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Voyageur - DAY 1 - 5th May



Yesterday Lyall gave us an excellent briefing however the news was not encouraging. The rhumb line distance from Tortola to Bermuda is 845nm, in a direction of due north. Every day we will receive a weather forecast by email from their weather router. With a huge low in the middle of the Atlantic the Azores high which should bring south easterly winds is virtually nonexistent. It is very much looking as if the winds over the course of the next three days will have a northerly element which is just what we do not want. Voyageur does not sail particularly well upwind. On the plus side however the forecast is not for strong winds. The fleet is twenty five boats strong, four of us double handing covering fourteen different nations.  
 

Mainly Motoring

We slipped our berth 11.30 am sharp in time for the midday start. The sun was beating down, I have never been hotter. By the time I had stowed all our ten fenders and mooring warps I was a blob. I staggered back to the cockpit and collapsed under the shade of the bimini. “Take photos, and shoot some video” the skipper demanded, “ready on the genoa sheets”. Ah yes there is no rest for the wicked! The final countdown, a blast of the horn and twenty four of us drifted slowly across the line. One was delayed due to a broken starter motor. In the lightest zephyr of a breeze everyone was bunched up and not really going anywhere. Minutes later headsails were rolled in except for a few determined souls at the back, their spinnakers making a pretty sight. The course took us south of Tortola, past Soper’s Hole leaving Little and Great Thatch and finally Jost van Dyke to starboard. The sea was slight, with nine knots of true wind out of the north, north east. The echo sounder read a steady 50 metres until we were 30nm out, when the depths gradually plummeted, as we were now starting our traverse of the Puerto Rican trench, the deepest section of which we expect to cross sometime early tomorrow morning. Halo reported sighting three whales but we saw only a lone dolphin. We continued motor sailing throughout the rest of the day and were indeed beginning to think that we were in for a long night of motor sailing too, but a rain squall ahead soon changed all that. We reefed right down and an hour later when we came out through the other side we had a usable sailing breeze. Out rolled and the genoa and mizzen and off we went.

Radio Ga Ga

It was all a bit of a farce really, no one in particular to blame. When we tuned in to the SSB for the 5.30pm ten minute listening watch set up for emergency traffic, the Atlantic Cup fleet who left 48hours previously were giving all their positions on the same frequency. Our net controller on Chiscos is going to announce on this morning’s broadcast that we change to 4 Charlie instead to avoid the conflict. 

So it was back into the old routine. Sun downer (glass of ice cold beer) followed by an early supper (salmon and spinach lasagne) and all washed up before night fell. The nutty box came out of the freezer, the cup a soups to hand for the latter part of the night. The relentless three hours on three off gets off the ground. David took the first watch 8pm to 11pm. I had forgotten how hard it was but at least the conditions were benign. We were overhauled by at least two other rally yachts, one of them displaying top and low level lights which is actually incorrect. I slept up in the cockpit, by my second round of sleep I needed two blankets and when I came on at 4am I had to dig out a pair joggy bottoms from the winter woollies locker! The wind gradually fell away as night wore on but still we managed to sail, doing just over four knots in eight knots of breeze, with the wind gradually swinging round more to the east allowing us to make a little more northing. So all in all we are content with our forward progress even if it a little slow compared to what we are used to. As long as we can keep sailing we will. Voyageur is weighted down, weighted down with water and fuel.  Stuff, the product of years of collecting, shells, trinkets, books, jewellery, clothes, which I have been waiting a long time to bring home, and not forgetting that she has now been in the water for five months now. Finally the addition of two extra sails that we now carry having had a new genoa fitted in South Africa and then a main made in Grenada. It is 4.30 am and as I look to port an almost full moon that peeps through dark clouds every now and again makes its slow descent, casting its lovely trail of liquid light towards Voyageur. It will be light in another hour. There is never enough sleep to be had. I have had five hours, David six but we will take turns throughout the day to have further bouts of rest but it is not easy in the heat. Dawn brings the beginning of a brand new day, the first one now well and truly behind us.

Susan Mackay




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