Author: kerrizane

Ascension Island to Ferndando de Norohna (Brazil)……Day 3

June 24th, written the morning of June 25th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

Yesterday the winds were fairly strong in the morning and our speed was good so we passed on putting up the spinnaker. It was an uneventful day until around 11 am a ship tripped off our AIS (Automatic Identification System). It was the \”VTR Dragon\”, a 550 foot cargo vessel en route to Rio de Janeiro.

At six miles we were effectively on a collision course and he didn\’t seem to notice us. I hailed him on the radio, he looked at his AIS and radar and said he would take our stern. He passed about a mile behind us and I still think it\’s amazing how low the odds are that two vessels in the middle of nowhere on a right angle course could be that close! We like our AIS and Radar and other navigation goodies aboard!

Last night, for the second night in a row, we saw one ship. This one was about six miles astern and most likely a large commercial fishing vessel. The previous nights was quite strange. It was about 400++ feet and it\’s decks completely lit up. It was not moving, did not display an AIS signal. It had \”RAM\” lights (restricted in ability to manuever) which actually gave it the right of way over us. He was about two miles away and I tracked him on radar to make sure he wasn\’t closing.

We passed uneventfully, but again, the middle of nowhere and two vessels are pretty darn close. I assume he may have been a survey vessel given the \”RAM\” lights and his lack of movement. He did not appear to be fishing. With the full moon we\’ve had the last few nights, the horizon has been visible for at least six miles all around us.

Another Fish Story…..:-)
So last night at 5:30 in the morning, I\’m up in the saloon reading a book on watch and I hear Nikki scream. I quickly run down into her cabin and she\’s mutter something incoherently. I think she\’s having a bad dream. Finally she answers me and tells me \”Flying Fish\”! I turn on the light and indeed, a flying fish about 10 inches long has managed to \”fly\” right through the cabin ceiling hatch onto the bed. First of all, it\’s kicking all over the place shedding scales everywhere and second of all they are the WORST smelling fish imaginable. As many of you know, I don\’t eat fish and one of the primary reasons is I CAN\’T STAND THE SMELL. I quickly got a paper towel, picked the beast up and tossed it back over the side out the ceiling hatch. Most of them die on deck and are found in the morning. This one lucked out and got a reprieve. Of course the stench required the bedding to be immediately put in the laundry and it\’s now hanging up to dry.

My previous best flying fish story was that both Cindy and I were simultaneously flown into at night while at the helm. A sudden whack in the face followed by a flaying object on the cockpit sole let you know what happened, but the scaly stench comes off on you right away. A quick shower is often the solution. Thank goodness we\’ve plenty of hot water. So the brave \”fish girl\” from Norfolk had to be saved by the Captain. It\’s good for my ego anyway…:-)

We\’ve 632 miles to go, a 176 nm day and we may or may not put up the spinnaker. We\’ll be half way in about 10 hours and looking forward to the luxury/eco island. I have visions of \”Fantasy Island\”…We shall see.

KIT,
Scott and Fishy Nikki

Ascension Island to Fernando de Noronha……Day 2

June 23rd, written the morning of the 24th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: Staying with GMT for now

We\’d had a lovely night and decided if the winds were below 20 knots, we\’d run the spinnaker during the day. First we jibed and it seemed the wrong thing to do so
we jibed back and put up the big kite. It\’s actually a small spinnaker for a boat this size, but it does really give us some speed.

We flew along doing 7.5-9.5 knots most of the day and as the winds built around 5:30 pm, we decided to take it down. After that, we jibed on to starboard tack and we\’ve been that way since yesterday afternoon. Full main and genoa for the night, easy sailing, lovely conditions.

We did 170 miles on day two and I cannot remember a much easier sail. The one thing that was a bit interesting was that we did have a noticable wind shift that undulated back and forth from E to ESE for several hours in a row. It would shift every 10-15 minutes and we had to compensate our course with the auto pilot. That\’s no big deal!

On my first night watch last night, we passed within 2 miles of a big ship. It was all lit up and didn\’t appear to be moving. He did not have AIS nor his radar on.
Don\’t know what to make of it, but it was the first ship we\’ve seen since night two leaving the African coast. The vessel also had \”restricted in ability to maneuver\” lighting on? Again…who knows?

Yesterday, we were able to get all of our four boat mini fleet on the HF radio at 1445 UTC. \”This Side Up\” was 380 miles ahead of us, \”Jongilanga\” – 70 miles behind and \”OZ\” about 850 miles behind us as they just left St. Helena en route to Fernando. They\’ll be skipping Ascension.

Not much more to report, 797 miles to go, we hope to be there on Saturday sometime…

REMEMBER SHOULD YOU WISH TO WRITE NIKKI DO SO ON THE DIRECT BOAT EMAIL (FOUND IN YESTERDAYS BLOG AND POSITION REPORT). Her GMAIL is not forwarding to the boat.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

Ascension to Fernando de Noronha Island (Brazil)…..Day 1

June 22nd to the morning of the 23rd, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: Still using GMT

We got a bit of a late start yesterday morning. The boat was completely ready to go, but the previous three days on the anchor was anything but calming.
It was tough to get a good night\’s sleep and we waited the extra day to get good rest. Nikki must be a sailor as she was adamant about not leaving on a Friday too!
And as you may know, sailor\’s are superstitious. Murphy was a sailor and HE was an optimist.

John on \”Jongilanga\” left two and half hours ahead of us, we quickly caught and passed him by noon. John really sails quite under canvassed. It makes his passages very long, but he feels he gets better rest trying to never exceed 5 knots. I have a different philosophy!…

A good thing was that we got John\’s HF radio going and I think he will be able to at least hear if not transmit to our mini group out here. We have Steve and Pat on s/v \”OZ\” who left St. Helena yesterday and are heading straight toward Fernando as we are. They are 800 miles behind us. \”Jongilanga\” is too heading toward Fernando and s/v \”This Side Up\” (Mike and three crew) are heading directly for Forteleza, Brazil which will most likely be our next stop and 300 miles or so west of Fernando.

The first days sail was very comfortable, the seas haven\’t been too big, the winds steady between 15-22 knots. We\’re running as deep as we can as the wind is directly parellal to the course; so again we\’ll be jibing back and forth. We\’ve been on the port jibe since we left and we\’ll most likely jibe to the north side of the rhumb line within the next 24 hours. So far, we\’re actually SOUTH of Ascension, though quite a bit west.

The first 21.5 hours, we\’ve done 153 nm That\’s pretty good and would have projected out to around 170 nm day. No stress too! I did a \”short day\” report because it\’s more convienent for me to do them at 8 a.m. local time. Tomorrow\’s will be a full 24 hour run.

We\’re keeping two radio nets (still based in South Africa) for as long as we can and will keep our mini net going as long as possible too.
Soon, we should start hearing the \”BIG\” nets in the North Atlantic and Caribbean which will have lots of boats, net controls, relay stations and check in\’s.
The Maritime Mobile Service Net on 14300 USB (1600 UTC) for all you \”Hams\” is one of the real biggies around the world.

PLEASE NOTE: NIKKI\’S EMAIL IS NOT FORWARDING TO THE BOAT (SHORE SIDE GLITCH). YOU CAN EMAIL HER DIRECTLY AT: Wdb5638@sailmail.com
PLEASE: NO ATTACHMENTS, PHOTOS, POSTS OR GROUPS. If you CC: attachments, they will be deleted by sailmail but go to her GMAIL account.

So far, so good!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

Ascension Island – Departing on June 22nd…..

June 21st, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

We\’ve been at Ascension Island for six days now. The small Capital of Georgetown is a sleepy little vista with lots of history. The British based ships out of here to watch for \”Black Birder\’s\” (slave ships) in the 1800\’s. There are many, who infected with Yellow Fever, sadly never left. Today, Ascension\’s main industry is the US and British Military along with being a major relay station for the BBC. The Air Base was used as a major staging area in the Falkland Islands War in the early 1980\’s. The US presence here seems (who really knows!?) to be about monitoring the 30 satellite GPS constellation that we all now know so well. Apparently, it\’s monitored from six sites around the world and this is one of them. It is interesting that the command here is called, \”45th US Space Command\”. How that should be taken, I am again uncertain.

It seems there has been a great deal of activity lately as this airfield will be used as an emergency/diversion field for President Obama on his trip in a week or two to South Africa on Air Force One. Lots of extra infrastructure including jet fuel has been delivered, \”just in case\”. The former need of this airfield from a US stand point of view was as an alternative landing site for the Space Shuttle. Fortunately, it was never needed, but the runway is very long.

The US Air Force personnel here told us that their standard billet is only 3 weeks. There are no married couples and I don\’t really think this is a highly requested location for most service personnel.

We did a drive of the island by ourselves one day and a formal half day tour the next with John from s/v \”Jongilanga\”. We did see the old NASA site which is now for all effective purposes gone. There is one building left and it is in complete disrepair. Ariane,(The European Space Agency Program) has a very efficient – compact one man telemetry station here for their launches out of French Guyana. They now launch more commercial satellites than anyone else on Earth and use a location near the equator to get the \”sling shot\” effect. This reduces fuel consumption by around 17% we\’re told as it\’s the \”fat\” part of the Earth which moves about our axis faster than the poles and sling shots the orbiter more efficiently.

Large guns from HMS Hood\’s last re-fit before WW2 are here as well. These guns were removed to have new anti-aircraft ones installed just prior to the war. HMS Hood was unfortunately most famous for being completely obliterated by the famous German Battleship, \”Bismark\”. The guns here were fired once \”in anger\” during WW2 at a German U Boat which was not hit, but had the good common sense to leave.

This IS the trickiest and hence potentially most dangerous dinghy landing I\’ve seen in 6 years of cruising. The first three days we were here it was pretty mellow, but the last two days we\’ve had three meter swells and it\’s down right scary getting ashore at the wharf. It\’s also made the anchorage quite less comfortable than when we first arrived. About a month ago, a dinghy off one of the cruising boats flipped over at the wharf, all hands apparently safe however. One day was so bad, I swam out to the dinghy and quickly made three dashes in between the sets of waves to pick up all ashore. I won\’t go through the technique in this blog, but if any boaters want information on \”how to land your dinghy\” at Ascension Island…email me.

The BBC has the largest antenna farm I\’ve ever seen here. It\’s enormous and covers in total at least a square mile. Their TV and Radio Broadcasts to Africa are re-transmitted from here and they have quite a power grid with wind and solar as well as generators to keep it all going.

The island itself is only 1 1/2 million years old as where St. Helena is about 20 million years old. It\’s much more volcanic in appearance and around 1/3rd the size of St. Helena. The last eruption was estimated to be around 800 years ago.

The Green Sea Turtles are the big eco-tourism event here. Every sand beach on the island is a Turtle hatchery. Unfortunately, we\’re here at the end of the season.
Two months ago we were told that 400-600 (250-500 pound) 125-300 kg females were coming ashore just on the beach where we are anchored. Now there are at most 5-7 a night. Still, thousands of baby turtles make the mad dash every night after sundown. We see them off our stern with the underwater lights. This night time dash reduces their predation by Frigate Birds (an endemic species exists here) and the voracious Trigger Fish. The Triggers sleep at night and give the little guys a chance. We also saw a Sooty Tern nesting site yesterday where they estimated there are about 20,000 mating pairs.

Long Beach, (the beach we\’re anchored at here in Clarence Bay), is the single largest Green Sea Turtle site apparently in the entire world. As such, their are lots of Tiger Sharks here in the season, but the locals say they don\’t come in close. Oh yeah?…. The beach is very steep and the large swells the last two days are refracting heavily off the beach which does not make the anchorage a particularly nice one. When calmer, it was lovely.

We\’ll be leaving on Saturday morning. We\’re all checked out and just resting and tidying up before the expected 8 day passage to Fernando de Noronha Island (Brazil).
Fernando is located just off the \”beak\” of South America that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. We hear it\’s a bit pricey, but very beautiful and worth the stop. It\’s a major location for sighting large schools of Spinner Dolphins which never disappoint and are there in large numbers. I did indeed get a tourist visa for Brazil in Cape Town, as Nikki has a British Passport, she does not need one.

I\’ll try and post some photos inside this blog when I next get internet – maybe in Brazil. If I retro-post them, I\’ll let you all know!
Next post we should be \”at sea\” en route to Fernando.

KIT,
Scott and Nikki

St. Helena to Ascension Island…..Day 4

June 13th, written the morning of the 14th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

Right after I posted the morning blog yesterday, the winds dropped to 10-12 knots and I was sure we wouldn\’t make the Anchorage today.
About three hours later, we put up the spinnaker on port tack and the wind shifted against us! Hence, it was time to jibe. We first had to take down the spinnaker,
jibe the boat and our new course was laying the island. Back up went the spinnaker and the winds came up to 17-22 knots. We decided to stay with it for the night and under full main and spinnaker we were flying! We did 105 miles in 11 hours, mostly between 8.5-12 knots. The seas were not building up, the waves right behind us. The night was clear, the fair weather cumulus clouds created no squalls and we were making time.

Nikki did a great job of steering with the auto pilot which was no mean feat with the constant shifts in the wind and the varying strengths. It wasn\’t really even a pattern you could anticipate. The winds would go ESE then SE and back. The speed went between 17 and 22 with a few gusts in the 25 knot range. He two watches is why we will make it in today!

When we changed watch, we dropped the spinnaker at 4 a.m., tacked (not jibed) the boat and put a reef in the main sail as we did it.
This allowed us to change to a better heading to the island and not have to go through the jibe maneuver. Raised the genoa on the pole to port and now we have only 49 miles to our way point with 12 hours of daylight left. This anchorage is a bit trickier than St. Helena and I want full daylight when we enter.

We\’re still making a healthy 6.5-8 knots and should see the island within about 3 hours. Looks like we\’ll put in a very respectable 190 nm day of which the first 6 hours we never went over 7 knots.

Next report should be from the anchorage. I\’ll send the position report shortly and update it when anchored.
KIT,
Scott and Navigator Nik!..

St. Helena to Ascension Island…..Day 3

June 12th, written the morning of June 13th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

Yesterday started out a bit blustery, but we were able to use the full main and genoa for several hours before the winds came up over 22 knots and decided
to put in the first reef. We sailed that way all day and just before dark it started to come up to the mid high 20\’s so we took in the second reef.

Just before dark, we gybed on to port tack and we sailed that way till 4 am. Then took out one reef and this morning we\’re \”full laundry\” with the full main, genoa poled out and the reacher to leeward. We\’ll be on port tack most of the rest of the way. We didn\’t over stand, but might have gybed yesterday morning or noon in retrospect.

We\’re doing 7-8 knots and I\’m now pushing a bit as I want to make sure we\’re anchored before dark tomorrow night at Ascension Island. There is a large commercial
mooring field there, the buoys are black and I want to keep clear of it in daylight. Friends Dave & Kathie said there was a likely fairly shallow anchorage spot inside the field and I\’d like to try that for our anchoring spot. No small boat moorings here as there were in St. Helena.

The other tricky business is the dinghy landing there. No shore boat either! We\’ll have to tie a line to a float that is off the dock so that we can pull the dinghy away from it when ashore. The surge is apparently quite an affair there and we want to make sure dinghy and crew don\’t get bashed. Fuel will be by jerry can there as well and the good news is, we won\’t need more than about 80 liters (20 gallons) if that.

One of our instrument plastic cases self destructed yesterday, but I\’ve got it all taped back up. This was a defect problem in the plastic cases of our Maretron sailing displays. It\’s more of an annoyance than anything. All else is well. Exercise day was yesterday..we\’re getting fitter and the flab is going…:-)

We\’ll do around a 168 mile day. Position report will be up in an hour. Hope to see the island shortly after sunrise tomorrow morning.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

St. Helena to Ascension Island…..Day 2

June 11th, written the morning of June 12th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT

Yesterday started off a bit slow and during the day we were a bit slow despite all the \”laundry\” (all the sails) up.
Late in the afternoon when we were on radio schedule with Peri Peri Net (Paul) in Johannesburg, a 10-12 meter \”Sei Whale\” swam up about 100 feet away from us
and had a look. He seemed as curious about us as we were about him. Tagging along were 6-8 very large white dolphins. If I\’d been in the Santa Barbara Channel, I would have thought them to be \”Riso\’s Dolphins\”. However I\’m not sure that species is here in the South Atlantic?

We\’ve been surfing on and off much of the night. At mid night we took down the big reacher and almost reefed at 4 a.m. Glad we didn\’t but now it\’s picked back up
strongly. We just surfed at 13 knots for almost 30 seconds (as I write this). It\’s predicted to back off considerably in the next 5 hours, but if it doesn\’t start soon, we\’ll reef just the same. It\’s really easy to take the reef out. We can do it while sailing on course. We have to head up wind to put the reef in.

I\’ve been a little sleep challenged and had some most unusual dreams. I rarely ever remember my dreams, but last night it was like living color. I wrote the person who it was about. I hope she finds it as amusing as I did….Ah, memory lane!

The boat is still remarkably comfortable and the swells are occasionally 3 meters (10-12 feet). We\’ve 368 miles to go and had a very nice (much more Miss Piggy like), 175 mile run yesterday.

All is well…Just did the laundry (the clothing kind…:), made water and charged the batteries. We\’re zipping along. I\’m off watch and will hopefully get some sleep.
KIT,
Scott and \”On Watch Woodrow\”