Lazy

September 1st 2018

At five O’clock the alarm went off. At 5.30, the other alarm went off.

The explanation for not getting up – not the excuse (there’s no excuse) – is that there’s still 300 miles to go to The Lizard, the nearest I’ve come to a ship in the last ten days is 11 miles and there had been not a breath of wind since teatime yesterday.

So there didn’t seem much urgency about the alarms.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a lazy sort of person. You won’t find me lying on the sofa surrounded by empty beer bottles and decomposing pizza boxes watching daytime TV. Indeed, I would like it known that One O’clock this morning found me struggling into foul weather gear while the cabin rolled through 40 degrees. It had been raining for most of the day and there is a saying:

If the rain before the wind,

Lofty ships their topsails mind.

If the wind before the rain,

Soon you may make sail again.

It is surprisingly accurate but does nothing to tell you what will happen if there is no wind. I feel there should be another couplet:

If the rain is all you get,

Sorry mate, you just get wet.

Anyway, at one in the morning there was a breath of wind – only about three knots which, normally, is not worth bothering with. But if I could manage to turn the boat round and head in the right direction, the wind would be from dead astern – and that means that if I had the downwind rig, we could do two or three knots (still rolling like a pig, of course. But rolling and going somewhere is a lot better than rolling and going nowhere).

So, for the best part of an hour, I faffed around with a head-torch rigging two booms, the temporary forestay, the staysail and cruising chute and the eight control lines that little lot requires. The windvane took over and after sitting in the cockpit watching us gliding silently over a flat sea, I settled down for a peaceful night of progress with nothing to disturb me but the alarms every 90 minutes.

Of course, a singlehander sleeping for 90 minutes in the English Channel would never do. But out here (especially with the AIS* running) you could probably sleep all night and not come to grief. No, the reason for the alarms is in case the wind changes – the last thing you want is to poke your head out of the hatch in the morning and find you’ve spent the last six hours going in the wrong direction

Or… in this case, you find that by 3.30 a.m. the wind has dropped again and the boat is going nowhere. Well, not quite nowhere: The effect of the endless rolling is to make the sails act like a bird’s flapping wings. It does produce just enough drive to keep the boat moving at about half a knot. With fore and aft sails, the wear on the canvas is not worth the progress – but my two headsails, firmly tied down to their booms waft gently back and forth without any of the cracking and banging and worries about the stitching…

So, I left them.

At five O’clock the alarm said “It’s Five O’clock” (my alarm speaks, now). However, the boat was still rolling and from the perspective of my sleeping bag, nothing had changed – in which case actually getting up would be nothing more than an inconvenience. So, I didn’t.

I think what I need is an alarm which says: “It’s five O’clock and the wind has sprung up but from exactly the opposite direction. If you get your arse out of bed and bother to take a look, you will find the boat is gliding silently over a flat sea at three-and-a-half knots in the wrong direction.

When I did, finally, get up at half past eight, we were nine miles further away from our destination than we had been when I went to bed.

Worse still, the wind had died again so there was not even hope of making up the loss – and when it did come back, it was from the North East! Exactly where I wanted to go…

It wasn’t until midday that we were back to where we started. In other words, I had lost about 12 hours.

As I write this we are back on course at three-and-a-half knots but it will be another few hours before the errant bit of track drops off the plotter screen and stops accusing me.

 

*AIS: Automatic Identification System. The ship transmits information about itself (Name, course, speed, destination etc). This is received by vessels within VHF range of about 20 miles. The device can sound an alarm which means I know a ship is approaching before I can see it which makes life so much less stressful…

 

 

I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. The plotter cannot lie – and clearly shows all the progress lost while I was asleep!

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-uzDM-300d

 

Fair winds

August 30th 2018

Sitting here on the lee berth, feet wedged against the windward, occasionally finding the keyboard jumping under my fingers I tell myself I should not be complaining.

Remember all the complaints about beating into strong headwinds for ten days round the top of Scotland?

Well, logic suggests that if you keep sailing, then one day, you will have those winds up your chuff as they say. Sure enough, over the last five days, we have logged 363 miles, 70, 95, 87 and 111 as the wind has stayed solidly in the western quarter.

Of course, yesterday morning, I did wake up to a flat calm. The sails – still set for a moderate breeze from the North West – slatted back and forth and by breakfast time, we were pointing listlessly back the way we had come.

It stayed like that all morning and I motored for an hour while reading the last pages of John Grisham’s Rooster Bar and managing to steer a not-too-wiggly course at the same time.

(The real reason for motoring is to top up the batteries and make some hot water for a proper strip-wash). The calorifier heats it to 420C which is really hot for washing – but not hot enough to make coffee… anyway, I’m not sure about drinking water out of the calorifier…

After that, something I’ve wanted to do for ages: Take down the windvane and draw the OldManSailing logo on both sides. We’ll be in marinas in the Solent and need people to see the website address.

And sure enough, as it always will, the wind filled in again. By mid afternoon the vane could cope with the steering and by teatime, the chute had us bowling along at five knots.

I’ve had no forecasts and although the digital barometer is broken and showing no figures or graph, I wonder if at heart it is still working because suddenly the gale warning icon appeared – and sure enough by dusk we needed the first reef and the GPS was still showing six and seven knots.

I was rather pleased with this reef because the moon wasn’t up yet, I couldn’t see much and the head torch seemed to have gone AWOL. But it all went OK by feel. The really great thing was that the sea hadn’t had a chance to build and so we were slicing through this essentially flat sea. I spent a long time standing in the hatch watching the long line of phosphorescence stretching out astern.

By midnight the wind was up to 27knots and the boat becoming unmanageable so time for the second reef and a scrap of headsail –still clocking 6+ knots with occasion surfs up to eight – and in the right direction. This is the stuff!

And it’s still going today. The wind has veered a little putting us on an even broader reach. How long can this go on?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-uzDM-300d

 

 

 

The day the cooker fell off

August 23rd 2018

Today the cooker fell off. There was a crash to which, I must admit, I didn’t pay much attention at the time, being out in the cockpit, getting us sailing again. We had spent twelve hours hove-to under trysail even though the wind never did make it to full gale force.

However, beating into a force seven is just so unpleasant – and there is so much leeway that progress is negligible – and anyway, I needed the practice with the trysail…

Returning, eventually, to the cabin, there was the cooker lying askew across the galley. “That’s odd,” I think to myself. “It’s all crooked.” Then reality dawns. That was the crash. On closer examination, it turns out that the massive stainless steel fittings which inspired such confidence were, in fact, only screwed into the bulkhead and not bolted – and not deeply screwed at that.

All it took was for the boat to jump off a particularly awkward wave left over from the near-gale and the whole thing wrenched itself off its mountings.

With a thousand miles to go, this would be a problem – in the normal course of events. Indeed, if times were normal just at the moment, I would be considering how to effect repairs. But in fact, this is not an issue because the cooker has not been used at all for the last 36 hours.

We are out of gas.

No, I can’t believe it either – but on the third day of the voyage the cylinder gave out and the spare is empty. No matter how stupid this may seem, in fact it is deliberate: The cylinder was changed on July 19th and I was ashore for a week in Ponta Delgada and not using it at all – and considering that normally a cylinder lasts anywhere from six weeks to just over two months, I reckoned I had plenty to get me home. The fact that I then spent three days sailing to Horta and stayed there for four days somehow got left out of the calculations.

As for the reason I didn’t get the spare refilled: Well, I’m afraid I’m over budget for this month and I reckoned it would be cheaper back in the UK – particularly with the exchange rate on the Euro at the moment…

Oddly, at the time, I considered this less a problem than having no music on the way out: I’ve got plenty of food that can be eaten cold and plenty of beer to make up for tea and coffee. The biggest problem would be my daily cup of herbal tea – but it seems that if you soak the teabag in cold water for long enough, it seems to infuse well enough.

So, there is no need to fix the cooker immediately. Instead the urgent question was how to secure it, otherwise it was likely to smash itself to pieces as soon as we tacked. In the end I stuffed it up in the fo’c’sle with the dinghy, the bike and the sails – not the easiest thing to do with the boat jumping off waves at five knots – a few scratches on the varnish, I’m afraid to say…

Of course, this would be the time to get a new one – it’s the same Flavel Vanessa that I had on Largo which means it probably came with the boat 45 years ago. The only trouble with that idea is that a new one (with flame failure devices on all the burners and a lot less rust) costs £500 and I can think of plenty of kit I would love to spend £500 on (AnchorRescue…Code Zero…) A new cooker, I’m afraid, is just plain boring.

Instead I will get a couple of stainless steel plates made up and drilled to order. That should give it a new lease of life – that and some decent bolts.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-uzDM-300d

Seven O’Clock

August 21st 2018

There is someone else aboard the boat now – a nice young lady (a pretty but homely blonde is the way I imagine her). Each morning she tells me: “It’s Seven O’clock” – or whatever time it happens to be. Whatever else I  imagine about this situation, I leave to your imagination…

Heaven knows how it’s taken me so long to discover this feature of my phone but there she was again this morning, telling me it was seven O’clock. It is now nearly twelve and I cannot believe how much has happened in the last five hours.

If anyone asks me “What do you do all the time?” I shall point them to this.

For a start, at seven O’clock this morning it was raining – hard. It was also blowing 17knots which is about as much as you want with the light running sails up. The plotter was showing us belting along at between six and seven knots – and then I realised that was without the staysail drawing – the sheet had freed itself. So, on with the waterproof jacket (don’t worry about the bare legs, they’ll dry and there’s nobody to see).

After that I decided I would have breakfast and then see if any sails need to come down. At that moment the thunderstorm started. It wasn’t very close but close enough to put the phone in the oven.

If it seems an odd thing to do – put your phone in the oven (complete with homely blonde) – the idea is that if the boat should be struck by lightning, every electronic device will be fried in a millisecond – unless it is encased in a metal box. Personally, I think the whole idea sounds a bit suspect but I’m not going to argue.

The next thing you know, the wind has changed and we’re heading south west. That means the running sails have to come down. This time I don the trousers and boots and, clinging on with my fingernails to a foredeck which is now rolling through 600 , I make the mistake of trying to douse the cruising chute with the wind too far aft and wrap it round the forestay. The resulting mess ends up in the cabin with the chute out of its sock and the endless line wrapped six times round everything while I dismantle two booms and get the staysail below where it soaks everything else.

There is now no wind at all and since I have a dinner to go to in Southampton on the eighteen days’ time, on goes the engine and I get to eat breakfast.

By the time this is over, the wind is blowing ten knots from exactly the same direction it was before I took everything down. If only I hadn’t been so keen and had breakfast first…

I looked at the tangled cruising chute and its sock and its endless line (now untied at one end and therefore, by definition, no longer endless) and wondered at the possibility of getting it sorted out. Of course, the only sensible thing to do was hoist it. So – getting soaked in the process – I straightened it all out, stuffed it back in its bag and hauled it on deck. It went up like a lamb.

But then I wasted half an hour rigging the boom and getting half-way through setting the staysail before realising the wind had changed again and we now needed the mainsail – so, away went the staysail (still wet and soaking everything it touched) and up went the main.

It is now nearly lunchtime and I feel I have spent the morning in the gym (certainly, yesterday, I turned the camera on myself and was surprised to see muscles). So, I think I deserve a proper lunch. Although there is still butter and tomatoes for sandwiches, today it shall be the traditional Sunday comfort lunch: Eggs and beans on toast with coffee and HP sauce.

After all, there’s something to celebrate: We’re heading in the right direction…

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-uzDM-300d

Boat art and Café Sport

August 17th 2018

Horta is one of the great ocean crossroads of the world. Ever since people started voyaging in small boats, they have been coming here.

And now I’ve made it. It does feel as if I should have been here before – indeed, one of the first things I did was go and look for the name of my old boat on the harbour wall.  Largo came here in 1988 while being delivered back to the UK after the Singlehanded Transatlantic Race (I had to return on a plane from Boston to go back to work – that’s not going to happen again…)

In fact, it turns out that Largo’s name has been painted over.

This is hardly surprising since it is considered back luck for any Sailor to leave Horta without painting on the harbour wall – and there is a limit to even the biggest harbour wall, which is why they have progressed to the quay itself, the fuelling berth, the shower block – in fact just anywhere with a flat surface. It has created one of the great wonders of the cruising world: Thousands upon thousands of paintings – everything from a simple scrawl with a name and date to some real works of art. And what is so moving is the stories that so obviously lie behind them – five and ten-year circumnavigations are commonplace. Children appear between the first visit and the second…generations of families come back sailing the same boat…

Obviously, Samsara had to make her mark – although, since she has six Atlantic crossings to her name that I happen to know about, it is most likely some are listed somewhere here already – if only I could find them.

Anyway, I identified the perfect place for the new one – where it would be seen by passers-by on the pavement as well as yotties in the marina. This was particularly good news because I don’t mind admitting that I could see an opportunity here for a little tasteful advertising…

Since publishing my YouTube video just two weeks ago, I have had five people sign up for regular supplies of the health supplement which I credit with keeping me going into my eight decade – and all without any of the sort of ailments with usually afflict people of my age.

So, I spent much of today sprawled on the ground painstakingly painting a cartoon of an old man alongside the words: “OldManSailing.com – Because ageing is a lifestyle choice. Just say No! Samsara 2018”

… with lots of room to add the dates of future visits.

Here’s a tip, if you ever want to do this: Don’t buy cheap paint brushes. I got mine from B&Q before I left home and by the time I had finished, my painting looked like something out of the reception class at my children’s old primary school.

This meant I had to go back, time and again, with better brushes, touching up the mess. It drew a certain amount of attention from those passers-by whose attention I had intended to attract in the first place – it’s just that I wished they would wait until I had finished.

Some were accompanied by a guide who insisted on interviewing me – and one, shepherding a party from Germany, performed to type by asking: “And how do you know you are allowed to paint here?”

Trying not to roll my eyes, I pointed to many thousands of other paintings stretching in both directions and explained patiently that sailors had been painting on these walls for at least 50 years and I was sure that if the authorities objected, they would have done so before now. It was only afterwards that I wondered if anybody had asked permission to paint on the Berlin wall.

A French woman came by and wanted to photograph me with my finished work. She said she would send me the photo.

It was only after this, when I had begun to think about a photo that I took a really close look at what I had done and realised I had left the first “e” out of “lifestyle”.

So that was it, wasn’t it? I got out the big brush and painted over the whole thing. Now I’m going to have to do it all again tomorrow.

Feeling as if I needed some sort of restorative, I took myself off to the Café Sport while the paint dried. You can look up the Café Sport in Horta – it’s an institution. Now in the hands of the grandson of its founder and having grown from one café to an entire street with a restaurant, a whale-watching business, a clothes shop selling all things “Café Sport”, a scrimshaw museum (art on whalebone), not to mention an ice cream stall, a beer terrace and even its own gin.  Café Sport is the definitive lesson on how to build a successful business from a single idea.

Sure enough, I took my beer across the road to take yet another picture of sunset on Pico’s volcano (every time you see it, there seems to be something more dramatic about the way the light catches the clouds). While doing so I fell into conversation with a couple from Quebec who had sailed a boat even smaller than mine from New York. We discussed refrigeration and baking bread, lightning protection and astro-navigation – and it turns out we are moored on the same pontoon, just three berths away from each other. We will meet up again tomorrow.

Then on Saturday I plan to set off back to the UK and they will cruise the islands before making their way to the Canaries before winter comes to the Azores – which it does with a vengeance.

Shame we didn’t meet 24 hours earlier – they could have had some tuna…

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-uzDM-300d

How to eat a whole tuna in 24 hours

August 14th 2018

“You like fishing?” asked the man on the quay at Calheta.

Then he thought about it. Evidently that wasn’t quite what he meant.

“You like fish?” That was better.

Yes, certainly I like fish. However, I was a bit tired of fishermen, having been roused twice in the night to shift further down the quay at this tiny Azorean harbour in order to make room for the two fishing boats from Madeira which had called for an overnight stop and to top up with water.

Fishing boats use an inordinate amount of water for their icemakers. Indeed, part of my night was spent feeding a line from their boat, outside my boat, to the water tap opposite so they could haul their hose across – and as far as I can tell the two of them had it running all night.

And here we were at eleven O’clock in the morning and it appeared to be still running – and if I was going to get a beer in the Café Sport in Horta tonight, I ought to be leaving.

Meanwhile: “Yes, I like fish.”

The fisherman motioned me to come with him which meant scrambling up a chain onto a huge cylindrical rubber fender and thence with a heave like exiting a swimming pool, onto the quay – not dignified but then the quay was designed for vessels considerably bigger than Samsara.

By the time I made it to the fishing boat, the skipper – for he appeared to be the skipper – emerged with a tuna to feed a family of ten.

“Oh, that’s amazing,” I exclaimed. “Thank you so much – but really it’s too big. There’s just me, you know…”

Here I patted my very small stomach of which I am inordinately proud.

“Is small,” said the skipper. “The most small.”

Very likely, it was – after all he could lift it with one hand – even I could lift it with one hand…”

Back on the boat, I looked at the size of the fish again. Then I looked at the size of my fridge – which is only ever used for beer and the occasional left-over if the engine is running or the sun shining long enough for the solar panel to keep it going – or if we happen to be bowling along at five knots and the water-generator is doing its stuff.

There was nothing for it: The fish would have to be butchered then and there – and I wasn’t going to do it on the boat. I’ve seen how much mess you can make with a mackerel on a boat. This monster was going to bleed everywhere.

Not for the first time, I thanked Dr and Mrs Franklin, Samsara’s owners back in the 90’s who made such clever modifications as turning the top of the engine casing into a massive, removable chopping board/cup holder. It turned out to be just big enough to chop a baby tuna into the three biggest tuna steaks I have ever seen. Honestly, these were massive. Each one would feed three people – but I didn’t see the point in having any more. It wasn’t as if I had a freezer like Bill and Laurie aboard Toodle-oo. I met them in Ponta Delgada – but they were from the USA and had a freezer (actually they had their own washing machine because Laurie didn’t trust marina launderettes – I hadn’t liked to mention my bucket).

Anyway, clambering up and down for a bucket (the laundry bucket now on fish-gutting duty) and waving goodbye to the fishermen who finally reeled in their imprisoning hose, we set off – Samsara, the fish and me – for the 25 mile trip to Horta.

And thank heavens for the fish because, without it, we would still be on the way…

You see, I am in the Azores and so is The Azores High. This is the meteorological phenomenon which we hear about so much on the British weather forecast because of the effect it has on the British weather. Out here it just means the wind doesn’t blow – and if you happen to be becalmed half way up the Sao Jorge Channel which is 40 miles long but only ten miles wide and full of all manner of traffic, that is just plain stressful.

But on this occasion, it was an easy decision to switch the engine on – even with the cost of diesel what it is: I had fish to keep fresh…

Actually, the first steak was in the frying pan within an hour – served with couscous and parsley. I have never before eaten a tuna steak which fell apart on the fork before. But then, I suppose it was fresher than any tuna steak I have ever eaten before. I mean, this one didn’t even get to the fish merchant, let along the fishmonger…

The second steak for dinner caused a bit of a problem: I had looked up recipes and had settled on baking it in foil with lemon and capers to an accompaniment of pasta and green beans.

Duly arriving in Horta (a lifetime ambition incidentally) I set off to walk around town following Google Maps in search of a lemon.

How can a whole town – in a region famous for its pineapples – not possess a single lemon? I tried three shops including the big supermarket. In the end I made do with a lime.

This would not have been so bad if, becoming obsessed with lemons, I had not forgotten about the green beans … then excavated the kitchen foil only to find it had amalgamated itself into a solid block of aluminium. The frying pan came out again.

I don’t mind telling you that I was not looking forward to tuna steak for breakfast. It had seemed like a good idea while enthusing over tuna with capers and lime (and a massive slug of soy sauce) but with the heat already building at eight O’clock in the morning, a few slices of water melon did seem appealing.

But actually, once the beast was on the plate with a pair of fried eggs and the ketchup bottle…

I do have a confession, though: I kept back half the last steak. It’s cooked now – and with the fridge hooked up to the marina electricity, it should keep long enough for a tuna mayonnaise sandwich.

That’s if I ever want to eat tuna again…

Update Aug 16th:

Well, the fish has finally gone. I couldn’t face it again last night – in fact I couldn’t face any more protein at all. What I really wanted was a huge plate of green vegetables (and would you believe I couldn’t find any fresh green beans anywhere – had to eat a huge pack of frozen).

,,, and so, finally, I was ready for tuna mayonnaise for lunch:

 

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30 years’ progress

August 11th 2018

You expect some things to change in 30 years – it’s just a surprise when they do.

The last time I visited Vila Island off Vila do Campo on Sao Miguel in the Azores was in 1987. With a couple of other competitors in the Azores and Back Race from Falmouth, we took somebody’s boat the ten miles down the coast from Ponta Delgado and had a picnic in this crater of an extinct volcano.

I remembered it as an amazing place – you had to anchor outside and then take the dinghy through an entrance no more than ten feet wide into a perfectly circular lagoon. There was nobody else there, the water was warm and clear – quite simply it was like something out of this world.

So, obviously when the family flew out for a week to join me in Ponta Delgado, I was determined to show it to them.

We sailed – the five of us, which seemed quite crowded aboard Samsara – the two hours along the coast and there, just as I remembered it was the island.

…except it was not as I remembered. For a start there was a quay where excursion boats tied up to disgorge parties of tourists – and they’d built a breeze-block shack for the lifeguards (there are lots of lifeguards in the Azores now). Well, that can’t be a bad thing – and obviously there’s no reason why tourists shouldn’t see this wonder of nature…

Actually, that is part of the problem. The island is now a nature reserve and, after making two trips in my very small dinghy to drop my passengers, a lifeguard rushed over waving his arms and blowing his whistle to tell me that I could not enter the lagoon with a motor even if I wasn’t using it. After a bit of shouted negotiation, it was agreed that if I took the motor back to the yacht, I could row into the lagoon and haul the dinghy up onto the rocks.

Unfortunately, by the time I had gone to all the trouble of doing this, the lifeguard had spoken to his boss and, if I wanted to land and join my family for a swim, there were only two ways I could do it: Either (a}: Go into the local harbour and hire a kayak (which of course would mean I couldn’t take anyone else with me) or (b): Take everyone back to the yacht and pay to moor in the local harbour, then buy five tickets for the excursion boat.

In the end I returned to Samsara and sat in the sun reading a book until summoned by mobile phone to pick up the shore party – after all, I’d seen this place once already.

It was only later, talking to the owner of our Airbnb apartment that one other piece of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place: Vila Island is now a nature reserve and visitors are limited to 400 a day – which means that in high season like now you have to book several days ahead.

I suppose we should consider it a small victory that on this particular day, there were 404 visitors.

 

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What do you do in a calm?

July 18th 2018

This calm has lasted for 18 hours – so far. It is 1145 and I am sure it started before 1800 yesterday.

I’ve decided that I like calms. There is absolutely no point in getting worked up about them. I cannot make the wind blow and there is no point whatsoever in trying to motor through them – that might work if my destination was ten miles away but currently it is 760 and with a full tank Samsara’s range is only 150 miles.

Besides, the electronic autopilot packed up a few days ago and I am not hand steering a compass course for 150 miles…

So, you might ask: What do you do in an 18-hour calm?

The first priority was some music. I had no idea how much I would miss it but it seems I allowed my phone to go flat and when I charged it up again, Spotify required me to log in again – for which, of course, you need an internet connection.

I deliberated all day about this. I do have an Iridium-Go which gives me satellite access – both to summon help should I need to but also to send blog entries to my son Hugo who is paid £2.50 a time to post them. Theoretically, I should be able to use the same connection to log into Spotify.

Not so; it seems I need an extra app – for which, of course, I require internet access…

I tried a couple of times but, mindful of the $1.25 a minute charge, I didn’t try for too long.

To console myself, I got out the clarinet and played Stranger on the Shore and Londonderry Air but Basin Street Blues sounded terribly forlorn without Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five to play along to.

Then it was time for a cup of tea and a Penguin biscuit. I found that using small tins of evaporated milk caused a terrible mess. In the rough weather of the last few days, I had ended up keeping the can inside a mug so at least I wouldn’t lose the spilt milk. However, that meant the only way to get the can out of the mug was to upend the whole thing – with predictable consequences. Next, I folded a piece of kitchen roll lengthwise and used that to lift it out – but all that happened was that the paper got soaked and disintegrated so not only did I have to upend it all again but I wasn’t even able to use the spilt milk.

Never mind, tea and a Penguin biscuit with Charles Dickens. I was supposed to read him at school and remember thinking “For heaven’s sake, get on with it.” I could hardly blame him, if I was being paid by the column inch, I’m sure I would be just as long-winded (I’m not being paid at all for this. Indeed, if I send it by Iridium, I will be the one who is paying – but I notice that doesn’t seem to stop me going on…)

Actually, I am rather enjoying Pickwick Papers. After all, I have the leisure which I presume Mr Dickens’ readers enjoyed in the early 1800’s. Maybe I’ll get to the end of it. In which case it feels as if I am about to discover a complete treasure trove of delights – after all, those people who appreciate Dickens insist there is nothing like him – people who claim to have read the whole canon twice over…

Of course, after an hour of something like that, I had to return to my own novel-in-progress. Having written one before, I know it’s not as easy as it sounds and I know the process: Just keep writing. Up until now it was all by hand in a blue ring-binder but now I decided I didn’t like the central character – he seemed like a bit of a wimp so I started adjusting him. After covering several sheets with circled paragraphs and arrows pointing in all directions, I remembered how I used to do this: With a pair of scissors and glue. Seeing the film Trumbo, I realised that I was not the only one. Now of course, with Microsoft Word, none of that is necessary.

However, I’ve discovered that writing directly onto a laptop is not as easy on a small boat as it is at my desk at home. I tried putting the laptop on the chart table but that faces forward, meaning I have to brace myself sideways against the lurching of the boat and the mouse keeps running away of its own accord – I have to disable the touch pad because I keep touching it and the cursor disappears Lord knows where.

So, instead, I sit on the windward berth with my feet braced against the leeward with the laptop where it is designed to go – on my lap. Of course, this means I can’t use the mouse and if I disable the touchpad, every time I need to get the cursor out of the document, I have to enable it again.

Well, now I am pleased to report that I have trained myself to keep the heels of my hands on the computer either side of the pad without touching it while my fingers dance across the keys ((I am a touch typist these last 50 years and, as you can tell by the length of this, dancing fingers involves no effort at all).

Once that was sorted, it was time for dinner – the other half of the tin of tuna with sweetcorn. I sweated half an onion with it and added a stock cube to the rice. This cheap easy-cook rice needs much more water but I cut it with 1/4 with seawater and anyway I’m only using three litres a day. Follow that with cucumber and sprouted mung bean salad (always two jars of beans on the go – think I might start a third) and tinned peach slices with as much evaporated milk as I can get into the bowl now I’ve discovered that powdered milk tastes just as good if you let the tea cool or add some cold water first.

Dinner was taken, as usual, at the chart table with the Kindle and Mr Dickens propped up against the compass (to hell with the deviation). I find I don’t miss a glass of wine if I have cold herbal tea instead – using the ship’s mug that Tamsin gave me and I didn’t think would be very practical. It’s made of china and I thought it would get broken in five minutes. But now I think it’s one of the best things on the boat. It’s a pain having to hang onto your drink all the time in case it spills.

Wash up in salt water (but rinse the cups and coffee pot with fresh) then wonder about taking the sails down. They’re slatting away as the boat rolls but they are propelling us in the right direction – albeit very, very slowly. Decide to leave them.

OK, so anyone going nowhere like this would need cheering up. So, how about rewarding myself with a Movie Night. I have about a dozen DVDs and a tiny player which plugs into the laptop. The Bluetooth speaker (no defunct with no music) plugs into the earphone socket and, arranging both sleeping bags into a sort of chaise longue, I watched the RomCom Wimbledon – probably seen it a dozen times but my daughter Lottie and I agree that if you really like a film, you can watch it again and again and always get something new out of it.

There were a couple of intermissions to check for shipping and see if the wind had sprung up. Also, it seemed appropriate to have a small glass of grog – after all, it seemed that the chances of having to rush about on deck were next to miniscule (anyway it was a very small glass).

And so, to bed with the two timers set for 90 minutes – which of course turned out to be pointless since this part of the North Atlantic seems particularly deserted and, no, the wind did not return.

Awoke to rain – and still no wind. Went back to bed.

Finally, when it stopped raining at about 0800, I got up and took the sails down. We were now going very slowly in the wrong direction and there was not enough wind flowing over the windvane to correct this.

Breakfast – made the night before – oats, sultanas and powdered milk allowed to soak overnight. Started the last apple.  Chopped it up into tiny cubes to go on top. Perfectly all right, should have bought more.

Remembered I finished the 50/50 sliced bread for lunch yesterday. I brought two loaves with me and now the time has come to start baking. Actually, I really look forward to this. There is nothing, absolutely nothing quite as satisfying as baking your own bread on a long passage – not only the smell or the delight of eating warm bread fresh from the oven but the whole process, watching it rise, seeing it brown…

And I have found a very good boat bread recipe:

Take a wide, flat two litre plastic container. Half fill it with strong bread flour. Add two teaspoonfuls of dried yeast.

Make up half a litre of water including one quarter seawater.

Add the water gradually and mix with a metal spoon to a dough. Do not put your hands in it until you can do so without the dough sticking to them.

Light the oven and put it on the lowest setting.

Knead the dough in the container for ten minutes, adding more flour when it starts to stick to your hands. Put the dough on a metal plate and into the oven to rise for ten to twenty minutes depending on the heat of your oven. When it seems to have stopped rising, scrape it back into the plastic container and knead for a further ten minutes. While you are doing this, have the baking tray in the over to warm.

After kneading the dough a second time, shape it into a ball and coat it lightly with flour. Sprinkle some flour into the baking tray. This will stop it sticking. Do not grease the tray.

Return to the oven and allow to rise again. This time, when it seems to have finished rising, turn up the oven to the maximum setting and bake. Check the colour after 20 minutes and then at five-minute intervals.

When it seems to be the right shade of brown, remove from the oven, turn the bread out of the baking tray and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Then enjoy!

…and at last, at 1800 I can report that the calm is over. After lunch of fresh bread, corned beef and pickles with mayonnaise and HP sauce, I decided that enough was enough. The wind was fluctuating between three and five knots from the starboard quarter (or what would have been the starboard quarter if we had been pointing in the right direction) so I hoisted the cruising chute on its own and sat there steering by hand. After a while I reckoned I had the measure of things and carried on with the Pickwick Papers while steering.

This went on for an hour or so, until it seemed we could have the main without it blanketing the chute… we could…

And finally, after an hour of that, I went below and spent the next hour sewing the frayed edge of the ensign – and we were still on course when it was done, slipping gently over a flat sea at about three-and-a-half knots in the direction of Sao Miguel.

It is now 1830. My belief that calms rarely last more than 24 hours is vindicated. I have quite enjoyed it – and now I think we might investigate the beer locker…

 

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The Black Box

July 16th 2018

The little black box is indeed about the size of a pack of cigarettes – a little bigger, maybe – but a marvel, nevertheless.

Bernard Moitessier dreamed about this. In his book: The Long Way, he mused, deep in the Southern Ocean: “Some day we will have tiny walkie-talkies no bigger than packs of cigarettes, with a range of thousands of miles. Then pals cold communicate without going through the ears of others…”

Well, it’s not a walkie-talkie but, being effectively a Satellite phone, the Iridium-Go can get me onto the internet from anywhere in the world. I tried it from the back garden at home and then used it last week to send four blog posts for my son Hugo to upload. It took nearly 40 minutes by the time I worked out how to do it. Now all I need to know is: Does my $40 a month cover 7KB of data or am I paying $1.25 a minute regardless?

This is urgent because, although the wind has veered today and we are charging off in the right direction at five knots, the towed generator spinning like a mad thing and the ETA suddenly shunted forward to next Tuesday, that is still a week away. “Can I survive a week without music? Spotify is on my old phone along with some 200 songs – everything from Van Morrison to Willie Nelson. And  How am I supposed to practice the clarinet without Humphrey Lyttleton’s Bad Penny Blues to play along to?

It seems that I allowed the phone to run down and, when I charged it up again, Spotify expected me to log back in – but how am I supposed to do that from here?

 

Bored?

July 12th 2018

Won’t you get bored by yourself for all that time?

Well, if there was a day to get bored it was yesterday. Want to know how much progress we made? 17 miles. At this rate the two-week voyage is going to take two months.

But from the very first (three O’clock in the morning) it looked as this was going to be a day of going nowhere. In fact, for pretty much the whole day, the sails were furled, Samsara rolled through 500 in a snappy two seconds and it might have been fairly easy to sit wedged at the chart table and grumble.

Yet, somehow that doesn’t happen out here. We’re now five days out in the Atlantic – it’s three since I’ve seen a ship. I did pick up the world news from a short wave station in Thailand (Did I hear right, Boris Johnson has resigned over Brexit?) But essentially, this a bubble. The world has shrunk to 31ft 10in x 8ft 9in. Time is measured not by the clock but by mealtimes. So, what can I remember of yesterday?

I do remember taking off all my clothes and wandering around the boat in the buff. It felt wonderful – until there was a creeping sensation of parts of me beginning to burn.

Since a bit of maintenance gets done every day, this was clearly the occasion to tackle a really fiddly bit of wood-stripping. It took nearly three hours, feet at awkward angles, braced against the incessant rolling but with a bit of inventiveness (including a Conwy District Council library card to protect the instruments from the sandpaper), I managed to get it all done – and earned the reward of a corned beef sandwich with mayonnaise, pickles and HP sauce.

And I’ve started to write another novel. Ever since publishing the one from the attic on Amazon (see the tab above) felt this nagging urge to do a second. Would really like to know if I’m any good at it  – especially since Number Three Son Owen graduated from the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing course. He has a whole lifetime ahead of him to make his mark as a writer. I seem to have spent mine producing reams of journalism which somehow doesn’t seem to count as a legacy in quite the same way – although if you’re looking for a real journalist I can still quote you Vincent Mulchone verbatim.

So, out came the blue folder with its blank Sainsburys Low Price A4 ruled refill pad and now the first of its 200 sheets contains a basic plot. Without any apparent effort, this was followed by a handful of characters (all pinched from real life – mustn’t forget to add that bit about “any resemblance to persons living or dead”). I’m going to do it the right way this time as well – first chapter and synopsis. Last time I wrote 108,000 words before I sent it to anyone – and they wanted it cut to 60,000.

I’ve been so busy, I’m late for lunch…

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