Welcome back to the blog...as most of you know, we've been on the move quite a bit since the last time we posted, and one of these days, we'll hopefully catch up with a few "throwback" posts. In the meantime, we want to get the blog going again, so we'll just jump in with the present day action...stay tuned for "back dates" on a few recent adventures...
Leaving Arrecife on Lanzarote Island, we could feel the excitement building, as the departure marks the beginning of a new chapter for us. While we've had a great couple of years exploring Europe in times of Covid, it's been frustrating (as it has for everyone), with nearly 1 of the 2 years in Europe actually spent in lockdowns in both France and England. While we've now logged over 5,000 miles in new Bravo, we are leaving Europe with some unfinished business. Most frustratingly, Norway and Svalbard remained closed for both summers here, but we've had great experiences and met some truly wonderful people wherever we went, in France, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Canaries, and now Cabo Verde. Not to mention fantastic trips to Iceland and Morocco. So this passage, our longest on new Bravo, had real significance for us.
With no time remaining on our Schengen visa, it was time for departure from the Canaries (even though it is several hundred miles from mainland Europe, it is considered part of Spain, and thus subject to the same damned Schengen clock). After a quick haul out in Arrecife to fix a leaking shaft seal, we were good to go. Unfortunately the weather was not keen to cooperate. Looking at an enormous wind hole extending for much of the passage route to Cabo Verde, we watched as our days ticked by on the Schengen meter, and after remaining for a few extra days past expiration....it was time to go, despite the lack of wind which was predicted on all 6 forecast models that we studied.
The first day was light but decent sailing under our gennaker, which gave us a decent push in the dying breeze. But that evening it died altogether, and we fired up the engine for what we guessed could be a long spell of motoring in under 4 knots of wind.
After a couple of hours, though, the wind increased to around 15 knots, from directly aft. Perfect conditions for setting the pole, and heading downwind wing and wing for the next several hours, making 7-8 knots right on the rhum line to Cabo Verde. We had lots of dolphins to escort us south...
By 3am, as the wind swung towards the east, we jibed and watched the wind steadily rise. We were only 50-70 miles off the west African coast, so there was no real swell to deal with. But as we quickly saw the steady (and completely unforcast) south easterly breeze on the port beam increase to 25, 30, 40 knots with higher gusts, we had a fairly sleepless night and early morning of 3-4 meter wind waves and very confused seas, of wind against swell. We were continually adding a reef, until we were down to a 3rd reef and staysail. While the boat was doing fine, our real concern was how high it might go? 60? 70 knots? Since the forecast models were all showing around 18 knots out of the NE we really had no clue what the max winds might be. There was not much swell, as the winds were coming from Africa, just 50 miles to the east. Even the confused wind waves grew to a lumpy 3 meters or so, as they met the smaller swell coming from the west. But finally, after a few sustained 50 knot gusts, the wind began to subside, and back to the ENE. It steadily decreased into the 30's and 20's. The reefs were shaken out one by one, and we enjoyed some terrific sailing again. Life was good!
The sky during all of this wind had an eerie, red glow, from daylight on. At first, we had no idea why. We'd never seen a sky like this!!! The sun, even at mid day, was nearly blotted out, and we realized that the winds had been from a sand storm across the Sahara desert 50 miles away.
The real bummer was the amount of dust that was deposited on the boat, especially on the windward side! Every line, shroud, sail, and bit of equipment was coated with red dust and grit. It would take a lot to get it clean, and I'm sure we'll be seeing mud puddles around the base of all shrouds for months or years to come whenever it rains!
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Moonrise in the haze
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The wind continued to lighten to around 5 knots, and we were motor sailing again, as we entered the hole which we'd be in for the next couple of days. Warm sun and blue skies, it wasn't all bad. We read a lot, and caught up on sleep which had been missed during the sand storm. We fished continuously, but without any luck.
We had some dirty fuel problems on this passage, very likely from some diesel we took on in Arrecife. It was very fine, so got past the 10 micron Racor primary filter, and clogged the secondary Volvo filter. So we did a couple of filter changes to get it sorted out. We'll look at fuel polishing to hopefully clean the tanks in Cape Verde.
<GEEK ALERT!!!>
Another issue that we faced during our passage was perhaps really a non-issue, but due to a combination of unrelated circumstances, felt significant at the time. Like most sailors these days, we have an AIS, an electronic gizmo call which shows us all ships around us, and broadcasts our location, speed and course. Really helps to reduce stress of crossing situations.
AIS signals are broadcast on nearly the same frequency as marine VHF radio. Ordinarily reception of these signals is limited to line-of-sight. Depending on the height of the antenna at each end, the signals are cut off by the curvature of the earth. So typically we see ships out to just 40 or 50 miles away. During the early part of this passage, we noticed reception of ships up to 600 miles distant, extending far down the African coast. Due to a phenomena known as tropospheric ducting, which typically occurs during extended periods of still, high pressure areas, VHF signals can be bent off of the layer of the atmosphere known as the troposphere. Our navigation screens were lit up by 100 or more ships at any one time, looking more like the English Channel than a remote part of the African Atlantic.
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| Ships showing out to over 600 miles!!! |
However, this ducting does not last forever, as we were soon to discover! We had been motor sailing for many hours near two other boats also heading toward Cabo Verde. All of a sudden, while on watch, Adam saw most of the distant ships start to disappear from the screen over a period of just a couple of minutes. And then the sail boats, one around 5 miles away, and one 10, disappeared within an hour of each other. It looked like we had a problem with our AIS reception. We called one of the two boats, who said he could not see us either. So we figured that not only were we not seeing boats, but we were no longer transmitting....clearly we had a problem with our AIS system.
The built in diagnostics of the AIS equipment all checked out fine. I got out a long cable, and tried a second antenna, the one on the arch vs the one at the mast head. The VSWR on both antennas looked fine, and the AIS said that it was transmitting without difficulty! We were completely stumped.
We were sorry to lose our AIS, but not too worried as we headed into our last night of the passage, since we've navigated for years with radar. But just as we were discussing this, we got an error message on our radar screen "Power OFF", even though the power was on, and the radar had been functioning normally up to that moment. A few minutes later, this message changed to "NO RADAR", and when scanning for connected devices, no radar was seen. Not good..... We'd now have a night approaching the Mindelo harbor with no AIS or radar. Certainly possible, using ships lights to determine their direction and our crossing paths. But certainly more stressful.
As we were perhaps 100 miles from Cabo Verde, all of a sudden we began to see AIS targets appear, and then, without warning, the radar went to "Stand by" mode, indicating that was working fine. Yay! It turned into a normal night watch as we closed with the islands.
So now the question becomes, what went wrong with the electronics?
First the AIS: We could understand why the distant ships had disappeared as atmospheric conditions changed, but what about the two nearby sailboats? Why had they disappeared, and why had the one that we called told us that he could not see us either? Well.....after we arrived here in Cabo Verde, we met up with the two skippers. One told us that he now knows that he has an AIS problem on his boat, and was hard at work cleaning connections. He was not able to receive even large ships, so that explained him. And the other guy said that he is always turning his AIS on and off, to save batteries when he doesn't see any targets of concern, so he must have turned it off at around the same time that we lost the first boat, and the distant ships disappeared! A series of coincidences that had us tearing the boat apart to jury rig our second VHF antenna, and several hours of frustration!!! Ah well.....boats!!!
Now the radar: We've gone through the system carefully looking for loose connections or cuts in the cables. Nothing so far. The radar continues to function normally, but there is clearly an intermittant problem, the hardest to trouble shoot.....stay tuned! We really would like to get confidence that we've found the fault before heading to the Caribbean in a week or two.
All in all, Bravo did very well on this, her longest passage to date. She did fine in the gusty sandstorm, so gave us a good boost in confidence in her capabilities. Our fuel burn rate was good, averaging around 4.5 liters/hour, at around 1900 rpm, which gives us a speed of 6.5-7 knots, which was a bit better than we've estimated in the past. All good. Nothing broke, and except for the intermittant radar problem, we have few repairs to get ready for the next passage west.
In spite of the amount of motoring, it was a surprisingly varied passage, with more sail changes and reefs in and reefs out per day than normal for passage making. Cindi especially got a good workout at the mast, and many an off watch sleep was interupted for both of us!
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| LAND HO!!! Arrival is always a great feeling! |
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The all important passage beer.......cheers!
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We'll now do a bit of exploring of this island, Sao Vicente, and our neighbor to the north, Santo Antao. There is supposed to be some great hiking over there, but no really good anchorages, so we've booked a couple of nights in a guest house, and will take the ferry tomorrow.....stay tuned! In a week or two we'll head off to the Caribbean.
