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.