Day 12: 20 November 2016

Our twelfth day at sea was characterized by, yet again, another perfect day of sailing! We enjoyed trade winds of about 20 knots from the East. For Laridae, 20 knots seems to be an ideal wind speed. There is enough wind to keep the sails fully powered up and sail at a comfortable 6 knots, yet the seas do not become too large.

At lunch time, we passed an important milestone of only 500 miles remaining to Barbados. This represents about four days of sailing remaining, and also puts us within motoring range (if necessary for any reason).

Anneka and Dorian spent some time preparing a mini church service for us. This included some songs, played joyously on guitar by Anneka, and a reading that Anneka composed independently.

“We are almost in Barbados and maybe tonight, before you go to bed, or when you are doing a night watch, say ‘Thank You’ to God for helping us get this far. He has already given us so much, and most of it we don’t even think about it. Say ‘Thank You’ for getting us this far, because this is a place that is the most special and unexplored in the world, and us kids got here before we were even teenagers! The life out in the ocean helps us live. The micro plankton gives off 50% of the Earth’s oxygen. Say ‘Thank You’ for helping us get this far, and pray that we will enjoy the rest of the trip.”

Her words were wise, eloquent, humble, and even include a mini biological oceanography lecture! 🙂

We continued to celebrate the day with seawater showers (buckets full of water dumped on our heads) and a few litres of freshwater to rinse off the salt. Wow, it felt great!

The day concluded with one of the nicest nights of sailing that we have enjoyed. We were gently surfing down the (for once!) organized Atlantic swell, with the Orion constellation brilliantly lit directly behind us, white Venus and red Mars twinkling ahead of us, and the rest of the night sky occasionally interrupted with glowing shooting stars.

We used the favourable winds to tally up 146 miles.

Day 11: 19 November 2016

After the light winds, lumpy seas, and low distance run of Day 10, we were pleased to welcome the return of the traditional trade winds. Dawn brought 15-18 knot winds from the East. They slowly increased to a steady 20 knots. Laridae enjoyed being fully powered up and carved a nice wake through the waves.

With only 700 miles remaining until we reach Barbados, we passed the important 2/3rds-of-the-way-there threshold. We celebrated with a breakfast of really good crispy-fried bacon and potatoes. Later in the day, we were treated to a brief show of dolphins surfing in the waves. There were about five, fairly small, dolphins that swam with us, surfing in the waves, and frequently darting backwards. We presume that that were chasing flying fish for dinner, or just sport. We have seen many very tiny (5-7 cm) flying fish darting through the air, and occasionally landing on deck.

The return of the solid trade winds improved our daily run to 147 miles.

Day 10: 18 November 2016

The dark clouds, sometimes associated with rain and gusty winds, seem to be more prevalent during night watch. We can see the rain clouds well on radar, and under the light of the bright moon. On Eric’s night watch of Day 10, an unusually large and dark cloud was tracking directly for Laridae. As the cloud got closer, Eric battened down the hatches to keep rain and salty waves out of the beds. Closer still, Eric reduced sail in an effort to get ahead of the possibly gusty winds. Shortly thereafter, Eric covered up the companion way and put on his rain jacket (Gasp! The first time he has worn that jacket since Falmouth, England!). There he sat – hatches battened, sails reefed, door closed, raincoat on – ready for the worst the squall would offer. And he sat, and sat, and sat. The cloud passed along side and brought no rain or wind.

During the light of day, we were delighted to see schools of fish swimming along side the boat as we sailed at about 5 knots. The fish were about 40-50 cm long and had bright green highlights. Quickly, we deployed the fishing gear, but the only thing that we caught were some nice underwater images of the fish schools with the GoPro.

Have you ever heard a fact that made your head explode? Here is a fact from Day 10: our head exploded! Shortly after Eliana showed Eric that she knew how to flush the head (toilet) all by her self, Eric noticed that it felt a bit clogged. He pumped a few more times to try to push the clog through the system, but the back-pressure grew stronger. In an effort to clear the clog, Eric unscrewed a part of the toilet and — boom! – the contents from all of the toilet plumbing exploded all over the head… and Eric! It took one second to make the mistake of unscrewing that part, and the better part of two hours of Eric and Angela’s work to clean up the $#!tty mess sloshing back and forth in the waves and 30 deg heat. Finally, we fixed clogged toilet and the head is cleaner than it has been in a long time!

Shortly before dark, the light wind became even lighter and we made the decision to gybe and make some tracks to the south. We sailed in light and variable winds, with particularly lumpy seas, all night. Our daily run for Day 10 was only 114 miles.

Day 9: 17 November 2016

After motoring since 1 AM, the wind finally filled in at about 11 AM with a steady 12 knots from the ENE.  We were glad to turn the hot, noisy engine off and resume great trade wind sailing.

We deployed the fishing gear again, and finally caught something — a large clump of the omnipresent Sargasum seaweed. Clumps of the Sargasum float all around the Atlantic and tend to converge in large mats in the centre of the Atlantic Gyre; an area known as the Sargasso Sea.  Thankfully, we will not be passing through that area of large seeweed mats (too far to our North), but we do get to see small clumps of the seewead every day.  

After pooping on our deck all night, the White Ibis finally departed for distant shores.  We enjoyed having the bird’s company, but we were more pleased when Robyn graciously offered to bring a bucket and scrub brush on deck to clean off the mess!

During the day, we passed the imaginary longitudinal line of the 45 deg West meridian.  Since we started this journey in the UK, home of the Prime Meridian (0 deg) in Greenwich, we figured that we have already sailed 1/8 of the way around the world!

As dusk approached, we retrieved the fishing gear and redeployed the hydro-generator.  The boat took an unexpected roll and Eric accidentally dropped the kitchen scissors, cheerfully referred to as the “Bone Cutters” in our family, overboard!  We were sad to see these be lost because they worked very well, and also because they were a gift from Angela’s brother, Joey, for our wedding 17 years ago.

Never letting an opportunity to teach math be lost, we worked with Anneka and Dorian to calculate how long it would take the scissors to sink to the bottom of the ocean.  Assuming a sink rate of about 10 cm/s, and that we were in 6000 m of water (3.7 miles deep!), we calculated that the scissors wouldn’t reach the bottom until the time that we were eating lunch the next day, 17 hours later!

We continued to have peaceful sailing the rest of the day and logged a total distance run of 136 miles.