Stuck in the Doldrums

It is safe to say that none of us ,or many of the other boats for that matter, expected an Atlantic crossing with so little wind. The past week has been very frustrating with less than 8 knots consistently which means we only sail at 1.5 to 2 knots making for a very long crossing indeed. Fortunately, the weather forecast in Cape Verde warned us of this so we invested in more fuel, which has certainly proved worth it! Every morning we get a weather forecast and a position report of all the boats, which is no longer a report of the speed of boats but more like their fuel capacity. It has been a game of balancing fuel consumption against speed and patience of sailing, which is more challenging than you may think. We are currently bobbing about with 4 other boats nearby which surprised me given how big the area in which we are sailing is. Whilst it is nice to have some boats around and to talk to them it’s a bit of a pain at night as I actually have to keep watch!!

I think everyone would agree that life on board is beginning to be extremely boring with not much to fill time with. We have a rota for the night watches, which runs from 2000 to 1000 with 2 hours each. This is not a very demanding rota but the quality of sleep you get is terrible so we spend a lot of the day sleeping. We also have a cooking rota so we all do some cooking but it is gradually getting more difficult to make anything interesting now that all our fruit and veg has gone and our meat is beginning to go off. Apart from these rotas, we spend most of the day sitting around reading books, trimming sails, calculating fuel consumption, sleeping or I make some bread. The most exciting part of the day is when we get our emails, which make a big difference to morale, and gives us some entertainment on what the latest Trump development is. It’s a tough life really. I think back a year ago to when I was running around stressing about dissertation deadlines and I wonder how I survived!

This was all interrupted a couple of days ago when we noticed that the bilge pump was on so checked the bilges only to find that our eggs were floating in water. The bilges are the area between the hull and the floorboards where the pipes for the different outlets and inlets are, which should be dry. Earlier in the trip we found some water in them but this was on another scale. This was not only scary but created the challenge of finding the leak. Thankfully we managed to recover our eggs, ham and cheese and found that the leak came about due to my father’s sudden interest in cleaning. We have a pressurised salt water hose, which is not used often, but the cockpit had got to a state that it was intolerable, even to him, so he hosed it out. This was great and I was thrilled. However, the connection to one of the pipes had come loose thus jetting water into our bilges. Hopefully we have fixed the problem but I fear it has scarred my father to the extent that he will not return to cleaning duties! Sadly, that evening we got a note from the ARC organisers informing us that a boat, part of the ARC going from the Canaries to St Lucia, had been abandoned on Wednesday and subsequently sunk after taking water on. The crew were picked up by a navy boat and have made it to safety but I cannot imagine how upsetting and traumatic that must have been. It made us extremely thankful that our bilge pumps worked but it was a scary reminder of how these terrible events do happen at sea.

We are now over half way with about 800 miles to go meaning we will hopefully be arriving into St Lucia in a week. The wind has picked up a little so sailing is bearable in small chunks. We have had some beautiful sunsets, stunning starry skies and a fascinating display of dolphins trying to catch a Tuna. I hope his continues for the next week but some more wind would also be nice!