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The World Cruise of Veleda IV |
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Florida to Bermuda, at sea May 1999 
Days Six through EightWe settled into a casual watch system whereby both Judy and I are up during the day and casually spell each other to sleep, prepare meals, do maintenance or other activities. However after supper we generally have a reef in the main for night sailing, settle on our sail plan and course, then Judy puts her head down and I take the first watch from about 1900 to 2400. Judy comes on at midnight until 0400 or 0530, during which she naps for 20 minute periods in the cockpit by setting a kitchen timer. I then take the morning watch until about 0930 or 1000 by which time Judy is back in the world of the living. I usually make a coffee and breakfast snack for myself, and have a tea ready for Judy when she wakes up. She does not have much of an appetite when we are at sea. Lunch is our first attempt at a meal, and then a good supper, seas permitting. We will call each other if necessary for weather problems or major sail changes. We try not to have to go out of the cockpit during night watches, and if so are hooked on with our safety harness. Many nights are beautiful, with stars, and phosphorescence in the water, but also as we saw every night, the horizon had lightning flashes that kept us hoping they would not materialize above us. Any clouds during night watches look menacing as they are a black blot against the starry night sky. This sixth day the wind dropped to a light 5 knots with a following sea that caused a slop. At one point we had an accidental but light jibe that caused our mainsheet block to break. We secured it with a line and noticed that the brass screw had sheared. One of the other blocks was in danger of a similar break as its screw head had corroded and broken off, but the bolt itself was still in place. We secured it, as well, with a line until we could replace the bolts. We have three blocks on the boom, two of which were now being held by temporary lines. Later that afternoon we hoisted the spinnaker and dropped the main to repair a seam which tore from wear of our radar reflector when on a broad reach. While repairing it, the wind died altogether and wrapped our spinnaker around the forestay. We had to motor in circles to get it un-snagged. Since there was no wind we went for a swim (in mid Atlantic). However this proved a difficult exercise for two reasons. One was that there was a surface current running that moved Veleda away from us while we were swimming, and we had to struggle to catch up to her. In future a line in the water would help this situation. The second problem was that there was still a five foot Atlantic swell that made getting up on the ladder a very difficult operation because of the roll of Veleda. We had to use a light midships ladder which kept coming loose from its footing. We could not use our stern ladder as getting over the stern rail with the outboard motor mounted there made it very difficult. This raised questions we have yet to resolve regarding procedures for getting a man overboard back on deck. We continued motoring for most of the night as there was no wind and we did not want to just bounce around in a sloppy sea. At sunset we saw our first (since Florida, save for a loner in Georgetown) school of about five dolphins. The wind did not come up until about 0400 the next day (day 7). Then we went through a series of thunderstorms with winds between 15 to 35 knots, except for one lull of 5 knots for a couple of hours. We double reefed the main and reefed in the genoa, but lost speed, so we un-reefed the genoa and plowed through the 10 to 12 foot seas and thunderstorms at over 6 knots. At noon hour on day 8 the self steering broke again; the same problem we had a couple of days ago. So I hand steered while Judy crawled into our starboard cockpit locker to retrieve and re-insert the key that holds the drive axle to the chain drive gear. Another repair for Bermuda! We continued to sail in brisk 15 to 25 knot winds on a broad reach doing hull speed of 6 knots plus. The autopilot was slipping a bit, as it does when under too much pressure. So I checked the balance of the sails, turned off the autopilot and locked the wheel about 10 degrees to port to counteract the weather helm, and Veleda sailed along for the next six hours in this balanced state at hull speed. The winds moderated to about 10 to 15 knots by 0700 and we had a pleasant early morning sail letting the self steering do its job, and taking our sails down at 0930 to enter St. George's harbour and go alongside the customs dock to check in. We logged another 130 nautical miles this last 24 hour period to arrive at our destination exactly eight days and 948 nautical miles from our departure point in Fort Lauderdale. We were not exhausted or desperate to reach land. I probably enjoyed the voyage more than Judy, but she is quite happy to continue our itinerary to the Azores and Europe, and we feel comfortable with Veleda on long passages. I will talk about some of the lessons learned, problems encountered, and repairs we had to make in Bermuda in the next log. |
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