Logs

Purrr-fect - Leg Two - day 10: finally a beautiful sailing day

Saturday,Nov 29 turned out to be one of the most beautiful sailing days so far. The horrible swell and wind chop subsided and the boat sounded much quieter. We added a full mainsail to our double headed jibs and moved along nicely under sunny skies. The past two days had been overcast with even a few small squalls with light rain, so the sunshine today was great for charging batteries with the solar panels. Just before lunch we enjoyed another dolphin show with dolphins surfing down the swells and playing at the front of the boat. We enjoyed a fun cocktail hour playing our favorite game of Shut The Box. Paul won too many times!We even took time to shoot some photos on the front trampoline.. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - So long, farewell, auf wuedersien, adiue..........'til the next time, perhaps...........

........well nearly - this will be the last blogposting to the ARC Europe Website, though we we shall continue to post to theAndromeda bog at mailasail.  Well we made it to Lagos some 25 days after thelast ARC party and prize giving, no drink to be had though, so we think its timeto say farewell to ARC Europe as we think about what to do for the nextyear.   Our last night at sea was dark and we had upto 35 knots of wind from the NW most of the time. We were double reefed on genoaand main, with mizzen stowed, so felt reasonable comfortable, though it waspretty cold, and were steering 104 then 112 Magnetic, as part of the last bit ofthe route from the Azores, with the wind mostly on the port sternquarter.   We did have a very close encounter with a verylarge container. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - All Right Now - and Happy Happy Happy Birthday to Phill

N37:06:605 W08:40:473Happy birthday Phill have a good one.All Right Now, we are there, after over 5088 miles from Trini we have arrived at our destination, Marina De Lagos, Lagos, Portugal.At last, it has been a real journey to get here and once we were tied to the dock we broke out the champagne again.......... it is delicious.....now we have to sort our selves out, open the hatches, start the drying process but more importantly, find some more champagne, it is delicious.More very soon,Susan and AndrewAndromeda of Plymouth ( she is a real star)Marina de Lagos,LagosPortugal.ps we are only 24 days after the end of the ARC Europe, is this a record?m_20140709_111402. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - How many layers do the Peeps wear to keep warm? The answer (dear reader) is blowing in the wind...........

N37:07:445   W09:27:235   Layers and layers is the answer. We have beenwearing 5 top layers and 4 on the bottom including undies and our salopettes addanother half to the top too. Getting dressed and undressed especially forablutions is quite a lengthy process. The winds have been mostly from the northand cold so we haven't even been divesting ourselves of any layers during thedaylight hours either. As for our heads, well we have our buffs, then a hat,then the hood on our jackets and even a hoodie hood on occasion. Got to keepthose drafts out of our ears. Our feet however are coping with one pair of socksand in Susan's case a hot water bottle sometimes.   Yesterday afternoon we thought for a time that wehad been transported to Piccadilly Circus. In the space of. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Where have alll the wooly hats gone? The sea has claimed them every one.

N38:02:638 W15:21:929   Progess report - we are over half way to thePortuguese Coast, yippee, will soon be heading down to Cabo de St. Vincente andround the corner to Lagos.   Hats! An essential part of our sailing gear and asource of frustration too. It sems that as soon as we break in a new hat or itfits wonderfully and is so comfortable,  the wind will suddenly catch usunawares and off it goes to be claimed by the sea. We estimate that we have lostaround 24ish pieces of headgear between the two of us. Sun hats, baseball caps,woolly hats, bush hats, etc.  They have rushed off our heads whilst weare on passage, at anchor, in the dinghy or on the dock.  We have managedto rescue about half a dozen by leaping into the water but most have gone overthe side and. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Doh Ray Me

N38:10:647 W20:36:140   Doh a deer - well not around here there isn't, nowildlife at all that we can see,   Ray a drop of golden sun - we sure would liketo see some of these instead of the dark grey, light grey, charcoal grey, slategrey, pearl grey........   Me a name I call my self - and so does everyone,but do the whates and dolphins?   Fah a long long way to run - and to sail, hike,sail, climb, row, sail, drive, sail, dive, sail, swim, sail, skate, sail, float,sail, ski, sail, hop, sail, dance, sail,   Soh a needle pulling thread - sure comes in mightyhand and we have extra strong ones with extra strong thread,   Lah a note to follow so -  sha la la la la lala la la la la la la ti da, sha la la la la la la la la la la ti da,la ti. read more...

Anna Sophia - Oceaandagboek deel 3, dag 2

Positie: 42.32.045 N 023.52.682WCOG: 32 grSpeed: 7Dagafstand: 156,2Zeilvoering GR + GWind: 17,7 kts@271 grWeer: lichtbewolktZicht: goedGolven: 1,5 mLuchtdruk: 1029 mbrZeeziekte: 119.00 Uur; de first mate ligt ter ruste, wanneer ook Huib-Jan (Seaquest) en de Schipper, na een geweldige zeildag besluiten de motor bij te zetten. De wind is praktisch op en tempo willen we met nog ruim 1000 nm te gaan natuurlijk wel houden. Zo zaten we opeens middenin een motorsailend groepje Nederlanders.Tot 01.00 uur houden we dit zo. Maar wanneer de wind weer wakker wordt, zetten we resoluut de motor uit. Mijn uitrustmoment tot 4.00 uur vanmorgen, slaap ik dus in een heerlijke boordstilte op een deinende oceaan.Het gaat allemaal prima zo. Wel heeft helaas de marifoon opnieuw kuren; het ding zendt alleen met. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Happy Happy Birthday......do de do de dum.......

It's Andrew's 60th birthday today and for the next10 weeks he is the same age as me before I once again creep ahead......So fartoday I think he has had a nice day.  This morning for the one time of theyear, well maybe a couple of other occasions too, I made him a cup of tea first- well it is his birthday.  Scouring Ponta Delgada I managed to find somethings to surprise him with as well - and not just my singing, wellnot yet, I am lulling hiim into a false sense of security that maybe I willforget to do it.   The phone started tweeting early this morning andthere has been a stream of texts, emails, facebook comments and phone calls toremind him of his big day.  But as you know we still have to do the otherstuff too and with our departure planned for. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Did you miss us whilst we were away........

Did you miss us yesterday? We decided to get out of the marina for a while and had a great walk round Ponta Delgada wandering up and down many of the little cobble streets.It was interesting to start remembering various places plus finding some new ones too. We ended up at the shopping centre and picked up some supplies and I found some lovely orange sandals, and they had them in my size.Last time we were here I couldn’t find anything that I liked in my size – the Portuguese seem to have such small feet. We still haven’t been able to bring ourselves to buy closed in shoes, but I don’t expect it will be long until we have to succumb.The rest of the afternoon we spent sitting in the cockpit reading and boat watching.Ponta Delgada is a great place for that with all the commercial traffic,. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - We still haven't found a working fridge that we're looking for

We will be sending our yellow brick back to the UK today so it has been turned off and will no longer show our position so don't panic if we appear not to move anymore.We will still be posting to our own blog on mailasail.com as well and that will have updated position information when we are on the move and send our posts through our sat phone.We were very hopeful last night that our fridge worries would be over but this morning it appeared that we may still have a problem.....oh well back to the drawing board as they sa. Nobo who came round yesterday afternoon was very nice and checked out the pump and compressor etc and we seemed to have lost our Freon so he refilled it, now it would appear we may have lost it again.......It was a bit noisy here a couple of times in the night as some. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - We are waiting, we are waiting........

Well here we are once again in a cloudy andovercast Ponta Delgada with the bustling container ships and bulk carriersbehind us and a partially full marina around us. We have sort of recovered andare now getting a few jobs done before looking for a weather window to head toSanta Maria, some 60 miles SE of here and then set off for the last, fairlylong leg to Lagos. Hopefully the winds will be kind in the next fewweeks!   Today has been getting on with jobs day -replensihing the water tanks, cleaning the boat, putting away all the wetweather gear, and waiting for the fridge repair man - yes its gone again. Why weare not sure as all the indicator lights say everything is ok, but its notgetting cold, so it isn't working correctly - compressor, refridgerant....wedon't know. The. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Starlight Express

N37:44:283 W25:39:880   We arrived in Ponta Delgarda, San Miguel, at 11amthis morning after a terrific motor sail from Horta.  We had a little windbut not enough to keep us going with out the engine on but in a combination ofpower we were able to truck along quite nicely indeed and so covered the 150.89miles dock to dock in 14 hours, a very respectable time for us.  For anyone reading this on our blog you will noticewe have now closed the circle of flags from our last visit here....yabba dabbadoo.   Most of the way the water was pretty flat too andit made for excellent dolphin spotting opportunities and we saw no less that 10different pods of dolphins yesterday afternoon with about half of them comingalong side to enjoy our bow wave.  The water was so incredibly. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Oh what a beautiful morning.......

N38:21:021  W28:11:484   .....oh what a beautiful morning it was as we leftHorta in lovely sunshine and calm seas. We left at 7am with some assistance fromthe crew of Low Profile, an ARC 2013 yacht, who are heading north in the nextfew days back to sunny UK (?!).  Last night we said goodbye to Paul, Claire andSophie from Aditi, with whom we had exchanged e-mails on the trip to Horta,though they left from St. Maarten and did not go via Bermuda. They are alsoplanning to head north and get back to the UK, but are in no real hurry to do soat the moment. We wish both boats a good sail on a tricky passage at the best oftimes.   After saying farewell we had a final drink inPeter's Bar and then headed back to Andromeda for an early night notwithstanding the live music from. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Sunshine of your Horta

Here we are on our last day in Faial, we were awake early again this morning, a good sign that we are recovered from the journey here.After a leisurely couple of cups of tea and a Saturday morning read in bed, (oh I do miss the newspaper everyday - and checking on line is just not the same....still maybe I shall treat myself to a subscription once we get somewhere with relaible internet) we went to get a bit more fuel just to be sure. This time we timed it just right and there was no delay in filling our cans. Next stop was to get the gas refilled as inspite of carrying several different containers when we changed over to the 'St. Lucia' filled one a few days ago we didn't think there would be a problem as it is a big tank, however when we had all the trouble with the regulator a bit of. read more...

Shenanigan - Falmouth

A night of precision steering in very light winds ensued because of theEngland match deadline! A glorious morning and with 35nm to go the wind pickedup within seconds from 3.9 knots to 17 and then over 20. Shenanigan respondedwell and we were back to the sort of sailing we have become accustomed to, withspeeds of 7-8 knots.  After two hours it dropped again as quickly as it hadarrived, thankfully to pick up again shortly after. We were still beating intowind but able to make a good heading.  As we rounded the Lizard winds wereconstant at 20 knots – welcome to the English Channel off the Cornish Coast!With some exhilarating tacking around anchored cargo ships, and amazingly, giventhe wind direction, the sea was flat. We are sure our keel was on full view dueto our heeling. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Whale meet again.........

Leviathans, denizens of the deep  - yes we'vefinally seen a few. Today we decided to go Whale Watching as there was no windforeast and we had wanted to take a trip for some time - in all the time we havebeen sailing we have only seen two, and that was near Bermuda. The folks outhere have a series of watchers who let them know if there are whales anddolphins about so if there are none, you don't waste a trip. However conditionswere very misty and the sea calm and while some whales had been seen we weretold the decision had to be ours - so we went with about 7 others.   At first it wasn't very promising as just outsidethe harbour the whale watching catamaran caught a blue fishing line around oneof his props! It must be us. So we returned to Horta where the rope was dulyremoved by. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - A Picture Paints a Thousand Words......

Still in HortaWe were going to leave today but yesterday we got bogged down in some housekeeping jobs and then looked at the forecast again and we would be motoring most of the way to Ponta Delgarda so are going to enjoy this lovely island of Faial for a few more days.Goody, there are still more wall paintings to check out to see if we know the artists and the town to visit again when we are more awake.We have reverted back to our usual early morning wake ups, the trouble is that the daylight hours are so long we are ready for bed before the sun is.Today we had the confusion of waking at one time only to discover that that particular clock was an hour out and it was an hour earlier than we thought so in the end I googled ' what time is it in Faial' for a definitive answer, mainly because. read more...

Persistent Lady - Wednesday, June 18th 2014

“Can you bring it more to starboard?”“Yeah, Jake, I’ll get you over there, just be careful with the gaff.That sucker is huge!I am not sure you can bring it on board by yourself.”“Yeah I can bring it on board if I can just get it hooked.Oh No!Lost it, quick circle back around while I still have a chance!!!”“Ok, I will bring the boat starboard side to and I can block the wind that way.Let me know when I am close enough and I will go to neutral and just coast up to it.”“OK. You are pretty close, just slow down and I am pretty sure I can land it.There!Got it, now just a quick pull and Viola!!”“Man, that is huge; I never saw a fishing float that big before, must be four feet tall, probably washed overboard from a fishing boat in a storm.But what in the world will we do with it? It’s hard. read more...

Shenanigan - Fed Up!

Very slow progress. As you may have seen on the Fleet Tracker we are havingto make a very zig zaggy course - we are not mucking about, it is because of thewind direction.  All the books say that we should be swept into the EnglishChannel on good westerly winds. We are bobbing off the Isles of Scilly in a weaknorth easterly wind; a direction we have had for some days. We are having to'bob' because we have used all our fuel! One very unhappy boy on board who hasalready missed England's first World Cup match and the next game is 24 hoursaway - and at this rate we are a lot further away from a TV or, worst way, radioreception.Although the ARC Europe rally has officially ended, we are gratefulto still be receiving weather forecasts from the World Cruising Club and to haveour Yellow Brick. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Lay lady lay, across the still calm bay..........

.....and its pretty calm on the inside of thereception dock.............though it can be a bit bouncy on the outside it seemsat times........ah well, sometimes things work out for us.   So we bid a fond farewell to Jan and Annaliese fromAnna Sophia last night and they set off for Teceira early this morning aftersome two weeks here in Horta - they loved the place. We are beginning to getourselves organised for the next leg - whether Teciera or Ponta Delgada we willdecide in due course. We have taken on a little more fuel and got someprovisions in - we wanted to see whether we could squeeze in a whale watchingtour - nothing this morning, so may be tomorrow. Otherwise it will be when getto the next island.   We are almost ready physically and mentally for theAzores islands - we. read more...

Persistent Lady - Tuesday, June 17 2014

Just finished cleaning up the galley.Sherrin made an apple coffee cake during her morning watch and today is my day for KP duty. So far she is doing a great job of ‘using every pot in the kitchen’ as Poppa used to accuse Kris of, back in the day.Just kidding dear, only making a little joke, no harm intended, just trying to provide a little levity for the reading audience (I know she can do more damage than that if she is provoked!).There may be no better way to start your day than a cup of coffee, a little coffee cake, and the sea breeze blowing through the cockpit. Well, two out of three is not bad.No sea breeze, just the sound of the diesel engine pushing us along at 6 knots toward our destination.Chris Parker really nailed it when he cautioned us to reserve enough fuel to motor the. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Thank you for the Music - Songs to sing, hum, play the spoons to, bang those pots and wave some flags to

Isn't it nice to be able to open those hatches and let the sunshine in and a nice breeze waft through all the cabins to dry out those far away corners its hard to get to. Yesterday Susan hauled the washing to the laundry and then went and fetched it back and just sat enjoying being surround ed by lovely clean fresh washing - its the small luxuries in life that are so worth it.She was going to join the huge queue for the machines on the marina but thought better of it and thereby had time for a few other little jobs of course.Today after a much earlier night (like about 4 hours) to bed the Peeps were up and at it almost as bright and breezy as normal. Andrew is still finding out what he can't do with out a very painful yelp but did this morning finish our painting on the dock and very. read more...

Persistent Lady - Monday june 16, 2014

Monday June 16, 2014 The sun finally came out about 2:00, still cloudy but can feel the warmth on your skin.Very nice, and the solar panels will be charging.Light wind, under 10 knots, the grib file says to expect about 6 knots but based on observation, I would guess closer to 8, but variable in strength.We are making between 4 and 5.5 knots over the ground based on the GPS, but cannot sail the rhumb line so we are sailing a course about 30 degrees North of the line and are currently located about 10 miles North of it and 350 miles from Gibraltar.Because we are sailing higher than desired we will take longer to get there, but what else do we have to do?Not like we are missing out on the big sale at the mall or anything.When we start motoring we will just point our nose at Gibraltar and. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - I can see paradise by the nav station light.............

  ............and whilst we may wish all sorts ofthings its actually a couple of bottles of wine from ARC Europe and courtesy ofthe Horta Marina - thanks folks, its most welcome and we are looking forward toimmersing ourselves in your largesse!   So in the spirit of recovery we hiked up the hillto the supermarket yesterday - and very nice it was too - to get a few bits apieces before heading off to Peters Bar to spend our hard earned free drinksvouchers and to use the internet - the marina wifi is non-existent at themoment. Then, its a tough life you know, it was off to Aditi for anevening of conversation and wine along with folks from Low Profile andBeagel - thanks to Paul, Claire and Sophie for hosting a greatevening.   We also caught up with Jan and AnnaLiese who,. read more...

Persistent Lady - Sunday June 15, 2014

Well, it’s overcast again today.Pretty much ever since we installed the solar panels that Kris and D sent us the sun has been hiding.The one day we had full sun, we went 17 hours between charges, which is almost double our average, so we know they work well, just need the sun. Kris andD did a great job of picking out all the small incidental things we needed to install the panels, we literally just opened the box and took out the things we needed, everything was there.THANKS, Kris and D!!!It is a brisk day in shorts and tee shirt; yesterday I was in long johns, sweatshirt and jacket for my 10:00 PM to 3:00 AM watch, but I was not feeling well, alternately freezing and then too warm and a headache.No interest in eating, did not even try the lemon pie.This morning, I feel much better and. read more...

Shenanigan - Whales and Stowaways

We are now a week into our journey back to Blighty from the Azores. The first few days we enjoyed fabulous sailing before the wind died and the sunvanished. We motored and we motored in search of wind, eventually managing tosail again in a millpond sea.  The still sea meant that we were easily ableto spot lots of whales which appeared all around us. An enormous whale (finwhale we think)surfaced a bit too close for comfort when it came alongside; afabulous sight, but as advised we turned the engine on to deter it especially asit was bigger than the boat! Nothing much else to report until a racing pigeondecided to hitch a lift last night for the night. Christopher spoke to him (?)and tried to feed him.  Brian was flapping his arms and making strangepigeon noises to try and. read more...

Andromeda of Plymouth - Boat from another planet

Noon position: Well we think we are in Hortastill....   First of all A Happy Father's Day to the Dad's outthere, we hope you have a great day.   After a second night's sleep we are still feeling abit 'spaced' and new aches seem to be appearing, plus the odd bruise we didn'tremember getting but on the whole we have nearly got our land legs back, thoughthey seem to feel heavier at the moment.   We didn't do nearly as much as we thought we wouldyesterday but did wander along to the town to stretch our legs and buy some allimportant paint.  Good to see that the local shop sells small cans of thestuff especially as we had to get two colours to mix....we shall leave it to youto decide which two colours they were. We then had to go back for a littlesiesta before meeting up. read more...

Morning Haze - Fishing aboard Morning Haze

Fishing has been pretty good on our crossing with ARC-Europe. We have put in the line the water only a few times on each crossing and lucky were enough to fill our table with delicious meal provided by the sea. Just on this last crossing to Lagos, we fished only monday and tuesday and then stop since our freezer (please read stomach!) was full! We had Mahi Mahi, Wahoo and tons of Tuna?It was taking us an average of two hours per fish from the time of the byte, cleaning and preparing the fish and finally CLEAN and SCRUB the cockpit!...but it was all worth it.Below you will find a picture sample of what we have caught (and eaten!) on the high seas. We will also give you an idea of the kind of meals we had crossing to Europe...We also caught 2 birds...yes yes birds!!!...but we will refrain. read more...

Morning Haze - Pictures from Morning Haze

Did you ever see a "Portuguese Man-o-war? Rebecca took a picture for you during leg #2image. image. image. image. image. image. image. read more...