Day 17 - at sea

Our voyage is turning out to be a long one.
We are having to dodge a weathersystem with high winds.
We are at 31N and the weather system is passing to the north of us.
We have had nice sailing wind the past 20 hrs. and it looks as it will continue like this for
at least another 24 hrs. We have approx 870nm left to Horta. ETA is now 28. May.

We have been in company with S/Y Fathom. A 28 foot UK sailboat also bound for Horta.
He was very low on diesel and we gave him 20L. The transfere was easy as we had 2 empty 25 liter cans. 10L in each and a rope between them and over the side. Thom on Fathom fished them out with his boat-hook.

Grete ready to drop the diesel cans.

Thom fishing out the cans.

Thom is on the way home to Yarmouth harbor on the Isle of Wight - returning from a 4 year trip around the world.

This morning we were passed by a large norwegian LNG (gas) tanker.
She was M/T Arctic Princess under way to USA to load LNG for Europe.
Normally they are on contract with Equinor and transport LNG from Snøhvit/Malkøya gass terminal ved Hammerfest.

The mate we talked to on the VHF was a sailer aswell and his boat was in a marina in Grenada.
He was very frustrated with the fact that Grenada is closed by the Covid-19 restrictions - and he can't get to his boat.

We are both well, boat is all OK - but we look forward to reach Horta.

Still on 14.328 SSB/CW at 1900Z and 2130Z - and condx to N.Europe been very good.

Grete & Geir

Day 14 - at sea :)

Time for another update on our voyage.

First of all Congratulations to all Norwegians. May 17th is our independence day.
Normally a day of celebration with friends and family, parades and parties.
But as so much more the pandemic problem has made that most arrangements have had to be cancelled.

However, people was asked to sing our national anthem in unison at 13:02 Norwegian time.
We on Ocean Viking did the same ( at 08:02 our local time) - on the aft deck.

We have a video to proove it ;) But its too large to upload from out here at sea.

We have had various weather.
But sadly not the perfect wind that has given us the speed we had hoped for.
We had a strategy staying below 30 degrees North. That made us sail towards the east for a while. But sadly the wind died late in the evening and we found ourselves rocking around in swell/confusing seas with no speed and a consecuence of that, no steering speed. All sails down, engine started and we finally managed to point the boat in the right direction and the autopilot took care of the rest.

The day after we decided to sail above 30N - to put us in a better position for change in the wind direction.
This morning the wind swung around from the East to South West and increased to 15 knots.
We are now sailing happily doing 6 knots.Looks like we will have this wind for a few days.
We are steering 080 degrees - towards the Azores.
Distance to our destination, Horta, is now 1000 nm and we hope to arrive by the 27.05 (Geirs birthday).

We both go to sleep at night.
We take turn in waking up to check, sails, speed/course and for any eventual traffic in the area.
We have radar with a guard ring and an AIS system. They will warn us if any conflicting traffic.
Out in the ocean you don't see much traffic. On average 3-5 ships a week.
Those that come close know what they are doing and they always keep a safe distance to us.

Grete baked bread and bread rolls the other day. The smell of freshly baked bread is so nice when you are out to sea. They were eaten with good layers of butter and jam ;)

The radio connection on amateur radio to Norway has been very good the past days.
It's so nice to hear the familiar voices of old ham friends ;) I am on the air every day
at 1900Z and 2130Z on 14328. I am listening for calls on both SSB and CW.

Radio sked times + more

Days are passing pretty fast out here. Keeping an eye out for the weather and adjusting sails
and our Hydrovane steering keeps us occupied.

The Hydrovane is a fantastic gadget.
It is a complete independent rudder which is controlled by the wind/direction.
As long as the winddirection is constant the rudder steers the boat at a steady heading.
If the wind changes a few degrees we wills till maintain speed as the windangle into the sails
will still be the same. So we need to keep an eye of our heading once in a while.

We now have around 1450 nautical miles left to reach Horta on the Azores.
The weather outlook looks promissing and we hope to arrive before may 25th.
Our position can be found on winlink.org - look at the links at top of this blog.

I am on the air from the boat on HAM radio on frequency 14.328 every day
at 1900 and 2130 UTC . Please feel free to give me a call.

73's Geir - LA5ZO/MM

Days 5 at sea - and more

Time for an update.

We are now well into day 5 of our 3 week crossing to Horta in the Azores.
The weather has been fine, although we would have liked a more SW wind direction.
Wind has in general been from E-SE between 10 to 15 knots. That gives us only a max speed of 5-6 knots and average around 4 knots.
We are on a course of 030 to 040 degrees sailing up to a waypoint
at 25N and 55W. Here we are hoping to find better winds, we might have to go even a little further up north. If we get too far north there is risk of running into gales, so we are watching the forecasts carefully.

Days go by by reading, Ham radio and navigation/weather for Geir.
Grete spends much of her time reading and cooking dinners. She even baked a large pan of Foccatia bread which tasted great.

Been seaching the radio for english news stations. But it looks like they have all closed down and moved to the internet. Our daughter, Synne, has started compiling news into emails, something we are very greatfull for.

It is still very hot onboard. Air temperature is 28-30 degrees and the sea 26C - that means we are being heated from all sides :)
We are sweatting all day and constantly feel like having a shower. But we have to conserve our fresh water supply as we have no water-maker. When we start to smell too bad, we have a quick rinse with soap and water - and it feels fantastic.

As mentioned above, Geir spends much of his time on the radio. Checks in on different Sail/Cruiser nets on shortwave where you can talk to other sailboats under way and get weather reports etc.
He also talk to fellow radio amateurs all over the world. Last night a long chat with Ross (ZL1WN), a friendly guy in New Zeeland, and with Mike (KX4WC/AM) who was a pilot of an airliner flying from Philadelphia to Los Angles - at the time they were overhead Cedar Rapids.
Geir also have a scheduled radio contact (@19Z on 14328kHz) with Ola (EA5/LA2PC) - a Norwegian in his summer home south of Alicante/Spain. So far only a few weak station has been heard from Norway.

Leif Molle (LA3ZH) in Kristiansand is a very faithfull and polite weather-router - and sends us the weather forecast every day
for our area. In addition we download weather info via our shortwave email system called Winlink.

AWOB (All Well On Board)

Grete & Geir

On our way accross the Atlantic

We departed from Martinique in the morning 3rd. May.

We have been at anchor at Sainte-Anne beach for a few days while fixing our steering problem.
As we immediately went in 2 weeks quarantine - we were not allowed to go ashore.
But we were hailed by othe boats who offered to go shopping, take our rubbish ashore etc.
The cruising community is very nice and helpful. We anchored near 3 Norwegian boats.
There must have been more than a hundred sailboats there.

We were also permitted to stay while we waited for a workable weather window to start our Atlantic crossing. The steering problem turned out to be an easy fix. The wires connecting to stering wheel to the rudder had become slack and that n cuased the rudde to have "play".
The wires have been tightened and steering is now working very well.

However we are now siling using the Hydrovane wind rudder.It performs very well.
The main rudder is locked in midship.

We are not happy with our main sail. We had it made in Falmouth in august
and so far never sailed upwind with it. We are struggeling to get vove 30 degrees to the wind.
That means we will use some more time to get us into the easterny going trade winds
that will take us to the Azores.

We have lots of food, drinks and freshwater so we will survive ;)
Radio, reading and knitting keeps us from boredom. We also have a few DVDs to watch.
Oh - we purchased a new portable fridge in Saint-Anne. It is so much more efficient than
the built- in we have and uses very little electricity. We have turned the built in- off.

The weather is still hot. Seatemp around 26C and air 28-30C - we look forward to
when it will drop a bit. Sea state is fine. Waves between 1.5 to 2m and an occational one a little higher.

In Martinique

We were supposed to sail non-stop Grenada to Azores via Guadeloupe.
We had planned to anchor in Guadeloupe to wait on a good weather window, but our request to anchor was turned down. The island is closed due to COVID-19 and only EU boats were accepted.
And EU in Guadeloupe doesn't include EEC/Schengen countries - like Norway.

We left Grenada at noon on Friday 24th. The evening the next day we had noticed a growing problem with the boat steering was behaving poorly.
The boat seem to dift off 45 degrees to port - this was much to much to be caused by ocean currents. In addition the autopilot or manual steering could not make the boat turn back on wanted track.
Same fault was there even using the wind vane rudder.
Many thoughts ran through our minds while trying to figure out why - and what could be wrong.
We spent hours testing and discussing - but in the end we set the boat on course towards Guadeloupe with the unwanted drift to port. We slept very little that night.

At first daylight we managed to set the main rudder midship and lock it.
We turned the boat using our Hydrovane wind rudder and set course to Martinique island - which was 5 nautical miles to our ENE. We telephoned the Maritime Rescue Coordinator Centre in Fort de France and explained our situation and requested permisson to come and anchor for repair. They were very polite - and here there was no talk of "only EU boats accepted".

On top of this our email on shortwave wouldn't work. But Geir managed to fix it and we could have witten communication with the MRCC in Fort de France.

The trip in was a long one. We were 60 nautical miles out and we were only doing 2-3 knots as we had wind/sea against us. We motored all the way and used 24 hours to get in.
30 minutes before we arrived our anchorage we were called on the radio and we got the official permit to anchor.

Grete happy for visiting another island.

Our Anchorage oposite Saint Anne

Our anchorage looking west

Many charterboats and no costumers.

We haven't starting looking for the fault yet. Today we have slept and Grete has gone for a swim 3 times already.
We are ut anchor in 4 meters depth in crystal clear water. We are in quarantine for 2 weeks - but that doesn't matter to us - as we don't need anything onshore. We will remain here untill the steering is fixed and the weather for the first days of the Atlantic crossing looks good.

3 weeks in Grenada

Yesterday we passed 3 weeks moored in Grenada.

We have access to what we need here, but things are more difficult to get.
Not because of shortages, but because of the cerfew that has been put in place shops are not allowed to stay open all day.

Everyone is to be confined in their home and not allowed to leave their house/property.
Shopping is only allowed at special shopping days/hours and this leeds to crowding and loooong queues.

This morning Geir and Swedish boat neighbour Lasse - queued up for the local supermarket.
The line was almost 500m long an hour before the supermarket opened.

Supermarket - with the long queue (not visible here)

The progress was very slow, as it looked like they had 3 queues merging into one outside the premises. After having waited in the increasing heat from the sun for nearly 3 hours, we gave up.

We have access to other sources - who can buy and deliver stuff, but at a little higher price.
So we'd rather do that.

Here on the Ocean Viking we used a super yacht delivery who supplied us with, milk, juices, drinks, beer and drinking water - we should have more than enough to reach the Azores and perhaps Norway.

The other night a van showed up in the marina - selling fresh vegetables. Next day Grete made us a great salad for dinner.

Well, weather is great, beer is cold and our health great.
We will probably remain here untill the 20th April.

We will then start the trip up to Antigua and from there set course for the Azores.
The distance to the Azores will depend of the weather route we choose.
As it looks like this time of the year we will sail north 3-4 days from Antigua, then turn ENE for 10 days and then head straight to Horta the last week.  Finding the right wind is important.
To go too far north can get us too close to high winds, too far south in too calm areas.
So obtaining weather updates often is recommended,

Will be back with updates as we start sailing.