Choices

Perhaps I will know some day. I'll know what exactly happened to me last year.

It's a question I still get a lot, but how can I tell what traveling for a year has done to me, when I'm still coming to terms with it? At first I thought, well, that's that. I'm back, and now I'll live the rest of my life.

But then, I started wondering. Do I still look at things like I did before? Thing is, I've been working on this project for so long, I've been changing along as years went by. Especially the year before I sailed off, there was so much going on, I couldn't keep track of it all. While at the same time working hard on getting everything ready, I finished a work project as I planned on taking my year's leave.

I even handed control to my successor without the slightest hesitation - which is not to say I'm not proud of it. But it's a different kind of pride. Some other could have done the same. This is not so with the sailing trip. I'm always the first to accede to the fact that thousands do this every year. I don't mind being one of many. I'm pretty sure no one did it the way I did. I find I've got something to say about sailing now, not because I crossed the Atlantic twice. It's because it all worked out, and I'm the one who made that happen.



Looking back on the things I can remember at any given moment, I'd say I came away pretty much changed. Not fundamentally, only more crystallized. Doing that has made me more aware of the amount of possibilities ahead.

Choosing one possible option is just that: choosing one, for a while.

We made it

This ocean is more than water.

When I first read the theory of how the oceans were made, it struck me as a wonderful thing. Not the continuous rain which diluted the acidic first seas, amazing and apocalyptic though it may be, but the Gaia theory in which bacteria enhanced their environment by making water.

So when I sailed the ocean it was more than transport by water. It was an ancient technique for arriving at new lands, perfected by the sailors through the centuries. The aborigines perhaps pioneered this sometime 60000 years ago, to arrive in Australia. Countless other species and tribes have done the same.

Studying charts while traversing the Atlantic ocean, one gets some notion of the unbelievable amount of water all the way to the bottom. When swimming in the water with goggles, the deep blue goes on and on, suddenly lending a very mysterious quality to ones surroundings. While the sun sends its rays through many layers of waves and water, the dark prevails deeper down.

And even though it looks like water, it's so much more. It's a collection of dreams, dreamt by people on both shores. It's planning, sometimes obsessing, about getting across. Most of all, it's impossible to imagine.

Even now, after living all of it, the ocean for me retains its violent and hostile quality, while simultaneously calming me. It's not hostile towards us, it just is. We are the ones maladjusted to its qualities. With our boats, our devices and our techniques, we are so ill equipped for dealing with it.

We master technology, but we never master more than a tiny piece of ocean at a time. We sail across, but only if our technology doesn't let us down. We cover great distances, but it's only when in harbour, protected by land, we can truly say: we made it.

Cherish the memory

The most asked question we've been getting from friends and relatives pertains to what we've seen. I started by answering "everything", because it's just too hard to tell anybody everything we've seen. It would take months to tell, and then still they wouldn't get exactly what we've seen.

But the question remains, what have I seen?

I've taken a lot of pictures, about 2400. A lot of those are on my flickr site, and a lot of them also end up here. A lot of what I saw, though, isn't on it.

We saw the famous green flash, I actually saw it five times. I saw it twice one day, which is supposedly impossible. This happened when we were sailing between Martinique and Dominica. There was a nice big Atlantic swell running, and we were sailing on a close reach. The sky was bright and open, and I was looking into the sun as it set. The first green flash was on the down slide, in the trough of the wave. Then we were lifted and I saw it again, just as we were dipping down the next wave. It was just moments apart and I perhaps doubted seeing it the first time, the second time just confirmed what I saw.

After that, we saw it again, usually at sea, the last time as we were leaving the BVI on our crossing back to Europe. Sometimes it was bright green, then it was more emerald. I have seen other things which my mind clearly was making up, but this is something I won't easily forget.

It's also something I wouldn't even want to try and photograph, to not risk missing it. Some things are too important to take a picture of.

It's like that mountain I climbed in 1997, on top of which I spent the most lonely and difficult night of my life. After I got off it, I resisted taking a picture. Sometimes it's just like that.

Another thing I saw and the rest of the crew with me, was a night rainbow. On our first crossing, the moon was so bright and we got some rain in the distance. So we saw a rainbow from the moonlight, with all the colors, only much fainter and blueish. It's the first and only time I've seen this, and it seems to be rare enough to make me doubt I'll ever see it again. It was beautiful and eerie and I've almost told no one about it. There are things which I'll now carry with me for the rest of my life, cherishing the memory and perhaps feeling lonely sometimes because they're so hard to share.

But I'm grateful there were always people with me I could share these moments with, the good as well as the bad. I hope they will carry them along and cherish the thoughts they might have about us, about taking the trip, about being there.

Meeting old and new friends

We should be able to get to our home port tomorrow. That will conclude a year of traveling, voyaging, visiting, seafaring. We met dozens of interesting people, we got to know some of them quite well from visits to bars and pubs.

So after a year of socializing with perfect strangers, the experience which made it all the more worth wile, thank you Bernard, Jeanne, Nicolas, John, Gerry, Sam, Alex, Miguel, Robert, Quentin, Gabrielle, Frederik, Tomas, Lars, Carol, Frits, Marleen, Lulia, Dorival, Catarina, Matt, and many more whose names escape me right now. Also thanks to all the crew and friends who participated in the journey.

After tomorrow we'll see the start of a new adventure, in which we'll move on to new horizons, but perhaps we'll also meet up with some of the people we met along the way who invited us to come visit if we're in the neighborhood. A new page may well be written in the history of Victor Too after this trip.

The log entries

So, what happened?

Well, we set out all very happy and content, with a good weather forecast and in high spirits. The first few days were nice and quiet, a bit light on the wind side but making quite good progress otherwise.

From the log:

Saturday May 23 - We covered 111 Miles in the past 24 hours. Still 1790 to go. We got the tail of an active thunderstorm over us last night, without any serious consequence. The wind is now South East 8 to 10 knots.

Then a high established itself on our path, giving strong Easterlies. The log gives an impression:

Monday April 25 - We have had to sail North West yesterday in strong winds up to 30 knots - a tough nut to crack! We covered 140 Miles in 24 hours but only gained 7 Miles Eastward. Still 1731 Miles to go.

After the high passed, we got light winds once more, but from the South East, so we got some Easting done.

But then our luck ran out. From the log:

Friday April 29 - Where to start? We can't use the engine because the gearbox has jammed. We were lucky to replace the shroud chainplate connector after we found out it almost broke in half, but we've had to jury rig the baby stay as already 7 wires had parted. A couple of awkward moments passed while the mast was swaying around only supported with the top shroud whilst getting the baby stay connector in place of the broken one.
1460 Miles remain to be covered under jury rig.

We were still making relatively good progress, until a forecast depression forced us South:

Saturday April 30 - We have advanced beyond expectation - 101 Miles in the last 24 hours. Unfortunately a depression is going to pass us down to 34° North and in order to avoid strong Easterlies we will have to head South East again by at least 60 to a hundred Miles.

A few days later, our satellite contract got reset due to a miscommunication between the phone and the provider. We still had Navtex-forecasts from Bermuda, but we very much missed the detailed forecasts.

The next week, we got mainly light Easterly to South Easterly winds. Crackers were rationed on May 1st.

It took us until May 8th to get going in the right direction again:

Monday May 9 - First day of week 4, 899 Miles to go. We covered 93 Miles in the right direction yesterday. The bad news is that the barometer is rising, 1013 mb right now and the wind is already in the North East. If we don't get any closer in the next two days, I'll call a MAYDAY to get 2 crew off and new food supplies.

The high pressure blocked our way, we were becalmed for two days. Food and water were running low for 5 crew, we would run out of breakfast and lunch in 10 days.

The log account of May 10:

21:30 Eastern US Time (23:30 local). Mayday transmitted when a ship came into view to the South of us. GMC Fort St. George replied. Transfer succeeded of 2 crew at 1 a.m. Food supplies were received but we made contact a couple of times due to no propulsion available to us. Luckily we managed to fend off and no obvious damage to us or the freighter.

The day after, the wind picked up at 2 p.m. and we sailed straight for the Azores the next 6 days.

Then the high North of us started moving toward us and the wind went East again.

The log turns dramatic:

Wednesday May 18 - At 14:00hrs we were 222 Miles from Faial. We won't make it. We will try to get to Flores, at 132 Miles distance tonight at 18:00hrs.

We ran out of wind 5 Miles West of Flores harbour. After a panpan message Flores port authority organized a tow and at 21:10 local time we were secured in the new marina of Porto das Lajes.

Despair and Joy

33 days, 3089 Miles, 1 Mayday, 1 Panpan.

We got towed into Flores just after 21h10 today after 33 days at sea, with 3 of our initial 5 crew. We are all sound and healthy, and soon will be fast asleep after over a month at sea.

I decided to call a Panpan to get us towed in when the wind died less than 5 Miles from Flores, and current sweeping us past the island. The tow went perfect and now we're in the new marina waiting for wind to set sail for Faial and repairs to rig, engine and genoa.

Thanks to all who contributed to our succesfull crossing, you are the best!

A year's worth of water

After the great water party a couple of weeks before Victor Too left Ostend, we were carrying 500 liters of Bru spring water. Everybody had a good laugh and so had I, but I had my cherished source of drinking water for months to come.



So far, every bottle has been handled seven times: once when getting it from the store, the second time when delivering it to the pontoon, third was when we hauled it all on board, a fourth time when the lazarette had to be emptied to work on the engine from the lazarette hatch. Then a lot of the bottles were taken from the lazarette to the storage underneath the bunks or from the aft cabin to the saloon, which makes five. Finally, many bottles in the aft cabin were taken to the saloon to be replaced by Brisa, a Madeiran soft drink and Guarana, a Brazilian soft drink bought in Madeira. About half the bottles in the aft cabin were taken out of storage from underneath the bunk, because of water ingress from the wind vane supports. All the remaining bottles in the lazarette were transferred to the aft cabin, where the surplus was temporarily stored in the heads. And then, about 250 have already been drunk, which makes seven.



So after all this shifting of water, am I still enjoying every single drop? Well, to tell the truth, the natural carbon is slowly going out of the water, so the taste is altering slightly. The remainder will not last me the whole of the trip. But I’ll probably get across to the Azores on my final bottles, which was exactly my intention and I guess I can live without Bru for a month or two.

But it will be hard.

Slow crossing

The least you can say is the trades were intermittent this December. We started with a Northerly in the Cape Verdes which became a North by North Easterly the next day. The next three days we had fair winds from the North East to East by North East. Then the wind died to a force three from the East and this stayed for three days.

The next 4 days gave us a force three to four from the East, which was only enough for about 115-120 NM per day. So a little slow, but manageable. After that, we had a disturbance taking the wind away for four days so we motored intermittently, the longest time we had the engine on was 30 hours.

The last three days, from December 25 to 27 we had plenty of wind from the East and North East. Our total average didn't drop beneath 5 knots, but our daily average often did, both with sails and engine.

From the Grib files I could make a few tactical routing decisions such as heading further South to avoid the worst of the disturbance ahead of us. W probably would have been better off leaving about two days later because there was generally more wind behind us. I will certainly get a 14 or 20 day grib forecast to get as clear of a picture of the weather situation further ahead.

But from a comparison of the different downloaded gribfiles, the change in the weather pattern wasn't really predicted when we set off. So it wouldn't have changed our projected departure date.

The only thing I can add to my defense is this: the day we left, about 12 yachts did the same. So we weren't the only ones making a slow crossing.

Grenada

On Monday morning December 27th at 4 a.m. we arrived in Prickly Bay, Grenada. After 18 days and 17 hours, we have crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Mindelo, Sao Vicente to Prickly Bay Marina, Grenada.

So Victor Too and its crew have crossed an ocean, it took us 2291 Nautical Miles at an average of 5.1 knots.

We celebrated Christmas eve by taking a dip in the ocean, but the New Year will probably see a bit more festivities as we will stay here until then.

Ice cream and cappucino were part of the early arrival celebrations, some good food and drinks are high on the to-do list. Today, the boat was cleaned on the inside, tomorrow the outside needs a scrubbing.

I will post some of the log entries in the next few days, but let me first thank everyone who has supported my plans in the last ten years, we made it to the Caribbean! Thank you!

Finding crew is fun

At a party I threw last Saturday, I announced the trip and got a lot of crew in return. I had displayed the trip dates and some graphic representations of the route and invited people to put their names down. I was surprised to get as many interested folk to sail along for a short (1 week) or longer (up to 3 months!) period. Of course, there is still a lot of explaining, checking and organizing to do, but getting this kind of encouragement is fantastic.

For those interested in the exact route, these are the legs:

Ostend to Brittany: July 3rd to 15th 2010
Brittany to Porto: July 18th to August 1st 2010
Porto to Faro: August 15th to 31st 2010
Faro to Madeira: September 1st to 9th 2010
Madeira to Tenerife (Canaries): October 1st to 7th 2010
Tenerife to Boavista (Cape Verde): October 26th to November 1st 2010
Boavista to Grenada: December 5th to 28th 2010 (First crossing)
Then we island-hop along the Caribbean
Martinique: January 15th 2011
Dominica: January 29th 2011
Guadeloupe: February 6th 2011
Antigua: February 19th 2011
St Kitts: March 5th 2011
Anguilla: March 26th 2011
Tortola to Faial: April 21st 2011 (Second crossing)
Visiting Azores: May 8th to May 29th 2011
Faial to Scilly's: May 30th to June 5th 2011
Scilly's to Boulogne: June 24th to 29th 2011
Boulogne to Ostend: June 30th to July second 2011

I feel I've taken enough time to be able to reach every stop along the way and still be able to organize crew for the longer legs. Starting days are generally in a weekend, so relatives and friends joining us along the way, can arrange flights and so on.

I'm not entirely certain if the conditions for the second crossing will turn out to be good enough, but there is some spare time for that trip. I've read several pages of advice, and none are conclusive as to when to start and which route to take. There is the Azores High to contend with, so taking plenty of fuel seems paramount for this leg.

At the moment, I'm very pleased with all the excellent feedback I've gotten.

11 months to go...

As we'll be casting off the lines for the Caribbean around July 1st, 2010, it is now less than a year before this long anticipated date. A good time, it seems, to start the story of our preparations and tribulations to get out there.

The reason I post this now, is because I succeeded in buying a second hand wind vane. I've been looking for a used Hydrovane for a while now, and I was just starting to take a concrete interest in actually buying one. And then, all of a sudden, two appeared for sale the same week! I bid on both and ended up paying £1000 for one in good condition somewhere in the Welsh Wild West (Cardiff).

Needless to say, this is a bargain price and what could have set me back £4500 (list price) turned out quite nicely. This leaves more for other equipment, of course, since there is no doubt that I will be spending quite a lot of money on other goodies before next July.

But self-steering is now officially off the list of things to get! Now only to mount it on Victor Too's nice fat transom.

Things to come, things to do...

We're off to England for a well deserved holiday!