Another successful Transatlantic Passage

 

 

 

The sight of birds always tell you that land is close

 Every since Christopher Columbus first sailed to the Caribbean, the route he sailed has been the route to sail.  Known as a trade wind route, it takes advantage of the trade winds that blow in a steady east to west direction.  Closer to the equator these are the prevailing winds, but in the winter they blow a bit stronger, carrying sailboats across the Atlantic to enjoy the winter in the warm Caribbean.

 

Martinique - Landfall December 18, 2023

As it turned out this year you had to go all the way to Cape Verde latitude in order to pick up the trades.  And even down that low, where you should be solidly within the trade wind belt, the winds were light.  We fiddled for days trying to get the best sail configuration for downwind sailing, but with 15 kts or less of wind it was slow going.  As if contending with light wind were not enough we were beset with problem after problem.  First, came the battery issues which we figured out and took the dead battery out of the series.  But then the Balmar battery monitor never worked right - so we had no way to know for certain how low the charge on the batteries were getting.  So we took to running the engine for about 30 minutes every 3 hours through the night.  And then the engine died again.  Turns out the pre-filter went bad again!!  We spent the entire night trying to deal with that issue.  The next day I contacted the Yanmar fellow in Gran Canary and he told us how to bypass the pre-filter.  We had switched to charging the batteries at night via the generator.  But then after we filled the gas tank on the generator, it quit working... bad fuel.  Thank goodness, we were able to bypass the pre-filter and use the engine to charge the batteries once again.  

The piece of fiberglass that pulled away and the pulley

 

After days of light winds, we hit a completely windless patch.  PredictWind was routing us around the "no wind" patch but we decided to not stray from our course and just motor through that area.  We had not used the engine except to charge the batteries, so we felt we had enough fuel to get through that area.  Turns out we did have enough fuel and once through we picked up some 20 plus knot winds.  Perfect!  Only problem was the cross swell.  We were headed west, but the swell came from the north.  That made for a very rolly ride.  We were within150 nm of Martinique when we lost our steering.  The swell had been rough.  We were actually trying to track down a noise that we were not familiar with when we looked in the "kids room" and found that the pulley for the starboard steering cable had pulled completely from the hull!!  My goodness, we never expected that to happen.  So now we had another project - we had to fiberglass the pulley back to the hull.  We had no way to steer manually, but were able to steer with the autopilot.  This was no easy project!  It took an entire day to repair.  By then we were seeing land... thank goodness.  We had been at sea for 18 days and were ready to stop.  

At anchor - repairing the cable

It was mid-morning when we reached Martinique.  We had the pulley re-attached to the hull, but still could not steer manually until we had the cable connected to the steering wheel.  And we had to be stationary to complete that job.  Fortunately, there is a huge anchorage at the southern end of the island.  We were able to anchor there away from other boats and fix the cable.  Due to our many difficulties we tried to get into the marina at Le Marin, but that did not work.  We had no option but to go on to Fort de France where we had reservations.  By this time we were excited about a good dinner and shower.  As it was, by the time we reached the marina it was dark and we were told to pick up a mooring ball outside the marina and wait till morning.  So disappointing... we were low on food and hungry.  We somehow managed to scrounge around and find something to eat. We all retired early, hoping to get into the marina early. 

Martinique coastline

That whole process was slow, but we were happy that Bill was going to make his flight.  He needed to be home for Christmas and everything was working out well for that to happen.  Michael and I ate a big lunch and then went to catch up on sleep.  Welcome to the Caribbean!