We had a dream crossing! We expected it to take 16 days (with a max of 20), but it took 13.5 days. The weather was great and our new spinnaker (which we used for the first time) was fantastic!
Let’s go back a bit, though.
We knew we needed to arrive in Cape Verde (from the Canary Islands) on or before November 29th. Two of our friends (one was our former sailing instructor) were meeting us at the marina in Mindelo, Cape Verde on the 29th. We arrived on the 26th.
We spent the days prior to the 29th prepping for the crossing so we didn’t have time for any fun. 🙁 We cleaned Seahike inside and out, updated our insurance, hired a weather router, did some provisioning (we’d already bought quite a bit of food and beverages but needed more), swapped an empty butane tank for a full one, re-inventoried all of our boat supplies, inventoried our food and beverages (after buying more), changed the engine oil and gear oil, and had some work done on Seahike:
- New main halyard
- New spinnaker halyard
- New genoa furling line (we’d already gotten a new one but it turned out to be too thin – we needed a larger diameter)
- New AIS (ours was still working, but not good enough)
- Cleaned her bottom
We’d had our life raft inspected in the Canary Islands. It has now been certified for three years.
When our friends/crew arrived, we did some more work! We removed all of the rust from Seahike’s exterior stainless steel using rust remover and toothbrushes, put the new spinnaker in its bag (more on that later), did quite a bit more provisioning, and arranged to have an emergency tiller made. In addition, the port engine had just developed a problem with the serpentine belt rubbing on a bracket. It had almost shredded the belt. Steffan was kind enough to replace the belt and he was clever enough to use several zip ties to keep the belt from rubbing again. He also worked to secure the bracket better.
On top of that, the port head decided to start leaking, so we changed the O-ring, put in a new toilet waste pump, and changed the joker valve. That fixed the problem.
Let’s talk more about putting the sail in the bag. It sounds easy, right? Just shove it in! Well, it’s not. And, of course, we waited too long so we had to do it while the wind was blowing.
The sail is a big ass spinnaker. Before using it for the first time, you have to put it in a 50-foot long, thin bag. This, while not twisting the bag or sail. This, while the wind wants to blow this lovely light sail away. It took some work for the four of us to accomplish the task and we had to make some adjustments to the task to get ‘er done. But it’s in the bag!
Based on the time it would take to make the emergency tiller and for the weather to reach the best day to leave, our departure date was set for December 5th. We had a day to play, so Steffan, Vicki and I decided to take a hike to a lighthouse. Here are several pictures of this beautiful hike and the scenery along the way, including the beach we crossed to get to the trailhead.
Going back:
Vicki and I also took time to visit the Belem Tower of Mindelo on the way back from doing some provisioning. The building, with elaborate details characteristic of the time when the original tower was built, is an architectural landmark that embellishes Mindelo’s main street. Inside of the tower is The Sea Museum, where it is possible to understand the relationship that Cape Verdeans have with the Sea. And from the top of the tower, one has a nice view of both the City of Mindelo and the sea.
One of the last things we did was create a WhatsApp group that contained friends and family members who wanted to receive daily updates from us on our progress. Steffan managed the communications and ended up sending twice-daily messages. F&F truly appreciated them! We got lots of good feedback.
And just like that, it was December 5th! We didn’t know what was ahead of us, but we felt as prepared as possible. Michael and I were lucky to have Steffen and Vicki as our crew, as both are incredibly capable and talented and intrepid sailors.
We shared a small beer the night before we left:
Goodbye, Cape Verde!
I don’t have many pictures from the crossing because it would have always looked basically the same: blue water and waves. But here are a few of our beautiful and highly functional spinnaker! (The two pictures on the outside distort the shape due to the camera angle.)
Someone always needs to take the helm, of course. These were our shifts:
Michael: 8:00-11:00 p.m. and 8:00-11:00 a.m.
Vicki: 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Cindy: 2:00-5:00 a.m. and 2:00-5:00 p.m.
Steffan: 5:00-8:00 a.m. and 5:00-8:00 p.m.
These shifts allowed us to sleep enough to stay well rested the entire trip.
But what did we do with all of the time on our hands? Well, we each read books, we watched movies together, we worked on a couple of puzzles, we talked, we played cards once, we cooked, and we did dishes. Vicki also crocheted a beautiful bag that she gifted to us. We will use it for fruit or veggies or whatever we want to keep together. Steffan did some work since he isn’t retired yet. I should note that Steffan kindly packed his Starlink in his luggage so we had access to the web the entire time. We tried to use it sparingly, but it was great to have, and Steffan was glad to have it for work.
Puzzles:
Look at this cute dog puzzle! And some of the pieces have dogs or dog stuff (a bone, for example) on the back side.
Here were two of my favorite meals. Steffan made one of them: entirely vegan.
We had four very minor injuries: three people got rope burns and I bonked my hand really hard against the life lines when trying to manage a spinnaker sheet. (My bad, I should have waited for assistance.) My hand looked quite swollen, but the only things broken were blood vessels. 🙂
Let’s talk about dousing the spinnaker. Remember the bag that it is in? Well, to deploy the sail, you hook the bag to the halyard, then raise the halyard, then use a line to pull the bag up the sail until the bad is resting at the top of the full-blown sail.
The bag is all scrunched up at the top of the sail as you can see from the pictures below. When it is time to douse the sail, you pull on the dousing line, which pulls the bag back down over the sail, enclosing the sail inside again. That is really easy to do when there is next to no wind. It is really not easy to do when there is wind. But why would you take the sail down when there is wind? Well, because the wind has become too strong for the sail.
I weigh about 125 pounds. There were times when I was trying to douse the sail by myself when the line I was holding picked up my body. That was when Steffan came to my rescue and we pulled on the dousing line together. It also happened to Steffan, who happens to weigh about the same as I do, at which time I came to his rescue.
But we got pretty good at it and never had a dousing fail. The sail always ended up in the bag. We even doused it in the dark. Extra points for that!
Now, I can’t include a video here, but I took a bunch of screenshots from a video to share with you. This is dousing the sail when there is wind and you end up needing a buddy.
The first thing to do after clipping on your tether is identify the dousing line. You want to pull down the correct line. 🙂
Then, you ask the captain (using your headset) to loosen the spinnaker sheet. When the sail starts to fold in on itself at the top, you start pulling on the dousing line.
And you pull . . .
If the wind is light, you keep pulling with little effort until the sail is in the bag. Then you ask the captain to drop the spinnaker halyard. Then you stuff the sail in the bag and deal with the lines.
If, on the other hand, the wind is somewhat strong, you will have a very difficult time pulling down the dousing line. In fact, you might find your butt/body being lifted off of the boat by said line. What is happening is that the sail is still filling with air and it is preventing the bag from being lowered. It still wants to fly. (See the dousing line attached to the bag in the picture below and the sail still filled with air after the bag has only been brought down a little bit.)
This is where your buddy steps in. It can be tricky to pull down the bag even with two people, but you eventually win.
Getting the bag down over this part is the key:
Once you’ve done that, the job is easy.
Deploying the sail is a whole different thing. It is super easy to get the lines (sheets and dousing line) tangled, and we did, many times. That required us to abort the process, douse the sail, untie and untangle the lines, and retie them.
But once it was up it was a beautiful thing to see! Ahhhh. Love at first sight! And Seahike would go up to 8 or 9 knots with her. We surfed down a wave at almost 11 knots a few times. And even when the wind was very light, we would still go six knots. It was great! It was precisely because of the spinnaker (well, and good conditions to be sure!) that we made the crossing in a short 13.5 days.
My hand was looking better by December 8th. Still a bit swollen compared to my normal left hand.
We found dead flying fish on the boat several times.
We had one bottle of bubbly wine on Seahike. We decided to split it four ways to celebrate the halfway point (about 1000 nm) on December 12th. I have no idea why we are blurry!
The moon graced us with its fullness on December 15th, but it was already really bright by the 14th. It made the night shifts more pleasant. I am not sure what the bright star is. Probably Jupiter or Venus. It was very easy to see at night in person but I had to circle it to point it out in the picture.
My favorite picture (compliments of Vicki):
Here are three random pictures from the passage.
We brought a boatload of diesel with us: twelve 20-liter jerry cans. This, in case the wind died. Turns out it died the second day then for about two hours many days into the trip. We didn’t need any of the diesel. But we were prepared!
The spinnaker sheets were rubbing against the lifelines in a few spots so we covered the lines with washcloths and zip ties. Very high tech! Example:
Vicki, who crocheted the basket and brought the dog puzzle, gifted us with these beautiful baskets. She bought them in Mindelo, Cape Verde at the open air market. I have been wanting baskets for some time but hadn’t seen any I wanted. These are perfect!
It was December 18th and we knew we would arrive in Barbados later that day. But it was still fun to call out, “Land Ho!” Here is a picture. The land is so far away, I pointed it out for you. 🙂 🙂
We spent three days in Barbados with Steffan and Vicki before they flew home to the USA to be with their friends and family for Christmas.
I admit that I had a rough day when they left. I was wishing we’d planned to go home for the holidays. But Barbados doesn’t have a marina and we couldn’t leave Seahike at anchor so it wasn’t feasible.
So, that’s the big picture of the crossing. Here are a few other tidbits for those who care:
Distance traveled = 2150 nm
Sails used = 85 percent spinnaker, 10 percent genoa, 0 percent main (estimates, except for the main)
Motor usage = 23 hours
Average speed = 6.6 kts
Wave heights = from <1 meter to 3 meters
Weather = often partly cloudy, cumulus clouds, next to no rain
Apparent wind direction = between 120 and 120, mostly at 180
Autopilot usage = 100 percent of the time
Number of showers taken by crew members = two each
Log = we kept a log of the passage. Every crew member updated the log when they went off duty. We tracked dates, times, coordinates, true wind speed and direction, course over ground, speed over ground, wave height, barometric pressure, sail plan, engine status, sky/clouds, and entered any notes we thought appropriate. It was a paper log, but Steffan also entered the information into Excel so he could get all kinds of fund data from it – and charts. I kind of love Steffan (in a healthy friendship kind of way, you know)!
We hope you enjoyed our passage as much as we did. Here are some pictures of us with Santa Claus in Barbados.
Here is the beautiful bag Vicki crocheted. It is uber versatile!
