Across the pond

On Monday 11 December 2023 at 16:15 local time, Lulu crossed the finish line of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) after 22 days and 7 hours of sailing. It was our first ever race, so all the official start countdowns and finish line confirmations were new for us, and made it extra special. The sails came down quickly and we motored into the harbor, where we were met by cheering ARC participants both lined along the docks and on their boats. It was touching to see how many of the new friends we made both in Gran Canaria and on the ocean were there to welcome us to Saint Lucia. Many people followed us in real time on the YB app, you can see the results on the World Cruising Club homepage under Rallies – ARC 2023 – Fleet Viewer (https://www.worldcruising.com/arc/eventfleetviewer.aspx).

The trip passed by quickly, the days flowing into an easy routine of night watches and daily chores. Since it was just the two of us onboard, we split the evening from 8pm to 8am into three hour watches, where one of us slept and the other was on deck. Although we were often tired, we could take naps when needed during the day and generally had no problems with the interrupted sleep schedule. On the whole we had a wonderful trip, only a few issues, and otherwise lovely days of fair winds, excellent sailing and beautiful weather with gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. Jodi wanted to arrive in Saint Lucia in time to celebrate Saint Lucia day on 13 December, which was perfect timing.

Now we have landed in the Caribbean, cleared into our first country (Saint Lucia), and are ready to start exploring. The ARC has festivities planned through Saturday the 16th, so we will stay around Rodney Bay for this first week, perhaps taking off for other parts of the island or simply moving out to the anchorage in front of the bay. One of the first questions that everyone asks is “what next”? We don’t have a plan. The plan was to get here, now we are going to cruise around and see how we enjoy the lifestyle. We have about 6 months – until mid-May – to sail the islands before we have to move to avoid hurricanes.

There is more drama in describing the things that went wrong, however; so here comes that part. Directly on the first day our solar panel didn’t charge, but after we emptied the “garage” into the cockpit and Magnus crawled around for a while, he was able to determine that some cables were not connecting properly and was able to re-connect them. We ran the motor a bit, there was no wind and the sails were flapping and banging in the rolling waves, we knew there would be wind just south of us so we tried to catch up to it.

On the second day Magnus was back in the garage, this time because we smelled fuel in the cabin. Turns out our little plastic fuel tank with gasoline for the dinghy motor had sprung a small leak, we managed to contain the problem and stop further leaks. As a reward, we caught our first mahi-mahi that night, too late for dinner but fresh fish was on the menu for the next day.

The third day we also ran the motor for a couple of hours, until we had 6 knots / 3 m/s of apparent wind and could hoist our beautiful Tradewind sail. Initially we used it as a code zero sail, sailing at a broad reach together with our mainsail, and it worked wonderfully. We were able to sail in as little as 1,8 m/s or approximately 3,5 knots of apparent wind. It was a slow day, the fewest nautical miles in one day of the whole trip, but relaxing. That was the last time we used the motor to move until we crossed the finish line.

Days fell into a pattern, we fished until the 23rd of November (Thanksgiving) when we had two lines out and caught two 5-kilo (10 lb) mahi-mahi at the same time. Since we don’t have a freezer, the fish could only keep for a limited time. Vacuum packing the fish helps extend the time, but I still didn’t want to have fish for more than a week, so we ate mahi-mahi for lunch and dinner for six of seven days. Pan-fried fish, fish baked in a foil package, battered fish, fish in a hearty fish soup, fish tacos, fish in a stir fry….

One thing that we had to look forward to were small meals and treats that we had planned as special milestone menus. The first was Thanksgiving, we had pumpkin-filled ravioli with a sauce of browned butter, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar and toasted pecan nuts. A favorite recipe from home, and we actually found pumpkin ravioli in a store in Las Palmas, so very easy to make. We also had a “halfway party” where we had a small cup of champagne and shared some with King Neptune according to sailing tradition; Swedish gingerbread cookies on first and second Advent; and lots of other treats to keep the meals fun and interesting.

Entertainment-wise, Magnus had one compact disk with him from home that had several albums on it, and we had Spotify for most of the trip but it stopped working the last week – too long without being able to connect to the internet. Additionally, he played his various instruments – we have a guitar, a mandolin and an accordion with us. Otherwise it was comforting to listen to the sounds of the ocean, and something wonderful to sit quietly and stare into the starry night sky. We downloaded the whole Harry Potter book series onto Jodi’s Kindle before the trip and took turns reading on our night shifts, and had other books on the boat. We even played a few rounds of Yahtzee, but it was generally too windy and rolly in the cockpit to play games and we didn’t want to sit in the salon.

Sounds are an obsession on the ocean, there are many but it is also important that you recognize each sound. One of the first sounds Magnus noticed was the sound of our spinnaker halyard rubbing against the fitting where it exited the mast. We used our IridiumGo! to contact the riggers in Gothenburg and also North Sails, and received the advice to shorten the halyard so that if there was any chafe, it would hit a different spot.

Our IridiumGo! was our tool for communication during the trip, a satellite-based service which can retrieve small data files and support even voice calling. One night Magnus smelled warm electronics, and the IridiumGo! had begun overheating. Being an electrical engineer and having worked with batteries, Magnus had all the necessary tools onboard and was able to ascertain that it was the charging mechanism and not the battery that was at fault. Subsequently he built an external charging unit to charge the battery, and we were able to continue to download weather and messages. The team at IridiumGo! were really helpful to us, they responded immediately to questions no matter the day or time, and there was a replacement unit waiting for us in Saint Lucia when we arrived, even though our unit was past warranty.

Back to the sail – we took down the Tradewind sail and Magnus tied off a section at the top, to see if having the halyard at a different point would stop the noise. The halyard looked ok otherwise, a bit flattened but that didn’t seem like a problem to us. Unfortunately, because Magnus tied the line off instead of cutting it, he had secured the remaining line below the swivel at the top – something we didn’t notice until the next day. Since there was a risk that the line would interfere with the swivel and our ability to reef the sail in strong winds, we had to take the sail down again.

Taking the sails down in the middle of the ocean is not fun, so we waited one day for lighter winds and then took the sail back down. Since the halyard made just as much noise in the new spot and we didn’t see any signs of the line threads breaking or being damaged other than being a bit flattened, Magnus returned the halyard to the original position and we raised the sail. That was our mistake, we should have gone ahead and cut the line, and kept cutting it every few days.

After another day or so, at 04:30 in the morning on 1 December, Jodi awoke to a large cracking noise and flew out of bed. Magnus confirmed the sail was down, the halyard had snapped off. In falling, the poles we used to push out the ends of the sails had both broken against the shrouds (wires) on the sides of the boat, and everything was in the ocean trailing under the boat. We had to carefully untie the lines securing different parts of the sail to the boat, until we were able to get the sail to one side and flowing freely so that we could lift it into the boat.

We managed to rescue everything – all the lines, poles and the beautiful sail. As far as we have been able to see, the sail didn’t take any damage from the fall. We washed it off as best we could with fresh water from our tanks, and spread it out around the cockpit for two days to get it to dry as best we could before stuffing it into the sail bag and securing it on deck. Now the question was how to best sail – we hadn’t really planned on sailing downwind without our Tradewind sail.

Several sailing options were tried. The first day we just had our main sail out while we got everything organized, we still had 4,5 knots of speed with just the main which is decent for Lulu. Then we started trying wing-on-wing variations, beginning with the main and the genoa. However, the Atlantic is very rolly, with waves coming from two directions always and sometimes even three, which means that unless the winds are stronger, the sails will lose air on the dips of the rolls and then refill their air with a loud snap, often the main making a great crashing sound.

Those sounds worried us, we really didn’t want to lose our boom or any other part of the mast or rigging, so we tried different angels of the main sail to keep it better filled; reefing it; different sailing angles – until finally Magnus was able to use rivets and saws onboard to create a new pole from one of our damaged poles. It was enough to pole out a reefed genoa, which made it much more stable in the rolling seas. After that, we also paired it with our cutter sail instead of the main, which made the ride slightly smoother and took away our worst worries about the wear and tear on the main and the rigging.

More slowly than before but still with ok speed, we made our way toward Saint Lucia day by day. We changed the sail options often, switching sides for the sails and switching sails. We always had a preventer on the main when we used it to keep the boom from swinging, but also were cognizant of the risk of the preventer breaking under too much strain. We had no squalls until the last week, we could see lightning far off and larger squalls moving around, but our path was thankfully clear until the very last couple of days.

Another sound that Jodi noticed on a night watch was a clicking noise from our hydrogenerator, Remoran Wave 3. It makes a lot of different noises depending upon whether the battery is charged or not, how fast the boat is moving, and other parameters – but there was a new noise. At breakfast it was decided that Magnus would check to see if the mounting rail was secure, because the Remoran had been pulled through some very intense seas for over two weeks. Sure enough, the fastening screws had begun to loosen, and Magnus was able to tighten them. Another turn emptying out the “garage” into the cockpit, crawling into an itty bitty space and performing maintenance in a heavily moving boat.

Rolling seas mean that you are never still, nothing on the boat is still. Simple things like pouring water become hard, and even keeping your seat is work. I often sat next to our largest winches and had an arm around the winch to keep me seated, or else I had my feet propped up on the opposite bench. Sleeping wasn’t a problem because we were always exhausted when we got to bed, and our quarter berth where we “hot bunked” during the trip has a special design where we can raise the side of the bunk so it is like sleeping in a bathtub-shaped bed – no risk of rolling out of bed.

Making meals was a challenge, because of the constant roll, and one morning at breakfast I poured a big bowl of yoghurt for Magnus and set it down only to have a wave come and shake the boat, sending the yoghurt flying. The yoghurt covered the bedding and walls and floor of the quarter berth, the whole galley area, and splashed into the salon. I was still finding bits of dried yoghurt several days later in new places.

Towards the end of the trip my little plastic egg carton went flying across the salon, which I didn’t hear due to the noise above. Magnus got up for his shift and informed me that there were bits of eggshell across the cabin. Egg had seeped into the bilge from all over the salon floor, so I had to pour water over the floor multiple times and let it run into the bilge (which I was emptying by hand with a sponge) to ensure that I got all the egg. We took out the protective carpeting and washed it as well, leaving it to dry in the sun for a day. I had gotten overconfident in my storage, I was trying out different ways of stacking the eggs to keep them rotated so they wouldn’t go bad.

Salt got everywhere on deck, even the areas that we didn’t think got wet with salt water. We washed down the steering column and Hydrovane occasionally with fresh water, and took showers in the cockpit which resulted in a good rinsing of the cockpit every couple of days. On the last night of our trip, at 03:20 am, our electric furling mast decided to start furling by itself – we think due to salt water that had gotten into the buttons / contacts. We spent an hour chasing fuses and troubleshooting and finally decided, after much consultation with our wind charts, to leave the sails up instead of trying to manually haul them in and start the engine.

Following several hours of being turned off and some careful tests of the buttons, were were able to furl the main and genoa, and they worked like they should through several sail changes during the last day. We went from straight downwind to broad reach, switching sides of the boat facing the wind, and finally to a close haul where we raced at over 7 knots to the finish line. We will be servicing the furling buttons, opening them up and ensuring that they are clean and dry, but that is a project for later in the week.

If you are still reading – well done! Thank you! Fair winds to you all!