Six days at sea
The forecast looked good when we were ready to leave Bermuda - light easterly winds for at least the next two days - so we checked out with customs, hoisted the dinghy aboard and headed out to sea. The first couple of days we were able to sail at between 4 and 5 knots in fairly flat seas.
We got straight into a watch system, splitting the night into four 3-hour watches, where one of us would sleep and the other was on watch, ie keeping an eye on the sails, watching out for shipping and recording conditions in the logbook.
It’s hard to describe how magical it can be out to sea on really clear nights. The stars are amazingly bright, with no light pollution from land to interfere. As the boat ploughs through the water, tiny organisms are disturbed our bow wave and produce bright green specks of light in the water, called phosphorescence, glowing briefly all around the boat. The propeller also causes turbulence and can produce a spiralling green trail in the water behind us.
The day was punctuated by four main ‘events’- the 9am radio net, where we tried to make contact with other sailing boats; the midday fix, to see the last 24 hours progress; the 5pm weather update from US radio ham ‘Herb’; and finally the evening meal – we made a decent meal each evening to keep together body and spirit. Otherwise, we mostly sat in the wheelhouse, taking turns hand-steering or leaving it to the autopilot and simply reading, dozing or watching the world go by.
You imagine the ocean to be teeming with life but it’s surprising how little you see once away from land. On the second day out we saw three whales about 100 feet from the boat. They weren’t the least bit interested in us and carried on their way in the opposite direction. Yet the following day, we had a school of smaller dolphins playing around the bows. We remarked how blue and clear the water was, as we could see the dolphins clearly up to 20 feet below the surface.
We saw what we thought were lots of empty plastic bottles drifting by, but on closer inspection, they turned out to be the ‘sails’ of Portuguese men-of-war jellyfish. As they drifted past the boat you could see their long blue/purple tentacles. Most were less than 10 inches long but we saw one enormous one the size of a plastic carrier bag.
The main hurdle of this trip has been to cross the Gulf Stream. This is a huge flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that winds its way across the Atlantic to warm the waters of the UK. To the south of the Gulf Stream, the sea temperature is 22 degrees, and to the north it meets the cold Labrador current from the Arctic and suddenly drops to about 7 degrees.
At the point we would be crossing it, the Gulf Stream is about 80 miles wide and flows at around 2.8 knots. It is important to cross at the right point (where the current is with you) and with the wind in the same direction or you can face extremely nasty seas caused by wind-against-tide.
We had ideal conditions as we approached the Gulf Stream – light SW winds going with the current, but we heard over the radio that a low pressure system was developing right in our path. This would make the winds increase and veer to the north, clashing with the current. To avoid getting caught up in this, we started the engine and motor-sailed across the worst of the flow, getting swept along at over 8 knots (compared to our normal speed of 5 knots) in more turbulent waters.
Once clear of the Gulf Stream (noticeable by the drop in speed and more grey colour of the water) we went back to sailing and within a day, the weather took a downturn as predicted.
The blue sky turned grey and brought cloud and drizzle. The wind picked up, gusting up to 30 knots in squalls and we had to reduce sail. Eventually we had a wind shift to the NW and the barometer started to rise, indicating that we had crossed the frontal trough. The most noticeable thing was the plummeting temperature, we had to close all the portholes against the icy wind and dig out woolly socks, hats and duvets!
The winds slowly decreased as we closed in on land but we slowly sailed most of the remaining one-and-a half days, until the wind died completely as we approached land.
We were then treated to both the numerous lobster-pots and infamous fog of this coastline, but the sun shone down on us as we entered the attractive harbour of Newport, Rhode Island, (150 miles up the coast from New York).
So overall, in 6 days at sea (less two hours), we covered 700 nautical miles at an average speed of 4.9 knots, two thirds of it purely under sail. For a slow old boat that won’t sail upwind, Ros Ailither gives us a very comfy ride.
We got straight into a watch system, splitting the night into four 3-hour watches, where one of us would sleep and the other was on watch, ie keeping an eye on the sails, watching out for shipping and recording conditions in the logbook.
It’s hard to describe how magical it can be out to sea on really clear nights. The stars are amazingly bright, with no light pollution from land to interfere. As the boat ploughs through the water, tiny organisms are disturbed our bow wave and produce bright green specks of light in the water, called phosphorescence, glowing briefly all around the boat. The propeller also causes turbulence and can produce a spiralling green trail in the water behind us.
The day was punctuated by four main ‘events’- the 9am radio net, where we tried to make contact with other sailing boats; the midday fix, to see the last 24 hours progress; the 5pm weather update from US radio ham ‘Herb’; and finally the evening meal – we made a decent meal each evening to keep together body and spirit. Otherwise, we mostly sat in the wheelhouse, taking turns hand-steering or leaving it to the autopilot and simply reading, dozing or watching the world go by.
You imagine the ocean to be teeming with life but it’s surprising how little you see once away from land. On the second day out we saw three whales about 100 feet from the boat. They weren’t the least bit interested in us and carried on their way in the opposite direction. Yet the following day, we had a school of smaller dolphins playing around the bows. We remarked how blue and clear the water was, as we could see the dolphins clearly up to 20 feet below the surface.
We saw what we thought were lots of empty plastic bottles drifting by, but on closer inspection, they turned out to be the ‘sails’ of Portuguese men-of-war jellyfish. As they drifted past the boat you could see their long blue/purple tentacles. Most were less than 10 inches long but we saw one enormous one the size of a plastic carrier bag.
The main hurdle of this trip has been to cross the Gulf Stream. This is a huge flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that winds its way across the Atlantic to warm the waters of the UK. To the south of the Gulf Stream, the sea temperature is 22 degrees, and to the north it meets the cold Labrador current from the Arctic and suddenly drops to about 7 degrees.
At the point we would be crossing it, the Gulf Stream is about 80 miles wide and flows at around 2.8 knots. It is important to cross at the right point (where the current is with you) and with the wind in the same direction or you can face extremely nasty seas caused by wind-against-tide.
We had ideal conditions as we approached the Gulf Stream – light SW winds going with the current, but we heard over the radio that a low pressure system was developing right in our path. This would make the winds increase and veer to the north, clashing with the current. To avoid getting caught up in this, we started the engine and motor-sailed across the worst of the flow, getting swept along at over 8 knots (compared to our normal speed of 5 knots) in more turbulent waters.
Once clear of the Gulf Stream (noticeable by the drop in speed and more grey colour of the water) we went back to sailing and within a day, the weather took a downturn as predicted.
The blue sky turned grey and brought cloud and drizzle. The wind picked up, gusting up to 30 knots in squalls and we had to reduce sail. Eventually we had a wind shift to the NW and the barometer started to rise, indicating that we had crossed the frontal trough. The most noticeable thing was the plummeting temperature, we had to close all the portholes against the icy wind and dig out woolly socks, hats and duvets!
The winds slowly decreased as we closed in on land but we slowly sailed most of the remaining one-and-a half days, until the wind died completely as we approached land.
We were then treated to both the numerous lobster-pots and infamous fog of this coastline, but the sun shone down on us as we entered the attractive harbour of Newport, Rhode Island, (150 miles up the coast from New York).
So overall, in 6 days at sea (less two hours), we covered 700 nautical miles at an average speed of 4.9 knots, two thirds of it purely under sail. For a slow old boat that won’t sail upwind, Ros Ailither gives us a very comfy ride.
posted by Katie at 3:55 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Ros Ailither, We get sunsets like that at Oban.. but perhaps not the temperature. I'll just sit bobbing about on my mooring wishing I could escape Loch Etive. Regards, your younger brother 'Ros Donn' [born Killybegs, November 1954] Look me up on the net sometime.
Looking forward to comming to London on the 18th of July to see You Dave :-)
Love Jill & Nikita xxxx
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