Salty Ginger Voyage: Ponta Delgada to Madeira

Day 1

For the first time since our arrival we didn’t go to the cafe to have breakfast. It was agreed ahead of time not to waste time on waiting for the service and the kitchen to open and so on. I made “traditional” boat Italian espresso, having ground the beans in the manual grinder. Alice and I got yogurt and granola and ate while continuing to stow things and get the cabin ready for departure. I also wanted to install a latch I got for the cockpit doors that otherwise bang on passages and would get propped with random pieces of cloth. My first attempt was a failure: mounting the latch on the outside did not prevent the door from opening, so now we have a few extra holes in the fiberglass. At least in places that do not matter for water tightness.

The dock lines were quite a mess: having been in and out of the water many of them were covered with weed. Some were also heavily damaged and had to be thrown away. Peter and Alice washed the ones that could be salvaged on the deck, my son complaining that some of the lines had a foul smell. Once the last trash run was done, we were ready for departure in practically windless conditions.

I felt right away that the boat was not very responsive with the engine. It was no surprise, since I saw the state of the propeller while diving the previous day. Unfortunately, I didn’t see how I could hold the breath long enough under the boat to try to improve the situation. I could reach the prop, but after a few seconds of trying to get the barnacles off it, I needed oxygen and had to resurface. So was it, we had to live with reduced thrust.

Having left the marina, we stowed away the fenders and the good-looking dock lines. The ones that were still covered by dirt and weed were thrown into the water to be dragged in hopes of cleaning them up a bit. It was grey and cloudy, but there was not enough wind for us to sail.

Two hours out of the Ponta Delgada we got visitors. Small dolphins surrounded the boat and were frolicking in the bow wave. And we even got to see a baby following its mom.

Peter cooked spaghetti Bolognese for lunch, which was well received by all stomachs. Once we cleaned up there was finally enough wind to open up the sails and it was prime time for me to nap.

Ponta Delgada, like many other harbors we’ve seen in the Azores, does not always provide for good sleep conditions. The last 2 days we stayed on the island the winds came out of the east and created a swell that worked itself into the harbor tossing boats and docks. Sleeping in the open waters was a lot more comfortable.

By 5pm we got organized and switched over to the larger code-0. The poor sail has been sitting in its bag since it went for a swim at the end of the passage last summer. The cloth looked good though, much better than what I expected to find. Perhaps the salt inhibited mildew and whatever other growth which would have been inevitable if we packed a fresh water wet sail.

Alice told Peter about the nights when I suggested (insisted?) to keep the code-0 through the night and the conditions would pick up to very strong winds. “Peter, what she’s trying to say is that we’re taking down the code-0 before I go to sleep at 8,” said I. “Indeed,” said Alice, “you’re getting better at picking up clews.”

As I was ready to get to bed, we turned on the navigation lights and discovered that the green light does not work. Arguably, we could have let it be: there were very few ships on the horizon, but at the very least I needed to know what was wrong. This by itself was not an easy task: the screws holding the light were turning, but not coming out. I managed to convince them to come out by applying force and presumably wedging the nut. In the process I discovered what was wrong: the copper wires almost completely disintegrated due to the salt water. Those lights do get to see all kinds of weather. I tried to patch up the connections with electrical tape, but in the process the remaining strands on one side completely broke off. But preparation (however limited) paid off: I bought the exact connectors that were needed to replace the ones from which the wires were no longer sticking out. Not having a heat gun to seal the crimps, the only thing I could do was to wrap them in electrical tape and then cover the entire assembly with duct tape. I am pretty sure it wouldn’t pass a survey, but it will definitely get us to Madeira and will probably last through the summer until I can find a replacement.

The agreement for the shifts was as follows:

Alice: 8pm to midnight and then 4am till 8am
Myself: midnight till 4, etc
Peter: 8pm till 10 pm and then 2am till 6am

The topic of the evening shift science discussion was vectors. While Alice doesn’t particularly care for most areas of physics, this one happens to be applicable to sailing, so she considers it a worthwhile area to discuss with a teenager.

When I woke up for my shift I saw a glow in the sky. Weird, it’s way too late for the sky to be glowing with the sunset, I thought. When I came up on deck, I realized it was the green light reflecting off the foresail surface. The things that your brain invents when running on low amounts of sleep.

Alice was sitting at the helm with lots of white illumination: she couldn’t remember how to switch the chart plotter into night mode. Her shift was uneventful, and she was ready to sleep.

I did manage to wake up Peter at 2am. He grudgingly got dressed and came up, but right away said, “I don’t know how you’re not sleeping.” Half hour later it was clear that there was not much that Peter would be doing except falling asleep in the cockpit. He couldn’t keep his eyes open and to make things worse, he was feeling seasick. “A” for the effort, go sleep, we’ll try again next night.

Other than Alice seeing a couple of ships far away on the horizon, the night and the morning were also uneventful. The wind is coming up and calming down, it’s in our stern port quarter, and we don’t have the mental and physical presence to fly the spinnaker. James, our self-steering wind vane, is doing what he is designed to do: hold the boat on course relative to the wind. Given the light conditions, I’m pretty happy with the 115 miles that we made in 24 hours since leaving Ponta Delgada.

Day 2

Peter slept for a very long time. He woke up not feeling well and at first refused to eat, but we convinced him that he should put something into his tummy lest the seasickness gets worse. Alice brought a variety of Quaker flavored oatmeal, and Peter’s stomach was able to hold about 3/4 of the portion. I also gave him an anti-motion sickness pill which his body didn’t reject, and then he proceeded with another nap.

By the time Peter woke up (sometime around 3pm), Alice and I were in the process of getting ready to douse the code-0 and fly the spinnaker instead. The winds were light the entire day and finally we got our mental and physical energy together to hoist the big sail. Its rips were repaired in Ponta Delgada, but it wasn’t packed into the sock — something I didn’t realize until we had the sail on the deck. The light wind made it possible to get the sock on without having to go into the cabin. We carefully planned the procedure and the spinnaker inflated right away. Our speed went up to all of 3.7 knots from 3 under the code-0. Towards 5pm the wind picked up a bit so that we even hit 6 knots for a short while. King Neptune is not very generous with us, must be busy elsewhere.

Teenage mood boost came from the Sao Miguel pineapple that we got at the plantation two days ago. Peter took care of cutting it up carefully, trying to match the presentation that we received in the cafe. Delicious!

For dinner, Peter and I decided to cook beef stew. At first he asked for me to bring up onions and veggies to the cockpit so that he wouldn’t have to go down below. Eventually he mustered his strength and decided to cook in the galley. When he was done chopping the bell peppers, he spotted a couple of dolphin backs through the galley window. The best view imaginable while cooking! A few dolphins completely breached, jumping almost 2 meters up into the air! The pod stayed around long enough for Peter and Alice to go to the bow to enjoy the show, but then dispersed and we could occasionally see their backs in the distance.

Today’s scientific discussion by our esteemed Dr Lurain started with gas composition of air. Having gotten to CO2 it flowed into crude oil distillation processes, which naturally led to polymer chemistry. We also touched upon byproducts of coal burning such as nitric oxide and other ST (shit ton of — a scientific term used in the middle of Atlantic) of toxic compounds released by industrial processes.

The preparation for the night went very smoothly. The spinnaker came down, code-0 up and I went to bed while Peter was playing the guitar to keep Alice company for the first half of her shift.

At midnight everything around us was pitch black. We’re getting close to a new moon, but even if it were full, the thick layer of clouds would have hidden it from us. Not a star or nav lights of a passing boat — just black. Given these conditions, I didn’t bother waking Peter up at 2am. The wind died, we were under the engine and there was not much of anything for him to do. At 4 I asked him whether he would want to join Alice for two hours. He lifted his head from the pillow, shook it, confirmed verbally that he’s going to be sleeping and the head went back onto the pillow. In the morning he did not remember the interaction at all.

Given the not-so-generous winds and our preference for quiet time rather than guaranteed progress, it is no wonder that we only made 98 miles in 24 hours. Saturday arrival is now out of question, and if we want to make it to Quinta do Lorde on Sunday at noon, we have to average 4.5 knots.

Day 3

We opted to sail rather than motor despite the fact that the winds were light. This way we could enjoy conversations in the cockpit without having to speak louder than the engine. We flew the spinnaker while the wind was clearly abeam, but once it shifted forward later in the afternoon, we had to douse it and use the other colorful sail until the evening, when we had to switch back to the engine to be able to make any progress at all.

Peter woke up at 9:30 and like a proper teenager, he had breakfast and was hungry half hour later. First he finished the stew from the day before, then the spaghetti from the first day. I also got hungry earlier than usual, but the food I tried to put into my plate kept disappearing faster than I could start eating it. I made myself a sandwich, discovered a beef sandwich from one of the restaurants on Ponta Delgada. Once Peter finished that, he was temporarily culinarily satisfied.

Today we ventured into celestial navigation. I asked Peter to estimate how high and when the sun should be at local noon given the data from the nautical almanac. In the process we discovered that 6 times 4 was 28 and 35 minus 21 was 4. Once we corrected those misunderstandings, we had the prediction of the sun being 76 degrees high at local noon of 13:24 GMT. I explained to Peter how the sextant worked and suggested he measure the height of a cloud above the horizon. Peter and Alice roared with laughter, “which one of the clouds?!” Fair, it was overcast and not many clouds stood out to be noticeable enough to measure.

The clouds thinned just enough around 13:30 for us to be able to take a sight. After applying the corrections, I worked out our latitude with a mistake of 5 miles. Turned out, applying corrections was the only thing I remembered from the celestial navigation course that I took a decade ago. I tried, but failed to do a reduction from a sight that Peter took later in the afternoon. Good thing we have GPS.

After the (short) navigation lesson, Alice and Peter started experimenting with foresail shape to improve the boat speed. They would make an adjustment and wait. At some point I remarked that the wind speed seems to have a bigger effect. I interpreted the look Alice’s face as, “if I had a snowball, it would be flying in your face.” When a few minutes later she finished the adjustment, I started with, “Oh, it makes sense…” Alice looked at me: “anything else you want to say?!”

Peter thought of fishing. But then he decided that fishing before napping is not the right order of things to do, so he laid down for an hour or so. After the nap, it was “too hard” to pick a rod and a lure. Given the lack of birds and dolphins, my guess is that fishing would not have resulted in a catch, but one doesn’t know until one tries.

Later in the afternoon, Peter was coming up the companionway and started talking to us, when suddenly his head disappeared into the cabin with a fall. He bruised his forearm and his leg. And it’s not like he doesn’t know that it’s a dangerous part of the boat!

Then he started to make chili for dinner and scratched his leg on a handle on the stove. Nobody in the last 10 years since we’ve been sailing on Salty Ginger got scratched there. How?! As I was looking for antiseptic to attend to him, I saw Alice hurrying down the companionway. She spilled hot coffee on herself. Luckily that was only a blow to the self esteem and a stain on the shirt. No more injuries, people!

Chili turned out great. We enjoyed our first meal with a splendid view of the western skies. Too bad I needed to go to get some sleep before my midnight shift, but I was told that the sunset was beautiful. The sun appeared between the sea and the clouds just long enough to create an array of colors.

Peter and Alice tried to set sails, but quickly gave up since we couldn’t move faster than 2 knots. When I came on shift, we had a bit of a breeze coming from abeam, so I unrolled the genoa to help out the main. That gave us a speed boost so I could reduce the engine RPMs. By the end of Alice’s morning shift we were sailing without the engine, making good progress towards Madeira.

We made about 110 miles in the last 24 hours. It is enough for us to be able to comfortably come to Quinta do Lorde by Sunday noon.

Day 4

The brisk wind did not last long. Some time around 11 it stopped and the boat was drifting with the sails flapping. We waited for a few minutes to see if this was really the new state of affairs, and indeed it seemed like it was. Given our distance from the island, it didn’t make sense to go at full RPMs — otherwise we would reach the marina in the dark, which is something I would rather avoid. When I checked our speed an hour later, I was shocked: only 3.5 knots over ground. We were fighting a knot of current. I checked with the cruising guide to see if this was expected, but it only stated that a current set between southeast and southwest is expected. We saw a clearly west setting current. By late afternoon the current diminished and the wind picked up, so to everyone’s delight we were able to have dinner without the noise of the engine.

This was not a great day for wildlife sightings. The only exception were butterflies. Yes, 200 miles away from the closest land there were butterflies. They would occasionally take a short break on the boat, but would take off as soon as they detected motion. I understand that birds can fish. How do these little things cross such expanses over water?

Peter and I tried another noon shot to see how well we could have sailed if we didn’t have electronics. Ok, we cheated by setting the clock against GPS (admittedly doing a poor job at that). After 20 minutes on the job, Peter was starting to get bored, and once we seemed to have reached the highest sextant reading, he went back into the cockpit. I worked out the numbers and we were about 20 minutes of a degree off on both longitude and latitude. I’m blaming the longitude on the clock, but I’m totally perplexed about the latitude error. Oh well, we can try again.

We have a good streak of not wasting food: chili was gone at lunch time and during dinner we finished a melon that we started in Ponta Delgada. Oh, and the pineapple we’re brining to Irina is starting to smell very sweet. It might not survive the journey…

Some time after 10pm I was shaken awake by the bow hitting a wave. We were clearly moving fast. My first thought was that Alice is about to come get me to take down the code-0. But she didn’t and I fell asleep for another hour. At midnight Alice was happily steering. James was overwhelmed by the huge foresail, and in addition to that was on the most sensitive setting, so he couldn’t keep up with the changing wind speed. It would drop down to 8 knots, then ramp up to 12-13 and repeat. I could get him to steer well for maybe 5 minutes at a time, and then he would find a different “sweet spot” and wouldn’t get back to the desired course.

Before Peter went to bed, he and Alice continued with the on-the-water scientific lectures. This time they discussed composition of elements: isotopes, how heavy synthetic elements can be, how they are named after places, mythical creatures or dead people.

We had a run of 112 miles. With only 96 miles to go, we will have to slow down some time during the night, but in the meantime we are enjoying a close reach with partly cloudy skies, deep blue water and a pleasant breeze. Picture perfect justification for us to be out here.

Day 5

Great day for a sail! There was only one little issue: the huge code-0 was too much for James, so he had to be constantly watched. We talked about swapping it for the genoa at 10 or so, but then didn’t end up getting to it until 6 in the evening when we started to cook dinner.

Peter woke up with a hoarse voice, but feeling better than the day before. The threat of gargling with sea water and the meds that Alice gave him, his body got the message and he was feeling loads better than the day before.

I convinced Peter to do another local noon shot. Unfortunately we started a bit too late, so it was hard to interpolate the minute when it occurred, resulting in an error 20 minute of longitude (less than 20 miles though!), but our latitude was only 6 miles off from that reported by the GPS. Maybe we’ll have good weather to practice it on the way to Morocco.

Saturday lectures were cancelled: we were just enjoying the weather. With about 90 miles left till the eastern point of the island, I could squint and convince myself that there was land on the horizon. When only 70 miles separated us, the grey outline of the island under the clouds was unmistakable. Visibility was excellent and the high northern cliffs were coming more and more pronounced into our view.

The wind had us guessing whether we will have to slow down to avoid arrival in the dark. I stayed with Alice and Peter to enjoy my first sunset at sea before going to bed. The camera exaggerated the colors, but in any case it was a beautiful sunset.

Around 10pm I was shaken awake and forced to move my body to lean against the leeward wall of the cabin. We were sailing fast, water splashing over bow, jumping on waves — as they say, cooking with gas! But the fun didn’t last: an hour after I came on shift the wind stopped and I was forced to turn on the engine, which ended up completely disrupting Alice’s sleep. We were about 2 hours away from rounding the eastern point of Madeira.

I woke up as intended to help Alice navigate us into the marina. The wind picked up and we opted for sailing the last couple of miles after we went around the rock with the lighthouse. For the first time on my watch Salty Ginger hit 7 knots in the fresh wind. Fun!