is a bit sad, but there you go.) So we pull everything out of every locker, and empty all the carrier bags, and pile it all up on the saloon table, and take a photo. Then sort it out, and Anthony starts packing it away – and he carries on packing and I carry on sorting and we only lose our temper with each other once – and miraculously, it all disappears into the lockers! But we don’t dare open them, in case the whole lot comes thundering out again.

Anthony had a birthday during all this, which we celebrated, along with our 100th day of the voyage, with a supper party with a lovely boatful of New Zealanders, and all the presents I have been collecting for him from various visitors since we left. Thank you, everybody, for getting the cards and presents to him!

We took a day off, as part of the festivities, and hired a car with the intention of going up El Teide, Tenerife’s volcano. This was what turned out to be the start of almost a week of bad weather. We drove up from the still-warm, if drizzly coast, into a bank of cloud, filling all the gaps between the tall straight eucalyptuses, with just the faintest glimmers of light shining through the trees. Then we came out of the forest into a storm of horizontal sleet, which gave way to horizontal freezing rain (like sleet, but wetter). We stopped at a café which served hot chocolate with whipped cream on top, by the side of a roaring log fire. Down at sea level, we had put what seemed like a lot of warm clothing in our rucksacks: a sweater, an extra shirt, gloves, hat, scarf and waterproof jacket. Totally inadequate in the bitter cold – full-on skiing kit would have been a good start!

Then on and up, until at around 2,200m we came out of the cloud into bright cold sunlight, and a vast barren plain around the volcano itself. The colour scheme here is shades of brown, purplish grey, ochre and dull mustard, with occasional apparent bursts of colour coming from a dried-up clump of grasses, or an array of greenish granite chips giving the impression of life. Due to the cold (-4° at the top) the cable car up the volcano wasn’t running, but we had a long walk all around the base of the mountain, and through a park of twisted lava pinnacles left behind by erosion of the softer rock around them.

Downwards, past the site of the most recent eruption, in 1798, which still looks as bare, raw and scarred as if it had happened only days ago. Right at the edge of the lava flow, where it thins out, the indomitable Canary Pines are just starting to establish a toe-hold, and their dropped pine-needles will, imperceptibly slowly, start to decompose and provide the basis for other forms of life.

We had planned to leave Tenerife a day or so after this trip, but ended up staying put for a further three days, to let some thoroughly nasty wind, rain and waves blow themselves out. So we got down to some jobs that were so dull they’d sort of got ignored in our first burst of energy … and Anthony’s resistance was so worn down that I was allowed to go shopping in the chandler’s for spares that we don’t even need yet!