Oh, well…the parties are over and so are the endless rum punches we had since arriving in Martinique. We still had a few yesterday, our first day at anchor after leaving Port du Marin. We wanted to see the elusive green flash at sunset and they say you see it better after a few rum punches 🙂

Crossing the Atlantic wasn’t always easy but not extremely difficult, at least not physically but more psychologically. For me the toughest times were not the 40kn winds, nor the +5m waves we encountered in the first days but the 4 hours spent in a thunderstorm, with nothing to do about it, but sit and pray you will not be hit by lightning. On arrival, we found out that the boat near us on the pontoon in Port du Marin, was hit by lightning during that storm. When we were in the middle of the storm, I could only think that we were a 24m high lighting bolt in the middle of the sea.

Would we do it again? Yes! During the crossing we said no, but as a German friend from another boat said: saying this, is just as a woman would say she’s not gonna have another child while giving birth (delivering) the first.

The breakages were annoying, but looking at how much repair work the other boats needed to do, I should say…what breakages? Indeed they were minor and the only two we could not repair at sea (and we could in less than 30 minutes, should we had no alternative systems to backup their functionality). These were the chafed/broken halyard and the grey water tank pump.

Joining the rally (Atlantic Odyssey) was a great idea: not because you’re safer in a group, which is not true, but because Paul found friends (French speaking) and it was so good to have someone to wait you on the pontoon on arrival, shake your hand and give you a great introductory speech: “There’s a great boulangerie with croissants, over there, the office is there, the supermarket across the street.”

For those interested, the statistics will follow but I’ll start with a few explanations.
We left Lanzarote but stop for refueling after 3 hours in Puerto Calero. I dived for an hour to clean the propeller and the underbody, so we consider our starting time the moment we left Puerto Calero: November 17th, 17:30.
We used the engine during the first three days as the wind was against us and we needed to go as far west as we could to avoid the bad weather. We also used the engine on two occasions during the crossing when the winds were very light. However, despite we still had 450 liters of diesel, we sailed all the way into Le Marin in a big zig-zag and not started the engine.
We carry 900 liters of diesel in our tank, possibly the largest quantity among all the boats in the rally. We also used diesel for the generator, which we started every day for 3-4
hours to recharge the batteries, make water and cook. Cooking on Seven Seas is on an induction stove, very atypical for a sailing boat but as we anyway needed to charge the batteries the workflow was very good.
We used a dial-up connection via our satellite phone, at 2.4kbps, for getting weather forecasts, position reports, posting on the blog and asking for a few things to be sorted out at home. We didn’t shared our email at sea with anyone as any email larger than 50kb (basically, any photo) would have blocked our line and made impossible to get the needed weather forecasts.
We made water, by desalinating sea water, everyday, about 100-150 liters, as Seven Seas is very fresh water consuming.

Finally the statistics:

Total time: 22 days 18 hours
Motoring time: 102 hours
Sailing time: 18 days 12 hours
Generator hours: 105 hours
Fresh water produced: approx. 2500 liters
Emails sent: 82
Emails received: 128
Diesel consumed: 414 liters

Breakages:
One halyard chafed and broken.
One bolt on a batten car (that holds the mainsail attached to the mast): fixed with a bolt slightly rectified while under way. A big scratch on the hull, from when the anchor dropped on the third day. The cockpit table. A bolt which we replaced after cutting to the right length. The boiling kettle. But it still works.
Our french press. I smashed it against the hull, while trying to washing.

Well that’s it. The next post, soon to come: The Atlantic crossing in photos.

Yesterday we needed to make the entry formalities to Martinique.
So I went to the port office and stated the formalities.
At one point the girl processing our entry asked: “Are you Mr. Peter G.?”. I smiled and say no but I realized Seven Seas knew the way in, as she was here before. Mr. Peter G. was the previous owner of Seven Seas for which, despite I never met him, I have a great deal of respect in relation of how he asked the boat to be built and how well he maintained her.
We always say there are two angels on the boat: Mr. Peter G. when we talk about how the boat was designed and how the systems should work and Piers when it comes to how things should be done, meaning the boat processes 🙂
We always say: “How would have Mr. Peter would have build this?” or “What would Piers do?”

Yes…this morning at 06:30 we crossed the finish line into Le Marin, Martinique.
It was a great journey, more demanding than I thought it will be, tiring at times but with great sailing, fishing, talking, playing.
We’ll publish more now that we are on land and will have access o wifi. And photos too!

I’m tired as I only slept three hours in the past 24 but I would like to thank you for sailing with us, for the comments and appreciations we received and couldn’t read. There’s a long list of people who I want to thank, but first and foremost is Piers, our friend and previous skipper, tutor, helper. Pier encouraged me during the entire year of preparation, trying to keep my moral high when problems seem not to end and finally connected us to Huw to be able to make a team of three to cross the Atlantic (a minimum required by our insurance company).

Chat soon! We’re now going to party!

This post, of yesterday, wasn’t published for an unknown reason. For completeness of the account of our adventure I am re-posting it now:

Yesterday was extremely hot, but a nice day to sail. As we’re not fishing anymore there’s not too much to tell. Maybe just the dive of seagulls (I believe) for fish, which is spectacular but I couldn’t get it into a photo. I thought of fishing to have fresh fish for when we arrive, but as we decided to give Alina a break from cooking for a few days and eat out, I am afraid that the fish will sit in the fridge.
The night started nicely sailing on flat seas quite fast…in a slightly wrong direction. The winds were again strait from behind so we had to deviate from our course. Towards the end of my watch the winds started to pick up but, not too much, just enough to need a reef in the mainsail (reducing the mainsail by about one third). As Huw is a terribly difficult to wake up, I started doing these manoeuvrings myself at night.
On Huw’s watch the boat started to rock and roll in all directions but I managed to sleep OK. Alina woke me up, on her and Paul’s watch as the radar showed we were surrounded by squalls. We furled (packed) the whole headsail and sailed like this for a while. The wind continued shifting so our course was almost straight south (when we needed to go west) so we went on he other side of the wind where the course was just 15 degrees above our straight line to destination.
Despite all temptation I didn’t start the engine as i just feels bad when we can sail reasonably fast (even if in the not so right direction).
It seems we might arrive in the port at night and this will be probably our next challenge as we need to make our way around patches of shallow water, marked here and there by some posts which only a few of them are lit. The moon is still bright and shiny and quite up in the sky after 10 pm so this might help.
The morning looks good, a few clouds in the sky so maybe it’s not gonna be so hot as yesterday and announces another nice sailing day.

This is Seven Seas Adventure, dreaming of cold wine, pina-coladas and standing by! Over!

Last night was definitely the longest night of our passage for me. But to start with, yesterday was the record day for squalls. I didn’t count the but there were at least eleven from morning to dawn. Just before sunset we were heading towards a large dark cloud with its base into the sea, the typical squall cloud. As we approached the cloud, for the first time in the passage, we decided to go around it. two hours later, rain pouring down, wind creeping up and the worst, thunderstorms far on the horizon.
I went to sleep but I woke up two hours later, when the lightning and thunder got closer to the boat despite of our efforts to avoid the weather. The next two hours, we had lightning and thunders all over. Left, right and on top of us. Some discharging in the sea, fortunately far away. Nothing to do, but wait and wait.
Another small sailing yacht was struggling, mostly like we did, a few miles away. When the lightning and rain eased, we started the radar, just to discover that we were surrounded by heavy rain.
I tried all night to avoid the heavy weather by changing course, speeding up, then slowing down but it seemed that whatever I did, the storm did the same. So I gave up and wait. I started the radar every 15 minutes, and finally in the morning, the rain dissipated and although cloudy the weather settled.
We’re now sailing nicely, in the sunshine and only have less than 300 miles to go. We start dreaming of what we would like to have when we arrive: iced drinks, frappucino, pina colada, an “entrecote, a point” (remember we’re heading towards a French island), a bottle of cold Solo Quinta (my favourte Romanian wine, a surprisingly good wine) and so on…

I’m still tired after last night when I didn’t sleep at all so I’ll get back to dreaming of the pleasures at arrival. But I know very well: it’s not over until the boat is tied to the dock in Martinique.

This is Seven Seas Adventure, standing by! Over!

I became very lazy these days. The wind helped us sailing in a more straight line due to a change of direction becoming southeasterly. This is a bit of an anomaly in this area where the winds are supposed to be NE. It does help us however, as now we are able to sail at 6-7 kn directly, without zig-zag-ing, to or destination.
It also helped me to understand, what I couldn’t really understand reading weather books: this is the effect of a large air mass spinning clockwise, named “the Azores High” because it has it’s center more or less above he Azores Islands, thousands of km away. This mass is currently moving towards East and this makes the wind to blow from a different direction than usual. It will return in a few days to it’s “normal” place and so will the winds to their “normal direction”.
Nothing else…or…ah yes, just a few squalls (the mini-storms I was talking an a previous post), one flying fish (only) and another breakage.
The other day, during lunch, we just saw our largest headsail (81 sqm) falling into the water. Fortunately, the metal swivel at the top didn’t hit anything and got directly in the water.
The halyard (the rope, going through and coming up at the top of the mast) used to hoist the sail, broke due to the constant chafe created by the movement of the sail. Fortunately there’s a second halyard that we could use to hoist this large sail when the wind will get again very light. But it’s annoying 🙂

Tonight Saint Nicholas will put presents in Paul’s shoes and he is very keen to clean and polish them in order to receive the nicest presents.

625 nautical miles to go, the chart plotter (the equivalent of a GPS in a car) tells us we have 4 more days to go, but I believe it will be 5 days as the winds will get very light after Saturday and we’re not yet in motoring range (i.e. we don’t have enough diesel to cover all the remaining distance)…just got interrupted by a squall with all the associated sail reducing manoeuvrings…the sea state (waves) behind this squall, which covered a larger area than usual, is not so nice bu won’t last long.

That’s it for today!
This is Seven Seas Adventure! Over! (to you)

We continued with the good weather and peaceful sailing and generally made good progress last days. We hoisted all sails we could for a while, then we switched to sailing just with our headsail as this allows us to sail at a better angle even if this means sacrificing some speed. All in all, we just passed the point where we have less than 1000 nautical miles to go (probably about 7 days to destination).
At night, winds drop, and sailing is slow, with sails flapping with a loud bang when they get filled again by the wind. Almost depressing 🙂

And so were the three fish we missed during the last two days. I told you about the like-scissors-cut, lucky lure, in my last post. I gave it another chance and another fish took a bite but I lost it trying to get it on board. And again…and again…

I changed the lure to one which was labeled as “tuna waster”. Some combination of burgundy feathers and red plastic “tentacles”.
One hour later, I got a strike (as it’s said in fishing terms) and after not too much fight I had on board a nice, 70-80 cm wahoo fish (I believe slightly below 2 kg). I never had one, neither fishing or in a restaurant, so I was looking forward to it. We gutted, gilled and chopped the fish and Alina wanted to cook it in he oven with vegetables and serve it with polenta.
I reluctantly said yes, as she was dreaming of cooking the fish this way for some time already. And maybe because yesterday was the national day of Romania and a polenta would have been appropriate :).
As the fish was small, I cast the line out again with the “tuna waster”. It is true, I am dreaming of a tuna, made sashimi or our favorite Peruvian style ceviche, right then and there. Ceviche is basicaly raw fish with a lot of lime and lemon juice, some red onion, coriander leaves, salt and a touch of olive oil. Yummmmy!
Another half an hour or so, another bite. I went to pick up the rod and I could hardly hold it. A monster! And this started the toughest fight I had with a fish until now. I don’t know how long it lasted, maybe 20-30 minutes, maybe more, but I know that I was exhausted and my arms were hurting like hell. A couple of times I’ve put the rod in the holder and the fish managed to almost get snatch it.
Two years ago, on my first rod and fishing experience, I caught a quite big tuna and managed to bring it near the boat after some really long fight. But, as I didn’t know much about fishing, I asked Alina to get the camera, take photos, etc. while I’ve put the rod in the holder and let the fish in the water, by the boat. Big mistake! Revived by getting back in the water, he snapped and broke my holder and gone were fish, rod, reel, holder to the bottom of the sea. For the rest of the trip, I felt like the main character in “The old man and the sea”.
Back to our fish, this time the rod was tied to the boat with a string, so I was less worried about losing it. A few more episodes of reeling-in the fishing line and we see the monster: a quite large dorado (or Mahi-Mahi) but definitely much smaller than I thought judging by the fight. I would have preferred a tuna as this was the 4th dorado we hooked since we left Gibraltar.
After a bit of action and we managed to get it on board. It was about 1 m long and I weighted it, just to be surprised that it was only 11kg. I am wondering, if I fought so much for a 10 kg fish, how do those people manage to catch a 50 or 100 kg tuna or marlin?
Gutting, cleaning, filleting were tedious jobs and at the end my back hurt terribly. My new, clean, clothing – as I had the other day my mid-Atlantic shower – are all stained and smelly. I took an aspirin fro my back pain and rested for a while while Alina cooked the “fish on a vegetable bed served with polenta”. Which was delicious, by the way.

Paul doesn’t want to eat anymore meat and fish as he realized that one has to kill the fish or animal in order to eat it. So part of the fishing procedure is to distract Paul’s attention from the on-boarding of the fish and what follows.

This would be the fishy stuff of the last days and as we have enough fish for a week or more, we stopped fishing. Keep your fingers crossed for the winds to be good, for us to arrive well and in time in Martinique.

This is Seven Seas! Over! (to you).

PS: I would like to hear you after the “Over!” but untill we get on land there’s very little way to read comments if there are any).

We had some almost great sailing days since my last post. The wind is a bit too weak (only 10-12 knots) and sometimes from the wrong angle, as I explained in my last post, but overall great sailing. Seas calmed down to 1-2 m waves, the sun shines and it’s a lot warmer. At night we don’t need anymore our sailing clothing but just a t-shirt and maybe a thin jacket.

Alina and Paul started working on Christmas surprises for family and friends and life is good except that it seems we will run out of milk and juice before we reach the Caribbean. I lost yesterday a fish. The bite was strong but not the strongest I’ve had so far and I didn’t see the fish so I can’t tell you more. Just the lure, in the shape of a squid looks now as if was cut with scissors. This was the only byte since we caught the two dorado.

So, what’s wrong with the title? Well, this is the dark side of long distance sailing: breakages. We had a number of breakages since we left Barcelona, some requiring sailing tricks which you learn in school and then you forget as you think that this could never happen to you in reality. I’ll tell you more in about this in my next post. For now, the last thing that broke was one of our waste pumps, that pumps…now you know what.
Boats discharge their waste water, the water from the toilets with everything that goes in the toilet, and galley (the boat’s kitchen) into a tank and then a pump empties the tank from time to time. This is in order not to discharge your dirty water when you are in port for example, but use some pump out facility of the port. Some boat have grey water and black water tanks, some can bypass the tanks when offshore discharging directly in the seas. Seven Seas has two tanks, one that serves he kitchen and our toilet and another one for the front toilet, and has no bypass feature. The pump for the kitchen and our toilet (that serves three people) is broken and doesn’t pump anymore. In the last two days, we tried to repair the pump, or better said to see what’s wrong and that meant dismantling the pump and get a lot of sh%& on our hands and in the bilges (the part of the boat that’s under the floor). We’ll give it a try again today, but until then we’re left with one sink, that’s in the forward heads (the marine term for toilet) and making cooking and washing dishes a difficult task.

Before I finish this post, let me introduce you to marine radio and Hollywood stupidity. You’ve all seen those war movies whee some actor talks on the radio something like: “This is StupidActor, over and out.” Well, there are a number of keywords in radio conversations: one is “over” which means “I’m passing the microphone over to you” and another one is “out” tha means “I’m outta here”. So over and out means “I’m passing the microphone to you but I’m outta here, I don’t give a damn on what you will say”. On passage we are required to always listen to the emergency channel (channel 16). In 14 days we received just one call from a buddy yacht but the signal was weak and we couldn’t chat. We only visually saw one boat and about five on our radar/transponder screen. On an overnight passage from Palma to Barcelona we usually see 10-20 and one night I had to contact three of them to agree how to avoid hitting each other. You know, us 14 m sailing boat, almost the highest priority (i.e. the others should go around us) against a 200 m tanker or container-ship. It’s always a tradeoff between the rules and the priority of the biggest.

Thanks for listening! This is Seven Seas, Over (to you)