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American Spirit II - Day 416; We See a Metiorite Almost Crash into the Ground; and We Arrive in Recife, Brazil; Thursday, February 26, 2015



One year ago today:

"Day 54; Janet and Darlene Head for Home; Mike Mogavero Arrives; Wednesday, February 26, 2014. Big day today. Darlene Heyne, Joel's wife, left us after being on the boat since January 4. During Darlene's 'stay' she sailed from Tampa to the Dry Tortugas; thru the gale; to Key West; around the western tip of Cuba; past Grand Cayman; thru the treacherous Nicaraguan Sand Banks;to the Sand Blas Islands; to Shelter Bay in Colon, Panama; thru the Panama Canal; to Panama City; to the Las Perlas Islands of Panama; and finally, to the Galapagos, where she visited San Cristobal, Santa Cruz and Isabella Island. With the Caribbean crossing (we think) being the most arduous of our entire trip around the world, Joel and I would have been hard pressed without her. Thank you Darlene! You will be missed."

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Relieved Jeanine at 5:55 AM. The wind is 19 knots and we're motor sailing at 6.1 knots thru the water and 8.0 knots over the land. A 1.9 knot helping current. How nice is that? Its 50/50 cloudy/sunny. Maybe it won't rain today. We're dead downwind with 1/2 jib out to keep us from rounding up when a big wave passes by. We've also have a 2nd reef in the mainsail and the motor is set at 1,600 RPM's.

At 7:04 AM the wind is 18 knots and we're motor sailing at 6.6 knots thru the water and 7.7 knots over the land. At 8:04 AM the wind is 17/20 knots and we're moving at 6.4 knots thru the water and 7.7 knots over the land.

Joel hosts the 10:00 AM net and Civetta II and Merlyn of Poole check in. Civetta is 136 miles from Fortaleza and Merlyn is 180; though Merlyn is not going to Fortaleza and is going directly to Grenada to have a new generator and hydro generator installed. We're 80 miles from our next destination.

Breakfast at 10:20 AM consists of eggs, potato, chilled guava and brown bread for Joel and me. Jeanine has honey in her tea, and an orange and guava.

At 11:00 AM the wind is 14/16 knots and we're motor sailing at 6.6 knots thru the water and 8.3 knots over the land. Its mostly sunny out now. Yeah!

From 11:30 AM to 2:00 PM I write 2 logs and some emails.

At 2:05 PM we jibe the boat from port to starboard tack.

At 2:10 PM we use the satellite phone to send and receive logs and emails. We have to initiate this process two times as the first time the connection is lousy. So after turning the phone and the computer off, we try again. This time we're successful.

At 2:30 PM we come across 3 fishing boats. Two are to our left and 1 to our right. We're not sure if they're stringing a net between them, so we turn off the auto pilot and turn the boat 90 degrees right, go around the boat on the right, passing him by about 50 yards (close) and then get back on our course again.

I take a nap from 2:45 PM to 3:10 PM. Couldn't sleep. Joel showers and shaves at 3:10 PM and then I shower after him. Joel takes a nap from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

At 4:36 PM the wind is 12 knots and we're motor sailing at 6.5 knots thru the water and 7.2 over the land. We have 28 miles to go to our waypoint; and expect to be anchored by 10:30 PM outside our marina in Fortaleza. The Marinapark Marina.

Dinner at 5:15 PM is freeze dried left over's: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce for Jeanine; and Beef Stew for Joel and me. We also have home-made French fries cooked in a skillet on the galley stove; and baked beans. If you've never tried baked beans with BBQ sauce, you have to do so. A Jeanine invention; and a really good one. We have a jigger of coffee liquor after dinner. We had bought the liquor in St. Helena.

The sun sets at 5:40 PM into clouds over land. Go figure. Its a pretty sunset, actually. Of course, with clouds and the sun setting over land there is no chance of a green flash.

At 6:25 PM Jeanine goes down below to read and take a nap, telling Joel to wake her when we get close to landfall.

At 6:32 PM we take out the canvas insert connecting the dodger and bimini, so we can see more stars. Though a half moon is out, there are still a lot of stars to be seen.

At 6:39 PM both Joel and I see something I've never seen before. A shooting star that I first see 10 degrees above the horizon, just forward of our port beam over land; that we see go all the way down to about 3 degrees above the horizon. If I had to guess I say that it probably impacted with the land. And what is particularly remarkable, I can actually see a 'pressure wave,' if that's the correct description of it, in front of the meteorite. For firsts, I've never seen a meteorite below 10 degrees before; I've never seen one so early in the evening; and I've never seen one with a 'pressure wave' before it. Wow!

With the wind behind us and dying down; and the waves down quite a bit, we roll the jib up at 8:58 PM. Once we get within a mile of our 'final approach' to our marina in Fortaleza, we roll up the mainsail. At this time I see on the AIS a ship coming up from behind us; and then I turn and can see the same ship visually. The front and lower white range light on the ship is left of the rear higher one, so the ship will probably pass us going right to left as I look at it. No problem. We then pass close by four 'bonus buoys;' two red and two green flashing lights. 'Bonus buoys' are aids to navigation that are not on our paper or electronic charts. Isn't this fun?! We're also passing by anchored ships that are all lit up as we proceed to our destination. Next we have to look out for a wreck on our port side, which we find marked with a flashing white light. Then we have to find a large, red day marker. Its a 'day marker' because it doesn't have a light on it. And its big enough that if we hit it it could severely damage the boat. We never see it, even though Joel is on the foredeck with a half million or million candle power spot light looking for it. I turn the boat 5 degrees to starboard so that we are sure to miss this 'aid to navigation.' What is difficult about a night landfall or landing is that we have a million lights on shore 'hiding' navigation lights. And as we continue forward I'm not only looking at the boat's Ray Marine chart plotter, which is like the GPS in your car; but my Navionics navigation on my I Pad. One I have zoomed out; and the other I have zoomed in. Making a night landfall is about 10 times more intense than a daylight one. And we have made many, many night landfall's on this voyage. Maybe more than any other boat in the fleet. Next we're looking for another large wreck. By 'large' I mean tanker or cargo ship 'large.' I finally see it silhouetted...with no light marking it. I guess its so large that they decided they didn't need a light on it. The whole time we're navigating our way to our final destination, I'm following a 'route' on my I Pad. By ' route' I mean a course with a solid black line that I've added to my I Pad so that I know what course, exactly, to follow, as we head to our destination;. Along the way of this route we make turns, some as much as 70 to 90 degrees. Finally, as we get close to our final location, I can see that the entrance between two rock jetties that we have to pass thru is blocked by a large, two masted almost 200 foot sailing ship called the 'Argo.' We last saw the Argo in Durban, South Africa in November. Its a student classroom/training ship. Taking students for legs around the world. We sail by the stern of this large vessel. I can see the red light on the breakwater to our right, but I can only see one of 2 green lights on the breakwater to our left. The two green lights are supposed to mark both ends of the breakwater. So we know where one end is. Great. We finally anchor at 9:58 PM, 50 yards from the Argo. Another safe landfall complete!

Next is the celebration of this landfall. A round of Captain Morgan's! Then to bed. We'll go into the marina in the morning.

Brian Fox


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