Wild Goose - "Monty" - Our most skilled helmsperson!

I want to introduce you to our best helms-person, "Monty." Monty is a Monitor wind-vane self-steering system and she is performing marvelously today. It is my favorite accessory on Wild Goose. Monty steers purely by the power of the water flow and keeps the boat on a perfect point of sail. When I look at the machinery of how this kind of "servo-pendelum" steering system works, I am in awe of the inventiveness some past sailors have had that evolved into this contraption. They were, no doubt hand steering for hours and maybe days on end, and likely spent much of their time trying to devise a way to use the power of either the wind or the water flow to turn the tiller, or in our case wheel of the boat. It's awesome to see it in action on the open ocean.

Today is day two of our long leg from St. George's Harbor to Horta, Faial in the Azores. We are having a great day of Ocean sailing today, with winds of 18-20 knots out of the South or South East. Our "rhumb line," the straight line between Bermuda and Horta, is 77 degrees. We went a bit North of that at first because after looking at the wind forecasts it looked like we might have a better chance of keeping wind in the sails for the next few days. Right now our course is 74 degrees and we are going between 6.5 and 7 knots. It's a "broad reach," a great point of sail. The wind is pushing us. It's pretty bumpy and we are pretty much heeled over, but we do have a reef in the mainsail and have reefed the Genoa. This is keeping it comfortable and getting the rails out of the water. If you have too much sail out and the water comes up over the rails it slows the boat down. We have it about right at this moment. It's good enough that Linda and Mike are both still asleep in the cabin.

The start at 1:00 PM in St. George's harbor in Bermuda was very official feeling. We had warning flags and timing horns, and everyone jockeyed into position to get across the start line at the earliest allowed time. It felt very competitive and exciting, but the reality is that on an 1,800 nautical mile leg the start position is completely irrelevant. But the wind was perfect (10-12 form the South East) as we went East out of the town cut of St. George's Harbor. Sail Magazine had flown in a photographer to take pictures for their upcoming article, so we hope Wild Goose will be in one of the pictures. Hopefully we didn't accidentally have a jib sheet trailing in the water, or leave someone's underwear to dry on the rail.

The wind died for an hour or two last night, but picked up and increased between 2:00 and 3:00 AM. Mike was on deck from 9:00- 12:00, and Lisa from 12:00-3:00. I had the "Graveyard shift" from 3:00-6:00 and Linda came on at 6:00 AM. Today looks like it's going to be beautiful sailing on a Starboard Tack all day.


As of 1:00 ADT (Bermuda Time) we have been 130 miles in the 24 hours since the start. This is good since we were dead in the water for a couple of hours last night.

As of now we have no "issues" on the boat. Surely some will arise as we travel on, and we will have to deal with them, but for now everything is performing as expected. Seas are 6-8 feet; normal ocean swells and waves. We had our morning check-in on the SSB Radio at 10:30 this AM and it seemed like most boats were available. We all reported our position and the conditions where we were at the time. We were on frequency 4146.0 on the SSB if there are any ham radio fans reading this. You aren't likely to be able to hear it because I understand that at this lower frequency, the 4,000's, the normal reception distance is 400-500 miles.

So the Monitor has taken over sailing the boat. The next project is to get out the new "GoPro" video camera and see if we can get it to work. It is a waterproof wide-angle video camera that snowboarders and stunt people use to film their activities. We had planned to put a mount on at the bow and let it film the boat through the water, but as of this minute I don't even know where it is packed.

Wild Goose is traveling on and we will check in soon. Thanks to all of the ARC staff for a great time in St. George's. The logistics of all of this are huge and you guys mastered it. See you in Horta!