Twenty minutes ago, April third, at one thirty-eight this morning, we crossed from the South Atlantic into the North Atlantic. As often at the equator, in hardly any wind at all. We are in the doldrums.
We’re about 480 nm from Ascension Island. Left there almost five days ago, averaging, not quite, 100 nm a day. By no means all sailing, we’re using the engine quite a bit.
We are floating on a big blue ocean, still with some ripples in the water, not quite the proverbial ‘mirror-like’ yet, and during the day, in intense heat from the blaring sun. Shade is hard to find on the boat. Blue skies with wisps of white cotton candy all around us.
This could go on for days on end. We’re doing just under a hundred nautical miles on average daily, and we’re only attaining close to a hundred because Ken wants to keep moving and is willing to burn a lot of diesel to accomplish that.
He is worried about our water supply and our electronics, more on that in a minute.
He doesn’t handle the heat and intense sun very well. Maaike is much better at it, although also has difficulty with the sun and little shade. Down below is not much better, as the air hardly moves and becomes stifling hot, not exactly a welcoming environment. And poor Tikki the Sailor Cat. She doesn’t know where to turn, shedding hair at lightning speed, but still not fast enough.
It’s my kind of weather. Not that I lay in the sun just for the hell of it, not at all, I’m seldom to be found on a beach. But the heat and the sun just don’t bother me, I function in it, I happily sleep in it. I’m good with it.
Burning diesel is expensive and we don’t have an inexhaustible supply of it. One liter of diesel translates roughly into one nautical mile. Yes, that bad. We bought diesel in Cape Town at about £1.00 a liter, topped it up with forty liters in St Helena at a liter price of £1.97.
Sometimes we see some cloud build-up somewhere on the horizon. On our portside, it doesn’t affect us, on our starboard side, and ahead, it generally does. Dark clouds bring rain. Most of the time not much and short last, but yesterday afternoon we had a downpour that took care of me, shampoo and soap included, all my laundry, and it filled the front water tank.
After a good few minutes of heavy rain, the deck is clear of salt and dirt, Ken lays some pieces of rolled-up cloth on the deck, strategically funneling the rainwater to the front tank filling hole on portside. Water supply is all of a sudden not a burning issue anymore.
Rain brings cooler air. And for a while, the temperature is very pleasant. But the rain doesn’t last long, and after the sun is back out, the water speedily evaporates from the deck. And in no time the deck is too hot to walk on in bare feet once again.
Just before we got to Ascension Island we had an electronics failure. After some beeping sound from one of the instruments our autopilot stopped working and we had to hand steer for about ten minutes. The time needed for Ken to power down the whole system, and power it up again. Everything worked fine again with the exception of the wind indicator, that thing did nothing.
Two minutes later, while rounding the island, we saw a leatherback, not more than ten meters from the boat. The biggest turtle in existence, huge, so big you could land a helicopter on its back. Not really, but one big turtle never the less. Made my day.
The second day after we left Ascension Island the electronics failed on us again. Again the autopilot. Turning it off and on solved the problem once more, but only for half an hour.
We have two chart plotters on board. One in the cockpit and one above the navigation table below. They are identical computers with fifteen-inch screens. One is the master, the other the slave, such unfortunate names, depending on which one has the memory card that holds the charts. So master and slave are interchangeable.
Chart plotter, the name implies what it does, you input your destination and it plots your route on the chart. Think of it as a ‘Google Maps’ at sea. There is a depth sounder attached to it, some gizmo reads the wind speed and direction, true and apparent. Some plotters read currents and tides. The autopilot is attached and controlled by it. It has internal and external GPS. Something reads the speed in water and the speed over ground. The chart plotter is the heart and soul of the electronics with a lot of functions and attachments.
Every year new models come out, much fancier than the previous year’s, not unlike a home computer, costing a bundle and becoming more and more complex.
And then something fails. It might be something small, it might be something big. Something might just start malfunctioning, or something might just shut the whole system down.
And that’s what I so dislike about these fancy systems. They look so phenomenal on a boat show in Seattle, Vancouver, London, or Annapolis, where a sleek talking salesman explains the benefits of integrated technology and shows you that this new plotter was almost designed with you in mind. And it is beautiful, and if you take your boat out for the weekend and don’t get out of cell service range to call for assistance, and you have a technician living down the road, it is the cat’s miaow. But it is not in the middle of an ocean.
We lost our autopilot and we were hand-steering. And we have no idea what is wrong with the system. Our watches went from three hours on and six hours off, to two on and four off. Hand steering can be exhausting when the waves are high and erratic and two hours was pretty well the most we wanted to do. Not that we have much in waves right now though.
We continued to power the system down and then start it up again, unplugging a different component each time. Well, it either made no difference, or it wouldn’t start at all.
