Night One
Peaceful is a relative thing on the boat. Being in the cockpit one hears the wind and when it’s not too rough, indeed there is a sense of easy life. Down in the cabin life is quite different. Banging against the waves shakes the boat and is heard throughout. Holding on with at least one hand is a must since one doesn’t see the waves coming. In the galley you are either pinned against the counter or you have to lean in and of course food is sliding away as you try to cut it.
It was not too cold, but spending enough time in the cockpit in the wind chilled me enough, so I decided that rice with beef stew would be a good way to warm myself up and give some calories to Mark for his shift. He was a bit queasy when he got up after the nap and decided to postpone the dinner until later. I finished my dinner, brushed my teeth and headed out to bed.
Since there are only two of us aboard, we shoved all the unnecessary things into the forward cabin and for the first time in ages I took over one of the aft cabins. On the one hand, it’s great because beating into the wind one gets thrown around in the V-berth. A LOT. On the other hand, I get different noises. First, the normal boat operation: walking, tether carabiner hitting the floor, winches being used, the wind generator humming right above me. But then things happen…
Mark got hit by a gust of wind which headed Salty Ginger up, backed the jib and jibed the boat. Half asleep I heard the engine come to life. Weird, I thought, feels like we have enough wind. Then in the haste Mark didn’t turn the engine off correctly, so it kept cycling back to life. I came up to check things out and the accidental tack repeated. Being a bit sleepy, I didn’t want to take the time to help Mark set James back up for steering, so he turned on the electronic autopilot. It can barely be heard in the forward cabin, but in the aft cabins it feels like a giant beast is loudly breathing in and out. Then it sometimes stops and continues. Sometimes changing tempo, sometimes like a clock. I know I didn’t sleep much before I woke up to come on shift at midnight.
Back to silence
One of the things that surprised me was the rapid reaction of the electronic autopilot. It seemed like it was not allowing for the boat to adjust to the waves and instead was steering back and forth like an old drunkard whose hands are shaking. I reduced the sensitivity and that seemed to make things a lot more sane: the average course was still fine, but the rapid motions of the wheel were gone.
I then fiddled with the Hydrovane setup and got James busy again. Even in the cockpit it is much more pleasant without the electronic zoom-zoom noise.
We were quite far offshore by then and aside from a few huge fishing operations way off in the distance (neither of them on AIS) I saw a Norwegian Star on the display more than 10 miles away. Other than that we didn’t have company. Until Salty Ginger split a big wave and I heard a weird noice on the deck. A little fish got thrown onto the windward side and was frantically beating against the deck trying to get back into the water. I obliged and sent it back into the sea.
With lots of time on my hands, I had to figure out what happened to the misunderstanding that Mark and James had. And then I saw it: the bigger waves into which Salty Ginger crashed with a loud noise would sometimes move the rudder just a bit. Now since the boats have a natural tendency to round up, once the rudder was perfectly centered by the banging waves, James simply couldn’t overpower the main rudder. Once the banging waves stopped, the wheel lock was strong enough to keep the rudder in a fixed position. At 4 when Mark came on shift I explained to him what must have happened, and now that he knew what to pay attention to, he and James had a quarrel-free shift, and me a deep sleep without the zoom-zoom noise!
Day Two
By 8 o’clock Mark was sleepy, so he went off to nap and I set out to have breakfast. To my genuine surprise I found out that instead of getting plain yogurt I got vanilla, but hey the nearest food store is a long way from here, so we eat what we got.
James continued to admirably drive Salty Ginger following the wind. Given the direction of the wind, in some way it is much better to follow the wind rather than a compass heading. Especially so since the wind would shift by 20-30 degrees, stay there and then go back. I was reading a book about Shackleton’s expedition and checking in on our course every now and then. Once we started to go south and even a bit to the east, I tacked Salty Ginger and we seemed to be on a more favorable course. We played that game a few times in the course of the day.
After lunch, Mark and I were talking about kids, wives — boys talk while sailing for hours and hours. And then I interrupted Mark mid-sentence: I just saw a whale spout! There were two humpbacks feeding a few hundred meters away from us. They dove down, then came up to show their tails once again and disappeared. Thank you, whales!
Not an hour passed when Mark decided to nap before his shift. I called him right back: dolphins! They also didn’t stay long, just passed us astern and were gone.
Weather
We can’t complain about the weather too much. Ok, the wind direction is not the best (exactly what I was expecting), but it has been remarkably dry and not that cold. When we woke up at Bob & Carol’s the temperature was +5C and the grass was covered by a thick layer of dew. There was practically no dew in the cockpit during the first night and perhaps because the water temperature is above 17C, it’s not that cold. Definitely way warmer than +5!
Now, the wind forecast is a completely different beast. The forecast I downloaded from PredictWind and the reality are quite different. We were waiting for the winds to shift from westerly to southerly, but alas that only started to happen and then reversed. By the time Mark got into his bed, it was clear that a tack was in order since we were sailing fast, but 90 degrees to our desired course.
Bow riders
With James in tune with Salty Ginger, I could get back to the book. Suddenly I was almost scared by a splash: a dolphin. And not just one! A pod of 10 or 15 animals surrounded the boat and were playing around, underneath, crossing the bow and providing an unbelievable spectacle. I found out that they will also swim with their belly up without losing any speed, of course! The show lasted more than 10 minutes and then with a whoosh of their tails they were gone.
Night Two
The night sailing was lovely. The wind strengthened just enough to move Salty Ginger at full speed without overpowering the boat. We could see the lights of Halifax in the distance which was the only reminder of civilization. There was a thin sheet of clouds, so the stars were a bit obscured, but still visible.
In the quiet of the night I was suddenly startled by a splashing noise just to the starboard of the cockpit. And then it repeated again. Dolphins! The night visitors swam around the boat and did do some bow riding just like the dolphins I saw in the evening. I could see their backs in the reflection of the boat lights, but then I noticed that their fins were activating bioluminescence, so now I had a split second notice of a dolphin swimming up before it would breach. When Mark was dressing up for his 4am shift a few dolphins came back again, swam around and disappeared.
At 6 I was woken up by what sounded like drilling noise. I started thinking what could that possible be! The only logical response was the electronic autopilot, but being a bit disoriented in the night I thought it was coming from above, so I came up to check things out. It turned out that Mark had another miscommunication with James and turned on the other autopilot to figure things out. The wind shifted and, as I learned later, Mark was fighting James with the wheel to keep Salty Ginger on course. I explained him what should be done to make the vane happy, problem solved, back to bed. Waking up at 7:40 for my shift was not easy, but the sun was out and I knew that my partner was also tired.
Day Three
As I assessed the wind situation, I realized that the genoa was a bit too small for the conditions, and it was a good opportunity to fly code-0 to speed us up a bit. Mark was not asleep yet, so he came out to help. We ran all the lines, hoisted the sail and were ready to go. All of a sudden, the sheet gets jammed on itself in the winch. Luckily, there wasn’t any tension on it after I released the twing amidships and we started to tighten the sheet again. Same thing happened again. Then Mark noticed that the line was coming up at a funny angle to the top of the winch, which ultimately leads to the line wrapping onto itself and jamming. A rather dangerous situation when there is a lot of tension on the line. Typically I ran the line through a block that is attached to a point which is now under bow of the folded dinghy, so I decided to send the line aft, and that was the mistake that caused the trouble.
The wind continued to diminish throughout the morning, but surprisingly still blowing from the southeast, which allowed us to keep the desired course since the previous evening. By lunch, our speed fell to under 3 knots, the sails were being flapped by the waves, so clearly we had to start motoring. After all we’re cruising and not racing.
The dolphins came again and again. We’re definitely getting spoiled now. How can one go sailing without seeing these beautiful animals on a daily basis?!
Night three
Mark motored on his evening shift. The wind was supposed to shift to a northerly and only at 11:30 was there enough of it to be able to sail. Rather than set up the sails on his own, he waited for me to wake up. We got Salty Ginger sailing on a beam reach, I handed the steering over to James. It was quite boring going 4-5 knots, so I started falling asleep. I was however woken up by a rain shower after which the wind picked up. Our speed gradually went from 5 knots to over 8! Exciting! By the time Mark came back on his shift at 4 we were doing solid 8.5 knots right on course!
At 6 (what a coincidence!) I was woken up because the boat suddenly heeled a lot and I heard things falling in the salon. I came up into the cockpit and helped Mark reef the genoa. Now that the boat was no longer overpowered, I could get another 1.5 hours of sleep before my shift.
Day four
By 8 in the morning the 20 knot gusts, that gave Mark so much trouble, subsided. He made 26 miles in those 4 hours, which I thought was suspiciously low given that Salty Ginger maintained speed of at least 7 knots over ground on a beam to broad reach in the strong northerlies.
I knew that James was doing large zigzags — after all it’s a cruising autopilot, not a racing one. I took over driving to see if I can do better. And immediately I knew the shortcomings I could overcome. Since the vane senses the changes in the wind, James would start to turn the boat too late. The building seas made the zigzags a lot worse. A wave coming from the aft starboard quarter would turn the boat to windward, the vane would turn to start to correct the motion and would generally succeed by the time the next wave came up from behind. By now Salty Ginger would surf down the wave, which would force it to turn to leeward. By the time the vane sensed the change in the apparent wind, we were already 15 degrees off course. I presume that the electronic autopilot would be able to do better, but it’s rather noisy, and we were definitely in the mood to give each other a quiet 4 hours off-shift, so much as possible.
Steering in the waves was a lot of fun and required being alert if Salty Ginger were to keep the desired course. Of course, I had James to back me up, so I could drink tea, make myself some oatmeal or go to the head. Typical waves were not that big, only 2-3 feet. But occasionally we would get 6 or even 8 foot waves that provided excellent opportunities to surf down and accelerate to 10 knots. In the 4 hours of the shift I made 30 miles.
The rain didn’t come back, but it was grey all around. The clouds were actually helpful by providing a visual point of reference for driving the boat. And then the greyness was interrupted by a short visit of the dolphins. I’m definitely getting spoiled!
When Mark saw me at the wheel, he giggled, “I knew you would do that!” I explained to him what I was doing to anticipate the waves, and he decided to try driving. As soon as he took over, a huge wave came over the side and splashed him. I could step aside just in time to avoid getting wet. Jokingly Mark made grudging remarks that he didn’t sign up for that and handed the wheel back to me, “Show me again what you’re doing!”
Some time after lunch the wind started to die down and our speed dropped to 5 knots. To compensate our loss of speed we hoisted the. Spinnaker and the speed went back up to 7 and above. The seas also subsided, so the opportunity for surfing was no longer there.
The scenery around us was still grey, although the sun was piercing through the clouds in places. All around us there were low-lying clouds. It felt as if we were in a giant amphitheater: the horizon was limited in eery direction. And yet, the walls of this circus were moving — this was not fog.
A completely unexpected phenomenon presented itself when we reached the first shoals. The 300+ foot depth became 90, and then off in the distance there was a clear ridge. Where we were the waters were practically smooth, and yet there was a clear line beyond which the water was anything but smooth. And to get there we had to go over a 4-foot swell. The standing waves must have been created by the ebbing current. They were not as extreme as what I’ve seen in Plum Gut, but after a day of waves that were traveling in one direction, it was an interesting change to feel Salty Ginger being rattled back and forth.
Night four
Before dinner Mark got to drive Salty Ginger under the spinnaker. With no significant waves it was not that hard and quite fun. However, we had to make a decision whether the spinnaker comes down while it’s still dusk or in the night. We made the prudent decision of taking it down while there was still light and we were still making good progress under the main and the genoa.
At midnight it was clear that sailing was no longer practical, so the motor was turned on when I took over. At first there was a bit of following wind so the diesel fumes could be felt in the cockpit, but then the wind died completely. We were clearly not on a collision course with any of the fishing vessels that were in the vicinity, so it seems like it would be a rather boring shift.
And then came the night visitors. At first I thought that the sea foam off the side of the boat were some sort of breaking waves. After seeing the standing waves, I couldn’t rule that out. But then it was clear that they were streaks of foam on the surface of the water and they were created by living creatures.
The dolphins raced to the bow of Salty Ginger, so if I were to see them, I had to clip into the jack line and go forward. A pod of 10 dolphins were playing around. Sometimes a formation of 4 were right under the boat with two more pairs on the flanks and a pair leading the boat by 20 meters. Then they would split and rearrange the formation. A couple of times they exhaled while swimming right under the bow. If my hand were stretched out, I could have felt the moisture of their breath. The bioluminescence was not there to indicate their presence, but the streaks of bubbles they left in the water was usually enough to see where they were. After about quarter of an hour they veered off and were gone.
Day five
I woke up at 8 as we were motoring in windless conditions with a beautiful sunrise behind us. Mark excitedly told me that I barely missed seeing us go over a huge wave that was separating the deeper waters and the shoals. It was smooth but at least 6 if not 8 feet tall. He said it completely obscured the horizon before Salty Ginger was lifted onto its crest.
We were in the whale territory, but we have spotted none. But then in a distance I saw fins. Our regular visitors were back again! The dolphins must have been on their way to breakfast: they passed us astern and were not in a mood to play.
Despite being up since 4, Mark was not in the mood to take a nap, so after breakfast, while I was putting together a list of work items that need to be done, he fixed up the galley cabinets so that they move smoothly and the latches work impeccably.
We passed another ridge separating smooth water and standing waves. What a fascinating phenomenon! But I also realized that going over the shoals in a blow would have probably been quite unpleasant, since the waves would be breaking all over the place.
By 10 a southeasterly wind picked up, so flying the spinnaker was an obvious decision. However, that fun did not last: on the horizon we saw dark clouds and lightning. Sailing with a spinnaker into a storm? Not for us…
Still making very good progress under the main and the genoa, we now were directly south of Nantucket and to our genuine surprise the water changed from blue into emerald green. Neither Mark nor I have been in these waters before and we found the new water color absolutely fascinating!
At first it looked like we would be able to sail around the couple of thunderstorm cells and the weather would be dry beyond them. The radar was showing where the cells are and when we saw a huge one right in front of us, we turned 90 degrees to try to go around it. The lightning struck to our starboard, sufficiently far away for my taste. But then something weird started to happen: the anemometer showed wind speed of 40 knots and the speed kept climbing. We were still flying full main and only partially rolled-in genoa, so clearly 40 knots would have laid us flat. The "wind speed" climbed to 70 knots and then was pegged at 100. Clearly we were touching the thunderstorm cell and its electromagnetic field interfered with the anemometer.
We thought that the rain more or less coincided with the location of the cells. However, the situation was quite a bit different. As the wind kept building from the southeast, the storms moved to the northeast and there weren't any new ones on the horizon, but the rain stretched well beyond the storm. It was not until Martha's Vineyard was in sight that it stopped raining. My left side was soaked since the jacket was gradually letting the water through. Luckily it wasn't too cold, but after 5 hours of wetness it was still rather unpleasant. And then the band of bright light on the horizon kept getting larger and larger and once we passed between Nomans Land and Martha's Vineyard, we were warmed up by the sun and our mood improved.
However, the wind shift from the southeastery to southwesterly and then to NWW - blowing directly from Newport. We wanted to be in port at a reasonable hour, so rather than tack up the wind we turned on the engine and headed straight for the harbour entrance. The sun hid behind a huge cloud and soon enough we were motoring in darkness while seeing the Newport bridge in the distance.
At 21:30 local time we anchored and could finally toast to a successful passage!
