After a certain amount of time at sea, you run out of things to talk about and lapse into hours, if not days of silence. For us that amount of time was 30 days. 30 days with almost no input from beyond our 9 foot by 30 foot expanse of wood and fibreglass in a seemingly endless ocean.
All topics have been discussed and gone over multiple times. All plans that can be made without additional information have been made, forgotten and made again.
There are no ships, no airplanes and few animals. Only water, waves and wind.
We haven’t even had to adjust our sails or alter course in weeks. The only change from day to day is the ever climbing number of miles logged and the ever shrinking number of miles to our destination.
In this environment you live entirely in the present and the idea of making landfall starts to feel almost mythical, or something often thought of, but not truly believed in.
Day 32
As i came on watch at 2am, Callum pointed out a strange light on the horizon. It was a glow about a handbreadth across and about as tall. Sometimes you could only see it out of the a weather eye on it. It stayed there, just below the horizon for the better part of an hour and then disappeared.
Around noon the wind deserted us. There was a large depression north of Bermuda which was killing our wind 1000 nm to the south. The waves were small and we glided along silently at around 2 knots in 1/2 a knot of current with barely a ripple.
The sun beat down on the decks in scorching rays. Soon we had to sloose down the cockpit with sea water to keep the deck from burning us. Inside was like sitting in a sauna, even with our two little 12v fans rattling away valiantly. These were the conditions we’d managed to avoid in the ITCZ and which had finally caught up with us.
Day 34
At 6 am I spotted the navigation lights of a passing ship just as I was going below for my last watch of of the day. It didn’t come close enough to see which boat it was and soon disappeared into the sun which was just heaving itself up over the horizon. As it turned out this was the first event of many that day. Many as far as shipboard life goes that is.
Around 11 we caught another fish. This one was quite large and put up a fight. Just as we had it alongside it contrived to make itself fast to the wind vane with a couple turns around the rudder. We had to let it out again, while I climbed down off the stern. Just the night before I had seen a large shark swimming along next to us and this was very much on my mind as I cautiously prodded and poked the line with my toe until it came clear of the rudder. Timing the wave, I gave the line a mighty heave that sent the unfortunate fish flying out of the face of the wave and skimming along the surface where it couldn’t get traction with its fins. Soon it was alongside again and after a brief but violent struggle to get it into the boat, it was all over. While Callum was cooking it the temperature inside the cabin rose into the high 50s. That fish kept us fed for two days.
Cianan with freshly caught dorado
Around this time the wind returned and soon we were doing 3-4knots again.
That evening as we were sitting on deck in what shade we could find and talking about airplanes, ways to afford, uses of, and how to justify buying one, etc when we spotted one flying over. Obviously this one was a jetliner but it was still a funny coincidence. This was only the second airplane we’d seen in quite a few months and was a source of much discussion. An hour later there was another one. Soon we had airplanes flying low overhead every hour and another ship passed close behind us that night (It was bound for New York with an eta of 6 days). It seemed we had now entered back into the modern world.
Day 36
We have now been at sea longer than any previous leg. Our second longest was Cocos Keeling Island to South Africa which was 3827 nm and took 35 days. Before that was Hawaii to Fiji which was 3000 nm and took 29 days with a very brief stop in Kiribati along the way. So far we’ve covered 4000 nm since leaving St. Helena 36 days ago and have 1600 nm left before arriving in Nova Scotia.
We had a tinned chicken pie and some fresh peanut butter cookies to celebrate the occasion.
Flour now being a rare commodity we have given up on our ill fated bread making to conserve the valuable powder for making peanut butter cookies and the occasional pie.
Freshly baked pie
The sargassum seaweed, which had thinned out over the past week, returned in a thick mat over the ocean, producing a loud rushing sound as we plowed through them.
Large mats of sargassum
It was also here that we spotted our first piece of floating garbage in the Atlantic. It was a large green plastic crate floating invisible just below the surface. We very nearly ran it over. We were now only 300 nm from the Caribbean, but with the ocean currents how they are, it must have come from Brazil or possibly north Africa or Europe.
Day 38
The wind had disappeared completely and we were motoring at 4 knots when we spotted a submerged oil drum bobbing in our wake. It was impossible to see it until it was right next to us and we speculated on the damage it might have done if we hit it. We figured probably not much serious damage to such a solid boat, but it did go to show just how hard submerged floating objects are to spot at sea. Just a couple weeks ago a sailboat had sunk off of South Africa’s wild coast after hitting a shipping container. All four crew were rescued by NRSI but the boat was lost.
The amount of floating garbage has increased greatly over the past few days as we sail along the edge of the north Atlantic gyre. If there are any floating hazards, this is where they would be.
There is really nothing we can do to decrease our chances of a collision, so it is best to imagine that, like the stray logs in British Columbia’s inside passage, shipping containers all disappear at night.