Solstice - Onward Southward

After the Gulf Stream the winds were still up in the twenties and the seas were still pretty rough. We weren't eating much (or cooking at all) and we had to be careful moving around the boat. Tuesday one slip (by Ray) led to an accident. He wound up with a scalp cut and a strained shoulder. The cut bled like scalp cuts do and we are still finding bloodstains to clean up, but there were no signs of concussion. We had to hold the bandage around his head with blue painter's tape over the gauze wrap. It looked pretty sporty.

Tuesday was also marked with an engine overheat. In fact a lot of the coolant was boiled or leaked away. We couldn't immediately find the problem.

Yesterday, after our first nice sailing day featured sunny blue skies, fifteen knot breezes, and more modest waves we started the gen-set to charge the batteries. It shut off with an over-temp condition. Solar cells don't work well at night, and the tail string had wrapped around the wind generator blades, so we spent the night hand steering and conserving batteries. The night was beautiful with temp's in the 70s and warm water overside. The latter is important because some of it occasionally comes by air to visit anyone in the cockpit. In buckets. We made it through the night and got the wind generator working just after the sun cranked up the solar cells. Today is more of the same good sailing that we came here for. We still need to track down the engine problem. We are getting closer to Tortola, with about 600 miles to go. We could be there in four days if the winds are kind. (Tom)

Sometimes there are simple things that take you by surprise, take you by surprise because they give such joy, but on the surface they are just, well...simple. Yesterday gave us one of those events. After we crossed the bridge-tunnel and entered the open Atlantic we really hadn't seen another vessel in three days. I'd never been out this long without seeing at least a container ship or something. Then low and behold a radio hail came through on VHF..."Sailing vessel at 28-degrees, come in." Low and behold it was another ship in our fleet, SV Lexington. We replied and had a nice chat about success at fishing, how things were going, little sailboat issues that only sailors talk about at sea. Thanks Lexington for sending us a friendly voice to bring us back to civilization and tell us we aren't out here completely alone. Then today a similar thing happened with SV Sojourner. The three of us found ourselves within visual site of each other and we sailed all night and most of today within a few miles of each other, finding ourselves together after 800 miles at sea.

The other little joy I (Don) found was in that our two primary charging systems have failed. That sounds silly but it forced us out into the cockpit, down beneath the stars, being covered in spray and wind and solitude. We sailed without chart plotters, auto-helm, or VHF. We hand steered all night long sailing by the seat of our pants in two hour watches. It brought me back to what sailing is all about, wind and angles and the elements. When my shift was up I didn't want to give up the wheel. I was having way too much fun getting this 30,000 lbs of glass, wood, and aluminum to go as fast as I could. We figured it out this morning that we are much better sailors than the auto-helm. We had Solstice moving smartly all night long. (Don)

More Little Joys: Shaking out the reefs after heavy seas and wind: calm sailing with a reasonable angle of heel. Most people ashore never get to see the stars and the milky way in their full glory anymore, unless they live in the desert.

With a little calm we may break out the sextant for some practice sightings. On my (Ray) first transatlantic trip there was no GPS and a fix good to three miles was considered good. It might take 30 or forty minutes at a pitching chart table to solve. Sometimes you would not get a sight for days: now every cell phone has a GPS. Being at sea resets your sense of your importance in the greater scheme of things: if you do not feel small out here, you have an ego problem.)