Dec: The Atlantic Crossing (Part 2)
We had sailed 1450 miles since the Canaries and had 1450 miles to go. We were on mid-ocean, literally. Land could not be any further away.
The feelings are strong, yet mixed. The “half-way” mark is being celebrated on most yachts. Some give each other presents, some open a bottle of champagne, certainly it is highlighted with a special meal, a sundowner never to be forgotten and some photographs taken from the middle of the Atlantic.
For others, this point is characterized as one of the two difficult moments in an ocean crossing; the other one being when actually letting go the shorelines to leave for the crossing.
The point of having completed half the crossing is something special, indeed. We had from now on started our countdown to our destination, or, as our friend Rudy on S/Y Shiva from mountainous Switzerland proclaimed over the SSB: “We’re sailing downhill now!”. Having climbed a mountain is, indeed, something to celebrate and to enjoy. The downhill climb can, however, be just as challenging.
When having finished something half way, you are in the middle of a task, a path you can’t retreat from. You can see the structure of your complete work already, yet there is a lot to be done until it eventually can be called a masterpiece.
For me, being out here, is indeed a personal peak. Never had I really believed that it would happen in the end. An Atlantic crossing had never been explicitly mentioned in our sailing plans; it had just been an option. We had always said that we continue sailing as long as we please. That is also the major reason why we had not signed up for the ARC or any other rally. We always wanted to feel free to do what we felt for, without any obligations and deadlines, other than the weather predicts.
This place in the middle of the Atlantic felt grand and new also for another reason: the situation had never been “cultivated” in my subconscious. I had since long been imagining myself steering in and out of ports, sailing in warm climate, experiencing atolls, lying on deck, even sailing in gale conditions as well as crossing the Biscay, but never to be in the middle of the Atlantic. Daydreaming has always been one of my prime occupations, especially on numerous walks home from the office at night, while jogging or swimming, as well as moments of quietness, like when I was just gazing into the fireplace on a wet and windy autumn evening. Somehow, I had forgotten, or possibly repressed, a situation being more than a thousand miles away from closest civilization.
By looking around, you couldn’t tell if land was just behind the horizon or thousands of miles away, and the same applied to yachts and ships. The horizon was the limit to our scope, some 2 miles out from us as the center. Anything else was just a mark on a paper chart or a mouse click on the charting software, while the SSB helped us to understand that there actually were other human beings around, equally sitting in small yachts doing the same crossing.
From an outer perspective, this day, the 6 December 2005, was just like any other day on the Atlantic. Regina was sailing by herself more or less, the warm winds were blowing steadily from East-North-East and watches relieved each other.
We saved the champagne until our landfall and celebrated with a tomato juice drink and snacks before dinner. With dinner, we had our one and only beer on the Atlantic and after our meal we started a movie, sitting in the cozy cockpit after sunset with the Macintosh on the outer nav-table, the sound coming out of the cockpit speakers and the stars acting as our ceiling. I had never experienced a greater cinema before!
The day gave us yet another Dorado of 4 kg or 1 m (3 ft), a lot of sunshine, good winds and every hope for a continuous pleasant crossing.
We’ve been sailing for 14 days now, in other words two weeks. There is still nothing but the sky and the ocean surrounding us. What is even more remarkable is the fact that it is predicted to stay like this for at least another week.
Of course, I knew how many days the crossing of the Atlantic would take. But what are figures, but some pencil lines drawn on a piece of paper? I don’t think you can really get the entire picture of how far it is to America by simply flying, for instance. At least I can’t.
The speed of an airplane is, similar to the actual distance, nothing but a figure, difficult to comprehend. Flying is so fast, that you might believe the Atlantic is just some water you easily cross in less than a working day travelling by air. But that is entirely thanks to the high speed of the airplane, not because the Atlantic would be any smaller. By sailing you proceed in the velocity of human being, such as we are built by nature. 5-7 knots correspond to fast walking or jogging. This is the speed mankind has been made for. Only by travelling in this pace, so I believe, you really can live through a distance by being part of it and thus comprehend how far it is. Walking, hiking, bicycling or sailing are examples of this.
My conclusion is: there is a hell of a lot of water on our blue planet! And it is in constant movement as well!
Over the SSB the other boats have started to talk about their estimated landfall, when they will arrive in the Caribbean, what they would do when arriving, how wonderful it would become to lie in a calm bay, jumping into the clear water and sleeping a whole night through. You can’t blame them!
Two recent e-mails, both from sailors, spring to my mind, illustrating two sides of the same Garden of Eden. One e-mail refers to the actual crossing by saying “Enjoy your sail! You might never come closer to Nirvana”, while the other e-mail talks about the destination by greeting “Caribbean is the closest you can get to Paradise - and you can still return home again.”
We do enjoy our crossing, especially since it increases our experience by handling anything from sails to nightly squalls. It ties us together as a family, both literally onto our tiny floating device, as well as spiritually. Would all days be like this latest one, by the way, with Regina dancing the waves in comfortable movements, we could accept this as our home for yet some time at sea. We obviously have.
The other statement about Paradise, on the other hand, illustrates the real reason why we are out here sailing, namely arriving to the many destinations, which never seem to end in variation.
The picture of that calm anchorage with a drink in one’s hand, relaxing all the muscles that have been working continuously to keep us upright for weeks now, is, in fact, appealing. Imagining not being called after four hours of restless sleep, ready for yet another watch in the dark, chasing squalls and keeping an outlook for vessels that appear only once every two to four days. The constant roaring from wind and waves, the slamming of sails as well as items stowed away, imagining all this taking a pause! Think of the endless rolling of the boat taking a break! Or just such a simple thing as meeting also other people for a change! For once, being allowed to abandon the never ending grumbling feeling of being anxious about wear and tear, wondering if the boat and her equipment really can withstand the treatment of continuos sailing for three weeks. Obviously it is supposed to work, looking at the vast amount of boats sailing back and forth over the Atlantic, but 2900 miles, which a one-way crossing in 20 days means, is considerably more than most sailors cover in an entire year. Part of the days go hence to boat maintenance, also, or maybe especially, during an ocean crossing.
I think we would be lying, if we didn’t confess that being at sea is all right for a time, but we now do look forward to landfall, please.
And why, would you argue, if all these wonderful destinations are the main reasons for travelling, why on earth don’t we not just travel in a more comfortable way, staying in cozy little inns along the way, all while seeing the same places as we do now? It would certainly not be more expensive!
The reason is that we might possibly see the same places, but I doubt we would experience them in the same way. Cruising is a life-style and it’s the concept that is appealing to us and to all the many other travelers by boat. We do it together with like-minded, vagabonding along without a fixed itinerary, carrying all our necessary belongings with us, including our home itself. It is about growing as a human being, learning to cope with fear and uncertainty, living closely together with the ones you care about most in life. It is about that feeling of self-satisfaction beyond description having either made it to a new destination all by yourself, or when you have fixed yet another item that needed service onboard, comprehending how the piece of technical equipment in question is intended to work. It is about comradeship and friends you meet along the way, where you help each other without the slightest thought of being compensated. It’s about pure life.
When were you baking your own cake or bread lately, rather than buying it readily made at the bakery? Making your own does possibly not taste any better to others, but has this unmistakable home-made flavor noticeably only to the ones behind the actual labor. In our case, sailing and crossing the ocean is our work, which is anything else but what one could describe as a “holiday”.
Many of our friends at home believe we cruise because we do love sailing. Interestingly, we meet very many yachties, who do not, who get seasick or really dislike any interruption of a whole night sleep. Still, they continue sailing. Why?
Ordinary people with all sorts of backgrounds are cruising, many with very little knowledge of the actual art of sailing itself, while, at the same time, being very experienced in travelling by sailing boat under varying conditions. Most yachties are people like you and me, not necessarily with a huge knowledge of sailing before they leave, learning by experience under way, instead. They all have in common that they want to experience new, exciting places on our wonderful world, meeting old and new friends along the way. The sailing part is just the way to get there.
After two weeks at sea and one more to go, we are hence starting to very much looking forward to our next destination.
It will be interesting to see how long it will take until we will be longing for the sea again, once we have found the anchorage. I couldn’t imagine swallowing the hook entirely and staying ashore for very long. But for a while, certainly!
Just less than 1000 miles to go!
"What!? - Just five more days?" Jessica's voice sounded surprised. "We're almost there!", Jonathan filled in, looking at the charting software on the PC at the nav-station.
I smiled, since, with just some five days left, I had a similar feeling to almost having crossed the Atlantic. On the other hand, five days at sea is normally not considered as a particularly short passage! We still had some 700 miles to go and should actually not yet have the slightest feelings of approaching land. I remembered: The crossing of the Bay of Biscay logged 536 miles and the crossing of the North Sea from Norway to Scotland was 280 miles.
Admittingly, the North Sea and the Bay of Biscay are not nearly as stable weather-wise, and thus from that standpoint a much greater challenge than the Atlantic, with its relatively predictable trade winds from astern. From that standpoint, crossing the North Sea or the Bay of Biscay could be more frightening, especially if making it out of season. On the other hand, a three days weather forecast is pretty accurate these days, enough to cross either the North Sea or the Biscay. And three days is short enough to get into port should anything unexpected happen onboard. Rescue boats are found close by, but so is the heavy traffic with everything from cargo vessels over fishing vessels to oil rigs giving an extra spice with collision avoidance as theme.
Even if the North Sea or Biscay do hardly allow you to really obtain any sea legs until on the very last day, maybe, three days pass quickly and you have soon arrived.
Not so on the Atlantic. Out here, you are all by yourself and contrary to any wishful thinking about landfall, five more days is still a long way to go, even if they pass quickly on an ocean passage.
The weather has been gentle with us on our crossing so far, but this day we had been fighting all day with squalls, these towering cumulus-clouds into cumulus-nimbus entertaining us with both heavy rain and increasing winds to gale force. They are easily tracked on the radar, provided you look at it.
We had some schooling in the sunny cockpit with Jessica and Jonathan, when suddenly we felt as if someone took Regina and pushed her forward like a toy boat. It was a wonderful feeling to suddenly fly along in 8 to 9 knots, but looking back (squalls come from the stern, mostly on the starboard quarter) we could see a wall of dark rain quickly approaching. Quick! All schoolbooks inside! Fast, reef the headsail!
Karolina investigated the squall on the radar. We had been hit by several smaller squalls earlier with a diameter of a mile maybe, but this squall was the biggest we had come across so far with a diameter of at least 6 nautical miles! And it had us as its target.
Luckily we had been testing our Atlantic reefing system many times before, so the sail area was quickly decreased when this big squall hit us.
The spinnaker pole, used to pole out the genua, was, as usual, locked into position with a fore guy and an aft guy as well as the topping lift. The pole was thus stuck into place with no chance to move. The sheet could then freely slip through the end of the pole. The headsail could thus be furled up, with the pole still in its position, ready to use after the squall. This rigging worked very well and sometimes we continued to sail on a starboard tack with both sails on port side and the boom still sticking out to starboard. If a wind shift encouraged us to boom out the sail to windward again, running "wing-by-wing", we just needed to furl out the headsail on the starboard side again and - voilà - the sail was boomed out!
Best of all, it could all be done from the cockpit and is hence allowed to be undertaken on a night watch. We have the rule onboard, never to leave the cockpit without anyone else, be it one of the kids, keeping an eye on the person on deck. Going on deck at night should be avoided if at all possible, we believe. Using the harness goes without saying.
As with the spinnaker pole, also our mainsail boom is poled out continuously, by the way. The main boom is held into fixed position to port by the topping lift, the main sheet and a preventer guy. The angle of the boom is just as much, so that the main sail does not touch the spreaders or any other part of the rigging when furled out. This angle might not be ideal for running downwind, but saves the sail and has the positive side effect that it also works for reaching without any changing. Remember: we are not racing, we are cruising! With our main boom in place, preventing any accidental jibing, it is an easy task to furl the mainsail in or out without even changing the course. The swinging of the mast in the rolling seas is used to find the best timing to furl, namely when the pressure on the sail is minimal. With one winch handle on the outhaul and one the furling drum, it is rolled in and out just as controllable as the headsail.
Last, but not least, we have the cutter sail, hanked onto the removable cutter stay (inner forestay). By this, we have three sails to play with: mainsail and cutter sail to port and the poled out genua on starboard, which is easily furled in and out again on port side, should the wind shift from east (running downwind) to north-east (reaching).
The gennaker has, in fact, been used very little so far, first of all thanks to good winds and secondly due to our limited family crew.
With the autopilot engaged, it was as if Pinta's mate steered, compensating the Atlantic swell from the beam with cross seas from astern in the increasing gale winds originating from the squall. The autopilot seemed to be able to visually see its surrounding, reading the waves and compensating before they even had influenced Regina's course. The autopilot can obviously not do anything against the actual rolling of the boat, but in course keeping it outranks any hand steering, at least on our boat. The built-in gyro "feels" the movements of the boat in the waves and steers against the heeling just as much to let Regina continue her rides downhill and uphill in the confusing seas. Contrary to any mate, it continues in doing so indefinitely (or until we do a cold-start every other day to get a "fresh" computer with a reset memory, preventing information to stack up which may lead to strange behaviors).
After some 20 minutes, the haunting was all over and left us with a freshly sweet-water rinsed deck. With the sun, the cushions came up again together with our pupils and school continued until the next squall break.
In the beginning of our Atlantic crossing, we did not know what to expect from the squalls and treated them with greatest care and respect. At that time, Karolina called me on deck each time a squall became visible on the radar. Now, we have learnt to read the size of it and its approximate course and speed, estimating whether it would hit us or pass on either side of us. Both Karolina and I are now reefing by ourselves from the cockpit when a squall has its track towards us, without having to call each other from our off-duty watch. Having reefed, it is then just to steer with the wind, into whichever direction it might shift until it is all over.
For some reason, most squalls hit you during the night, which obviously does then not interfere with any schooling, but involves some more night activity.
As with distances and times at sea, you grow with your experiences and learn to read the squalls, taking appropriate actions, loosing fear, while keeping the respect.
Some five more days we will be rolling in and out our sails with the squalls while rolling to and fro with the waves.
In some five days, we hope, the rolling will be replaced by a gently rocking, swinging by the anchor in a calm bay, with both Karolina and me sleeping in each other arms at the same time for an entire night.
Wishful thinking?
Our last 24 hours on the Atlantic had commenced. We had had the most beautiful trade-winds conditions during the last days with a slight waves and a good breeze of 15-20 knots pushing us rapidly towards America.
It was a strange feeling that we soon would leave our little world out here on the Atlantic. Hadn't I been looking forward to landfall just a couple of days ago? Hadn't I wished our wild ride on the confused seas would soon finally come to an end? When the squalls had been active and Regina had been rolling heavily, hadn't I been asking why we were out here?
Well, then here it comes: landfall is within reach!
But there was something holding back my excitement and the happiness. Could it be because we, on our last day, had changed our destination from Bequia to Rodney Bay, St Lucia? We would just have a short stay in St Lucia to get our "singing alternator" fixed, and then continue south to Bequia for Christmas, as planned.
No, it was not the changed destination. The conflicting feelings were more profound coming from deep inside me. A feeling of separation anxiety from what had become our home for several weeks. I had suddenly become afraid of land and all its people to be found there. How do you behave in civilization?
We still were very much looking forward to a full night sleep in a steady boat, not constantly having to hold onto something or holding something onto somewhere, avoiding too many projectiles onboard.
On the other hand, the Atlantic had become a home to us, a way of living. Just the four of us and Regina. Never before had we experienced to live this close for so long without meeting anyone else. For three weeks, our entire world had been our 12 x 4 m boat and the ocean around us. Our world contained everything we needed. We had food, caught more fish than we could eat, made our own water, produced the electrical power we needed, found shelter and a home.
And now suddenly we would leave all this behind within a couple of hours? I really didn't know if I was ready for landfall, yet.
Maybe we should first anchor outside the bay, sitting in the cockpit, observing civilization from a distance for a time? By this, we could slowly get used to civilization while still fulfilling our biggest wishes: a steady boat and a full night's sleep. After some time, we might become more prepared to be thrown into the crowd of people ashore?
Looking around me I greeted all those waves, who had been our loyal neighbors for three weeks. I almost felt guilty to say good-bye to them. We would leave them behind, since they were not allowed in to the tranquility of the anchorages. Big waves belong to the open sea, where they can play in freedom.
After dinner, we sat all four in the cockpit, trying to round up our first Atlantic crossing. A debut which never could be re-done! We asked each other what we thought about the crossing and if it had lived up to, or was different to our expectations.
The children had not been reflecting very much about it at all. For them, this had become their natural home and they didn't seem to miss neither friends nor land. "The Atlantic is great", Jonathan thought, "We eat cookies and snacks during night watches!" Jessica liked the fact that we watched movies in the cockpit. I had never heard Jessica and Jonathan quarrelling so little, they slept a lot, while finding excitement in the fish we catch and the birds we see. They had adapted to this life on an ocean to one hundred percent.
I asked Karolina: "What had been better than your expectations of an Atlantic crossing?"
Karolina immediately answered: "Sea-sickness and sleep. Of course, an ocean crossing is exhausting and I sometimes have difficulties in falling to sleep at once, but, on its whole, it worked much better than I had thought."
She was right. After three days at sea, we all moved around without the slightest feeling of illness. We cooked and baked, we cleaned, we read, we wrote, we maintained, we lived. We did every normal task on our rolling home and felt great all the time! Of course, everything was much harder to undertake when nothing stood still, but we were not the slightest sea-sick. That was much better than we could have imagined!
Sleep was another fact that worked much better than we could have hoped for. I had thought that we would hardly meet for three weeks: when one goes up, the other one turns in, saying hello in between. Contrary to this, we were up very much together, actually. The nights were shared in watches, where typically I would turn in after dinner and Karolina wake me up after 4 hours at about mid-night. Then, I would take a somewhat longer watch for maybe 5 hours. These were the quiet hours for me personally, where I could write both e-mails as well as stories, read a book or listen to music. The hours always passed quickly, until it became time for me to wake up Karolina for the morning watch. During the day, we would both take naps and otherwise actually be together quite a lot. The children were often on the first night watch with Karolina, while otherwise sleeping during the remaining of the night. During day-time, they would take short "watches", but always with one of us also on duty.
Karolina now asked me, instead: "Leon, you were longing so strongly for landfall not long ago? What was hence not as good as you had imagined an Atlantic crossing would be like?"
"The rolling!", I answered, "I hate to hear the rig and sails slamming in the seas. I get irritated when I take out something out of the fridge and the entire pyramid of food collapses due to everything being on the move. I dislike hearing items banging around in the cupboards and loose items flying around in the boat."
The Atlantic crossing had, at times, been hard work. The never-ending rolling of the boat in confused seas, for instance. We had both heard and read about the rolling many times before, but it had still been difficult to imagine a boat heeling 30 degrees to one side and then quickly heeling the same amount to the opposite side in a never ending pendulum. It did not happen during all days, but was especially enhanced due to two hurricanes passing north of us, tearing up a nasty cross sea down where we were. I had imagined that the ocean swell would lift and decent our boat as if the ocean was breathing, gently rocking Regina. Instead, these short, steep and confused cross seas were more tossing around Regina in a very uncomfortable way, especially when weak winds prevented us from obtaining stability through speed.
Squalls were also quite irritating, with sudden reefing and rescuing items from getting soaked as a mid-night activity. The squalls were dependent on convection activity and were very local. We could have fought with squalls for a full day and night, while other boats some hundred miles further away did not experience any squalls at all. Squalls seem to come in groups, so if you got one, you could almost be certain that this night would not be one of the calmer ones. On other days, however, we experienced no squall activity whatsoever, wondering if our radar still was working, since it showed literally nothing on the screen other than the waves close by.
The Atlantic is also much bigger than one can imagine. It is a remote place and sometimes there were five days between us seeing any vessels at all. Every so often, it felt as if the Atlantic was never coming to an end, which, at times, provoked some worrying feelings. I believe, especially for Karolina, the fact that the Atlantic is so huge and isolated without any possible help from outside, was a concern. "What if.." thoughts can trigger the most horrifying pictures in your mind while you lie restless in your berth or when you are ghosting along into a black mass at new moon seeing absolutely nothing in front of you. Especially for a mother, a harmless stomach ache of Jessica or Jonathan reminds you about the fact that a hospital is as far away as it was hundreds of years ago ashore.
A consolation had always been the SSB. To speak with other sailors somewhere on the Atlantic, having similar thoughts, fears and feelings, helped a lot. Knowing that all the "experienced" and "brave" ocean sailors were suffering just the same in confusing seas, being becalmed or experiencing squalls, put you on the same level as them. We were all out here under similar conditions. Knowing that you are not alone, being able to speak with your friends was a great help to overcome the most annoying days.
At the end of our little interview we all sat quiet in the cockpit for a long time, watching the sunset one last time, looking up at the full moon, listening to the intense sound of breaking waves around us, that we had become so accustomed to. Stars became visible and it was just like any other of the 19 preceding nights on the Atlantic, with the exception that this one was possibly the last one.
"Well", I broke the silence, "I'd better do the dishes and then turn in for our last night at sea." There was a hint of melancholy in my voice. Or was there a slight sound of being anxious, as well?
Anxious for our landfall, facing civilization again.
Luckily, among this civilization, also many friends would await us in the Caribbean, who had left the Canaries some days earlier and already had completed the crossing.
I believe, I am looking forward to landfall, after all.
