Day 40
About 6:30 am a tropical bird landed in our cockpit with a resounding crash followed by an indignant squawk. It looked quite out of sorts sitting in a ball of feathers on the bottom of the cockpit and so I picked it up and moved it to the more comfortable leeward bench. It showed no fear of me, and despite an indignant look, probably at my lack of good manners at not introducing myself first, showed no qualms about being picked up and moved about. It reclined in comfort on our best pillow for half an hour before departing to catch some breakfast.
The extreme vibrations caused by our drivetrain issues have compacted the stuffing in the stuffing box to such an extent that a steady stream of water now comes in no matter how much we tighten down the stuffing box. We had fixed the drivetrain vibrations but the leak persists. Within an hour, without the bilge pump running, the water would be just below the floorboards.Our float switch on the bilge pump had stopped working the day before, which meant we had to manually run the bilge pump every half hour or so. We cracked open the sealed float switch housing to take a look. We soon found the offending part and fashioned a new one from part of an olive can and some sewing pins. We then glued the whole contraption back together, added a hunk of foam to the float for extra floatiness and waited with baited breath for the water level to reach the switch. The float slowly rose higher and higher and the pump turned on! It worked!
This was a cause for great celebration and we had more peanut butter cookies to celebrate (the flour was now cut by half with oats to make it last longer). It wasn’t the greatest fix, but it only has to make it 1300 more miles before we can replace it in Nova Scotia.
Day 42:
We were now at 30°n by 62°w which is about 200 nm south of Bermuda or a similar latitude to southern Florida in the U.S.
As we cruise along under a baking sun with the hull warmed by an ocean the temperature of bathwater, it was hard to believe that in June of 1926 a growler (iceberg) was reported at almost these same coordinates and 19 years before that in 1907 there was a full on iceberg seen floating near Bermuda.
As the arctic warms and the glaciers melt, icebergs are calving off more frequently. The result is that there are actually more icebergs now than there were when that ill-fated mail ship Titanic met its watery end in 1912 with the loss of 1490 people.
It is hard to imagine ice here, but we will still be keeping an eye out as we draw closer to Halifax and enter the cold Labrador current.
Day 44-45
The Bermuda Triangle:
All we ever saw of Bermuda was a dark storm cloud lit from within by flashes of lightning and the cries of distressed souls emanating from its dark centre.
The Bermuda triangle was living up to expectations.
As we approached the island of Bermuda on the evening of day 44. It seemed that there was a yacht race just arriving in from Newport Rhode Island. This was a distance of some 600 miles and clearly those miles had taken their toll on the participants. The fragments of their communications with Bermuda port control that we heard over the vhf radio painted a grizzly scene. Firstly,one of the yacht’s emergency locator beacons activated (this turned out to be a false alarm). Soon after a yacht grounded while entering the harbour, breaking off their rudder and requiring a tow from coast guard. As the next 16 hours unfolded more and more distress calls came in. All in all five boats grounded, all of whom appeared to have entered the harbour despite port control advising them to wait for daylight, six had engine issues and had to be towed in, one requested an ambulance to meet them at the dock, and another had ‘a problem due to the number of people on board’ and requested urgent assistance to meet them at the dock. It sounded like complete carnage.
Not long after all of this a cruise ship showed up and was slowly running us down. The ship was bound for Bermuda and was crawling along at one knot as it had to time its arrival into Bermuda twelve hours later. All in all we were happy with our decision not to stop in Bermuda.
Day 46
As the sun sank below the horizon, a box appeared where the sun had been and as far as sheer quantity of light is concerned it wasn’t much of a downgrade from the sun. It turned out to be the cruise ship Norwegian Joy bound for Bermuda. At 1000 ft long it produced enough light pollution to illuminate the clouds in a wide arc above and extinguish the surrounding stars. From a distance of more than a mile, it lit up our sails and cast shadows across the waves.
I was peacefully reading my book on my first watch that night when I was startled by a whoomph from under the bunk that Callum was sleeping in. A couple more explosions quickly followed and a putrid odour started seeping out from beneath the mattress. Somehow Callum slept through the whole episode despite the noxious fumes wafting around him. There was now a bubbling gurgling sound coming from under the bunk and as I went to investigate I slipped in a foul clear slime that was oozing out of the heater vent and spreading across the floor. As it turned out most of our remaining cans of beans and vegetables from South Africa had exploded, spreading their odourus contents across the whole underside of the bunk, leaving no nook or cranny uncoated. A number of other cans had ruptured at the seams and were gurgling merrily away as they discharged their putrid contents into the bottom of the boat. Strangely enough all of our remaining Canadian cans from two years ago were completely unaffected despite being stored in the same place. We spent a good portion of the next day smeared up to our elbows in fermenting slime as we scrubbed out the storage area. All in all we lost about 60% of our remaining canned goods, with only 24 cans remaining. Luckily they only have to last us another 600 nm before we arrive in Nova Scotia.
Day 48
The wind had shifted and built from the north. This combined with warm water of the gulf stream flowing from south to north made for an ugly sea state with large swells from all directions.
As I was doing my rounds of the boat at 10pm I noticed a large rip in the genoa running from the foot right up along the luff the full height of the first panel. If this rip had reached just a couple feet higher to where the luff is under considerable load it would have instantly torn our headsail from foot to head patch. That would obviously have destroyed the sail beyond repair. We quickly dropped the sail and, with bathwater warm waves breaking over me, lashed it to the toe rail.
I had planned on putting up the jib for the night but somehow we were still doing 5 knots upwind without a headsail. This was quite extraordinary. The gulfstream must be flowing significantly faster than I had anticipated.
The wind and waves began to let up after this.
We had obviously had too much sail up which was at least in part what caused the damage.
That night the temperature dropped below 20°c and we had to dig out the sleeping bag for the first time in months. They were somewhat damp and mouldy. The transition to the icy arctic Labrador current after so long in the tropics was going to be a rough one.
Day 50
Coming on watch I noticed waves breaking over large gray objects not 100 feet off our port bow. For a heartstopping moment I thought they were a reef, and it was with some relief I realized it was a pod of whales. There were about 5 of them and soon they were spouting and diving all around us.
Around noon that same day there was a tremendous splash on the horizon, repeated a number of times, this we took to be the spouting of a blue whale which had been reported in the area.
We continued to see whales of all types and sizes close and far for the rest of the day.
Unfortunately the super wide angle lens of our Gopro camera is not conducive to wildlife photography.
We’ll have to invest in a camera with a zoom for the North West Passage next spring.
Day 51
In the early morning watch the barometer began to drop. The wind was still steady, but I decided to take in a reef anyway and was glad I had within an hour. In two hours I was beginning to wonder if a should take in a second. The wind was blowing hard over the starboard bow.
It wasn’t until the next morning that the barometer began to rise and the wind was replaced by a thick fog.
Day 52
The wind was very light now but the large swells remained. We started up our engine and motored all through the day.
In the afternoon we spotted a kinder egg capsule bobbing in the swell.
With waves over six feet, it was a real challenge to pick it up. After three tries we got it aboard.
From the growth covering the bottom of it it had been at sea for quite some time.
Callum stated that he “didn’t know what kind of disturbed person throws away the toy without even opening it!”. Perhaps it was a Canadian vessel bound for a US port who had to dispose of the “illegal” object before arriving in US waters. We may never know. Inside was a little toy shark which we were very pleased with and put up next to our statue of Jonathan Livingston seagull.
Before sunrise the next morning sailing vessel Hydromec, a 39 foot sailboat, passed within 500 feet of us. They shone a spotlight in my eyes and sailed off without so much as a good morning.
They were on much the same heading as us though going considerably faster.
The next two days were spent motoring. As we no longer have a tiller pilot, we just tied the tiller off. We went as long as seven hours or about 26 miles motoring along with the tiller secured in this way without straying off course by so much as a degree.
On the evening of day 53 we got our first view of Nova Scotia’s low lying coastline. This was our first time seeing land in almost two months and Canadian land in 328 days.
By six the next morning we were at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay. By noon we had cleared customs and were comfortably tied up to the dock at the Shining Waters Marina.
Cianan and Callum docked at Shining Waters Marina
Callum and Cianan looking remarkably good for two months at sea
Our parents and Granda were at the dock to meet us. We hadn’t been on land in almost two months and seen any of our family in more than 11 months.