Before setting off from Bermuda, I decided to change the big genoa for the yankee as it's a bit of a handful in the best of conditions. Whilst I was hauling up the yankee the winch came apart just as I was pulling very hard and flung me backwards so that my pelvis hit the corner of the fore hatch. I think I was extremely lucky not to break bones. After 3 days I felt I could manage to sail the boat albeit still with a fair bit of pain and some serious bruising which took 3 weeks to disappear.
Horta on the island of Faial in the Azores is around 1780 nm from Bermuda. Various factors such as wind direction and course changes to skirt round a storm add to the distance actually sailed. We had to sail 2200 nm which took 19 days. The detour to avoid the strongest winds of the storm turned out to have been unnecessary and added nearly 2 days to the passage. In the event, we experienced gale force winds despite the detour. The best 24 hour run was 157 nm and the least 93nm. A high percent of the sailing[perhaps 70%] was hard on the wind in big seas at times that batterd PS to a worrying extent. She came through the experience ok but the movement stired up contamination in the paraffin supply tank originating from fuel taken in Trinidad. This got unwittingly transfered to the pressure tank and then blocked the jets and pipes on the cooker. I had to dismantle the cooker at sea in very testing conditions and then filter clean fuel from the supply tank. It took a whole day to achieve. But this setback was nothing to the problems with Eva the Polish crew.
Before leaving Bermuda I had thought about asking her to leave given the difficulty in communicating with her which had nothing to do with language. She simply resisted any effort to be a sociable part of a team. Alarm bells rang when I lay injured on the deck and evenually dragged myself to the cabin to get pain killers and recover from shock after the incident with the winch-she sat impassively in the cockpit never offering to help or even to sympathise.But I suppose my mind was concentrating on the passage to the Azores and I let it pass. Once at sea, her unremitting sullen, unpleasant selfish behaviour was a source of constant stress and I noted in my journal on day 3 that I was seriously considering turning back. This drove me to speak to her in capital letters to make the point that we were 2 mature adults embarked on a serious passage and we had better make the best of it in a professional seaman like way. For the whole of the 19 days at sea she spoke only to ask for something or in response to my questioning. Attempts at normal conversation were simply ignored. With time to reflect I believe she was unable to accept she could ever be wrong or be criticised and took umbridge if she was. A few examples of her reaction to being asked to do something as I would like it done, rather than as she did it, illustrate the problem.
Of her own volition she took to pumping the bilges but although asked several times to tell me the number of pumping strokes so I would know whats going on she simply refused to do it. Then the way watches worked out she was on when it was necessary to record the days run and I showed her what to record but she never did as I asked and then stopped doing it after I had asked many times for the details I needed to be recorded. I found she was snacking on bread we had carefully calculated to last the passage and was therefore having more than her share. She reacted badly to me asking her to stick to the rationing we had agreed. There were many other examples of this stubborn refusal to anything other than the way she decided. All this made for a very stressful passage relieved at times by the visits by dolphins and the wonderful flight of the Sheerwaters which were constant companions.
Its not easy to get a good picture of these masters of the art of gliding. They use the air compressed above a rising wave to give them lift. Somehow, they keep just a few centimeters above the water diving into the troughs between waves then soaring up on the front of a rising wave to perhaps 20 feet before diving down low again. They manage this flight pattern for hours on end without the need to beat their wings.
I believe that when they are really close to the water they sometimes pick up food from the surface but I have never seen that happen. They manage to keep this up after sundown in very poor light, in rain and high winds.
There is a drawback to this form of flying. When its calm with no swell they can't generate the free lift so they sit on the sea, usually in small groups and wait for the right conditions. When I've approached such a group motor sailing in the calm, the birds are very reluctant to take to the air waiting to the last possible moment before moving.
None of my reference books say what food they pick up in flight. I wondered if they might take the very small Portugese Man of War which sporn in great numbers in places in the open ocean.
The nightmare passage ended in Horta a place I have visited twice before and like very much. Some friendly conversations over a glass or two of Super Bock in the famous Cafe Sport with fellow ocean sailors, many of whom had similar horror stories, soon began to restore sanity despite the Silent One rushing off without paying her contribution to food costs. I look forward to exploring these islands during the rest of the summer.
Horta on the island of Faial in the Azores is around 1780 nm from Bermuda. Various factors such as wind direction and course changes to skirt round a storm add to the distance actually sailed. We had to sail 2200 nm which took 19 days. The detour to avoid the strongest winds of the storm turned out to have been unnecessary and added nearly 2 days to the passage. In the event, we experienced gale force winds despite the detour. The best 24 hour run was 157 nm and the least 93nm. A high percent of the sailing[perhaps 70%] was hard on the wind in big seas at times that batterd PS to a worrying extent. She came through the experience ok but the movement stired up contamination in the paraffin supply tank originating from fuel taken in Trinidad. This got unwittingly transfered to the pressure tank and then blocked the jets and pipes on the cooker. I had to dismantle the cooker at sea in very testing conditions and then filter clean fuel from the supply tank. It took a whole day to achieve. But this setback was nothing to the problems with Eva the Polish crew.
Before leaving Bermuda I had thought about asking her to leave given the difficulty in communicating with her which had nothing to do with language. She simply resisted any effort to be a sociable part of a team. Alarm bells rang when I lay injured on the deck and evenually dragged myself to the cabin to get pain killers and recover from shock after the incident with the winch-she sat impassively in the cockpit never offering to help or even to sympathise.But I suppose my mind was concentrating on the passage to the Azores and I let it pass. Once at sea, her unremitting sullen, unpleasant selfish behaviour was a source of constant stress and I noted in my journal on day 3 that I was seriously considering turning back. This drove me to speak to her in capital letters to make the point that we were 2 mature adults embarked on a serious passage and we had better make the best of it in a professional seaman like way. For the whole of the 19 days at sea she spoke only to ask for something or in response to my questioning. Attempts at normal conversation were simply ignored. With time to reflect I believe she was unable to accept she could ever be wrong or be criticised and took umbridge if she was. A few examples of her reaction to being asked to do something as I would like it done, rather than as she did it, illustrate the problem.
Of her own volition she took to pumping the bilges but although asked several times to tell me the number of pumping strokes so I would know whats going on she simply refused to do it. Then the way watches worked out she was on when it was necessary to record the days run and I showed her what to record but she never did as I asked and then stopped doing it after I had asked many times for the details I needed to be recorded. I found she was snacking on bread we had carefully calculated to last the passage and was therefore having more than her share. She reacted badly to me asking her to stick to the rationing we had agreed. There were many other examples of this stubborn refusal to anything other than the way she decided. All this made for a very stressful passage relieved at times by the visits by dolphins and the wonderful flight of the Sheerwaters which were constant companions.
Its not easy to get a good picture of these masters of the art of gliding. They use the air compressed above a rising wave to give them lift. Somehow, they keep just a few centimeters above the water diving into the troughs between waves then soaring up on the front of a rising wave to perhaps 20 feet before diving down low again. They manage this flight pattern for hours on end without the need to beat their wings.
I believe that when they are really close to the water they sometimes pick up food from the surface but I have never seen that happen. They manage to keep this up after sundown in very poor light, in rain and high winds.
There is a drawback to this form of flying. When its calm with no swell they can't generate the free lift so they sit on the sea, usually in small groups and wait for the right conditions. When I've approached such a group motor sailing in the calm, the birds are very reluctant to take to the air waiting to the last possible moment before moving.
None of my reference books say what food they pick up in flight. I wondered if they might take the very small Portugese Man of War which sporn in great numbers in places in the open ocean.
The nightmare passage ended in Horta a place I have visited twice before and like very much. Some friendly conversations over a glass or two of Super Bock in the famous Cafe Sport with fellow ocean sailors, many of whom had similar horror stories, soon began to restore sanity despite the Silent One rushing off without paying her contribution to food costs. I look forward to exploring these islands during the rest of the summer.
