CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 33
Follow the Smith family’s sailing adventures at http://blog.mailasail.com/cape.
MARCH 2013
—Continued from previous page To be fair, our longest passage before the crossing had been ten days, so I did wonder how we would cope with one three times longer. I needn’t have worried — there still wasn’t quite enough time each day to do everything we wanted to! When we weren’t catching up on sleep, preparing meals or trimming sails, we read, did quizzes and puzzles, sewed, sang, listened to music, watched the waves, the stars and the bioluminescence, chatted and daydreamed. The kids also sketched, played their Nintendos, watched the odd film, and caught up on school: they finished off math workbooks, and turned the pages into paper aeroplanes that they launched from the stern. We celebrated Beth’s 14th birthday (a low-key chocolate cake affair) with the promise of an official birthday on arrival. • Our Trinidad & Tobago (T&T) courtesy flag: We hadn’t been able to get a T&T courtesy flag before leaving so I made one on passage with my sewing machine on the saloon floor and a bit of “rufflette” curtain-header tape, some black hair ribbon and an old red ensign. • The food: What did we eat? We were able to store well before leaving Gambia (although it was hard to find under-ripe produce that was going to keep for a month). As we have a fridge but not a freezer, we only carried enough fresh meat for the first couple of days. We had brought cured meats (jamon, salami and chorizo) and a selection of vacuum-packed cheeses from Spain especially for the crossing. Using a mixture of fresh, tinned and dried ingredients, we cooked meals “from scratch” including corned-beef spaghetti Bolognese and chili con carne, pizza, pancakes (plain with sweet toppings, and savoury such as potatoand-onion), pasta with sauces (tomato, mushroom, carbonara), various curries (lentil, egg, dhal, aubergine), roasted veg domada (the Gambian version of satay), homemade baked beans with crusty bread, refried-bean wraps, tuna salad wraps, and mahi-mahi when we struck lucky on the fishing front. Lighter meals included soups, salads, sandwiches, hummus, cereals, paté, cheese and crackers, toast with honey/marmite/peanut butter, tapas, biltong, fresh, stewed and dried fruit, etcetera. We baked bread every other day, cakes/puddings occasionally and also made yogurt. We tended to eat our main meal as a late lunch, as it was light enough to see what we were eating and everyone was awake. • Reaching the half-way point: Reaching half way felt really great, but crew enthusiasm flagged a bit in the following few days as we realized that we still had another couple of weeks at sea ahead of us. The last five days were the worst — mainly because we were excited about being nearly there! • The T&T Coast Guard: In true Cape style, we didn’t like to just sail in quietly; we made a grand entrance behind the Coast Guard boat! We were 20 miles off Tobago (motoring, as it was flat calm) when our heat exchanger died. We bobbed on, trying a variety of The one that didn’t get away — unsuccessful repairs. By now — assisted by a 4.5-kilo mahi-mahi the swell, current and what little wind there was — we were bobbing towards the rocky Atlantic coast of Tobago. We gave in and requested assistance from the T&T Coast Guard. They towed us in the dark through a 2.5-metre swell for the last 12 miles; the scariest bits were when the (huge) Coast Guard boat came close enough to pass us the towlines, and then being towed on a very short tow by a boat designed to do 40 knots. The Bad • The infamous “Atlantic roll”: The roll wasn’t too bad — we soon got used to it and only noticed if it was particularly violent. It was worst when we had light winds as we wallowed, and when the wind was from directly behind (we don’t have a dedicated downwind sail to harness this) but Cape was quite stable and didn’t roll too much when she was romping along in a decent breeze. We had a couple of patches with big swell (3.5 metres) that made sleeping a bit difficult, but we wedged ourselves in with lee cloths and cushions. • Catching lots of Sargasso weed and only one edible fish: We caught so much Sargasso weed that we got fed up of clearing the lure every half an hour and didn’t fish for most of the trip. We only caught one decent-sized fish: a 4.5 kg mahi-mahi on Day 25. • The lack of wildlife: After seeing lots of whales/dolphins in coastal waters, we were disappointed at the lack of wildlife at sea. Whole weeks went by without seeing even a bird! We were delighted when we did see signs of life, including two huge leatherback turtles, quite a few Portuguese man-o’-war jellyfish (bright pink/purple floating things that looked like inflated novelty condoms or something that Barbie might have dropped overboard by accident), three pods of dolphins, a few unidentified seabirds and a couple of red-billed tropic birds, amazing bioluminescence, and lots of flying fish (ranging in size from whitebait-with-wings to airborne mackerel). • Technical hitches: We ran the engine each week to make sure that everything was okay. On one occasion it wouldn’t run due to a blocked diesel line that was sorted by fitting a new primary filter and new fuel lines. As we approached Tobago our heat exchanger died, spilling a boiling mixture of sea and fresh water into the engine room. David tried various repair approaches without success, so we made our call to the Coast Guard. The Ugly • Only washing (properly) four times in 26 days: hum! We did have regular saltwater washes, plus baby wipes and a small amount of fresh water for anointing those “important little places”. We carried 700 litres of drinking water for the trip (500 litres in tanks and 200 in jerry cans); we used this only for drinking, cooking, and washing fruit, veg, faces and teeth. We washed up in sea water and rinsed the dishes with a small amount of fresh. We used a total of 500 litres. Lessons Learned If we were to do it again, would we do anything different? Knowing what we know now, the things that we would change on an Atlantic crossing (of those things that we could control, of course!) would be: • To have a dedicated downwind sail • To carry more onions!
GOOD GUIDES ARE TIMELESS Until Don Street wrote his first guide in 1964, the guide he used was Norie and Wilson’s “Sailing Directions to the West Indies”, published in 1867. Real sailors use Street’s Guides for inter-island and harbor piloting directions, plus interesting anecdotes of people, places and history. Street’s Guides are the only ones that describe ALL the anchorages in the Eastern Caribbean. In 1980 Street said in print that if anyone could come up with an anchorage safe for a boat that draws seven feet that he has not covered in the guide he would buy the drinks. Thirty-two years have gone by and he has never had to buy drinks. Real sailors in the Windwards, Leewards and Virgin Islands circle in Street’s Guide the anchorages that are NOT described in the other popular guides. Do the same and you will have quiet anchorages. HURRICANE TIPS! Visit www.street-iolaire.com for a wealth of information on tracking & securing for a storm Street’s Guides are available at Island Water World and Johnson Marine Hardware in St. Lucia, Sully Magras in St. Barts, and Blue Water Books & Charts in Fort Lauderdale, or contact channelsales@authorsolutions.com