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| A VERY rough indication of our intended 2023/24 route around the North and South Atlantic Oceans |
For a number of years now, I've been contemplating a circumnavigation. Indeed that's why I bought Bonny in 2021 in the first place. Like many before me however, my plans have encountered headwinds and choppy waters. Changing family circumstances, some very welcome like a continuing supply of new grandchildren, but others less so, such as health issues affecting family members and the impact of the cost of living crisis, have required a scaling back of that ambition.
I've therefore been looking for a voyage that I could complete in around 12 months, that would provide a sense of achievement if completed, but would also provide sufficient 'down time' to enjoy some 'sights' along the way.
Having previously completed a North Atlantic circuit (2015-17), I wanted to do something a little different this time and so started considering whether a trip into the South Atlantic and back might be feasible.
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| A view of Jamestown, St Helena and its anchorage. |
I'd read various accounts of visits to St Helena and Ascension.The relative isolation of these islands in the middle of the South Atlantic provides a significant enticement for me and of course, the opportunity to "cross the line" for the first time adds further spice to the proposed adventure.
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| St Helena and Ascension Islands |
Most sailing visitors arrive at St Helena from Cape Town during the Southern Hemisphere's late summer, hoping to ride the South East Trade Winds as far north as possible before tackling the doldrums straddling the equator.
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| Ascension |
That's a lot of miles to cover though, including those through the calms and squalls of the doldrums and its important to be in the right place at the right time to benefit from the prevailing weather systems and to lessen the risk of being clobbered by bad weather. Arrival at and departure from Cape Town in favourable conditions, are the most critical of considerations. Approaching Cape Town from the South West in the Southern Summer and clearing out from there before the onset of Autumn when gales become increasingly frequent and more intense, are therefore, the key passage making objectives. To give us time to explore the Cape Town area we need to arrive as early as possible in January, or even earlier, before departing for St Helena by the end of March.
Working backwards and forwards from Cape Town's location and time window and taking into account, the seasons, general weather patterns, the inevitable delays due to boat maintenance and the time needed to explore Brazil (a little), I thought the proposed cruise looked viable, if a little on the busy side!
It seemed sensible to find out how others had fared, but after searching through the archives of the Ocean Cruising Club and the Royal Cruising Club, I couldn't find a single account of anyone undertaking such a passage. I also posted a question on the Ocean Cruising Club members forum, asking if anyone had done it, but got no response.
Surely someone must have done it by now!? Then I remembered; some years ago, I had read accounts of similar voyages undertaken by the irrepressible Bill (H.W.) Tillman back in the 1960s. The accounts are written by Tillman himself and make extremely enjoyable reading. Amongst his numerous journeys of remarkable exploration to the top and bottom of the globe, in search of isolated mountains to climb, he made two voyages that included circuits of the North and South Atlantic in 'Mischief' his venerable Bristol Pilot Cutter. One was to Kerguelen Island in the South Indian Ocean and the other to South Shetland just north of the Antarctic continent deep in the South Atlantic Ocean. On both occasions, he got to those inhospitable locations and back to the UK in around 12 months. Admittedly, he didn't dally to admire the scenery on the way - he made only short stops to re-provision in the Canaries and Cape Town on the first trip and at the Canaries and Montevideo, Uruguay, on the second. However, he did spend a lot of time venturing much further south than I intend and a lot of time climbing mountains!
Following further research I came across the very informative and helpful "The South Atlantic Circuit" by Tom Morgan. Taken together with Tillman's voyage blazing, the book convinced me the voyage was doable, potentially very enjoyable and certainly well worth attempting. Getting to Brazil early enough in the season to provide sufficient time to get through the later passage gates whilst enjoying sufficient 'down time' is the key milestone on which the rest of the circuit depended. It will require departing the Canaries early in the season when the North East Trades are less reliable, but plenty of people have done that before. However, if we do fail to make Brazil in good time, we can fall back on plan B and return to the UK from there via the Caribbean.
So the die is cast. We'll (attempt) to follow in (some of) Mischief's wake and undertake a circuit of the North and South Atlantic commencing this June. We'll head first for the Canaries, then cross to Brazil and spend a couple of months there, before crossing the South Atlantic to Cape Town in December/January. The planned route for the return leg, is via St Helena, Ascension and the Azores; then back to the UK for the summer of 2024.
In the meantime the skipper and boat both need significant works and preparations.
Starting with the skipper. Recent visits to the Dentist and GP have revealed the need for remedial works. My teeth have never been one of my better features and of course, the march of time has not helped, having left me short of a few! I was only a boy when the first went missing without permission. It was a boating incident. Keen to demonstrate my usefulness to my Dad; when the 'trusty' seagull outboard expired, I stood up, put the dinghy painter in my mouth and dived into the water to tow the dinghy the remaining few yards to the boat. I surfaced with an odd sensation in my mouth and then noticed looks of horror etched on the faces of those still in the dinghy. Further boating activities were put on hold whilst I was whisked off to the local dentist short of one and a half pegs!
Genetics, an aversion to the tooth brush (in my younger years), gum disease diagnosed far too late, and the ravages of time conspired to require the capping of many of my pegs and the extraction of a further two. Then on Friday, I finally plucked up the wherewithal to visit the dentist to get the odd sensation in my upper jaw checked out. It turned out I had a sizeable abcess around the root of a capped tooth which was alongside a pretty ineffective broken tooth. The Dentist was most surprised that I wasn't in agony as a consequence, but said I could just leave it alone until it started playing up when it would have to come out. The prospect of that happening mid Atlantic made me opt for the other option of having the faulty pegs removed immediately and replaced with a plate containing two false teeth! They probably wont be the last I'll need! The deed will be done in a couple of weeks.
The previous day's visit to the GP to check out the flaky skin on the bridge of my nose confirmed the need for treatment to remove sun damaged skin before anything nasty developed. A simple cream applied twice a day for 4-6 weeks will apparently do the job. The down side being I'll be wandering around with a sore red nose whilst the cream does its job. However, rather that than develop full blown skin cancer in the South Atlantic!
A few months previously, having finally got fed up with my increasingly erratic personal plumbing; blood tests, and ultra sound and another visit to the GP, led to both anticipated and unanticipated results. My PSA test was negative for prostate cancer, but the ultrasound confirmed an enlarged prostate (which I had known about for years). The Doc said I had four options: do nothing and put up with the symptoms; start a lifetime course of tablets to mitigate the symptoms; go on hormone treatment to reduce the size of the prostate; or have a course of steam treatment! Yes that's right, steam treatment! I had to ask her to repeat herself a couple of times. Apparently, some sadist has come up with the notion that squirting steam up one's willy can reduce the size of one's prostate! Now I'm not particularly squeamish but I drew the line at that! I wasn't too keen on messing about with my hormones either given I strongly suspected the ones I had left weren't in much better condition than my teeth! As an after thought the good Doc said, ".. of course I could always refer you to a Urologist..". I said yest to the tablets and to the Urologist. I have an appointment with the latter in April. Provided that is, the poor old NHS can stump one up by then. I strongly suspect, he or she, will simply advise me to keep taking the tablets but we'll see.
The result I hadn't expected but which really should not have surprised me, was that I had significantly raised cholesterol levels. Despite my Dad dying of a heart attack at the ridiculously young age of 56 and despite previous test results showing raised cholesterol, I had convinced myself that all was well with my own ticker and was not taking any steps to minimise my cholesterol levels.
I've now reluctantly stopped consuming butter and am trying to limit my consumption of other animal fats and alcohol. I hope that will stop the rot but better get tested again before we set sail for the South Atlantic.
I'm also hoping that the various aches, pains and sore joints, that come and go these days, will not develop into anything too disabling during the planned cruise.
On a more pro-active note, after a long lay off due to injury, I've also returned to running three times a week with my youngest son. At 30, he is less than half my age but is patient enough to act as a good pace maker for his old man. Before the lay off I was able to run 5k at a 6 minute average pace with his help but am only averaging around 6:15 now. Perhaps by June I'll be able to make 6 minutes once again!
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| Celestial Navigation Homework |
I also made a late New Year's Resolution to (re)learn celestial navigation. I managed to pass the Yacht Master Ocean theory course back in 2015, when, prior to pushing off on my previous Atlantic Circuit in Arctic Smoke, I fell in love with the idea of navigating properly. To my great shame, the lore of the GPS proved much to seductive and my shiny new sextant hardly left its box and it's stayed there ever since. At least it didn't get damaged. In the intervening years, I've forgotten everything I learnt on that course and only passed it because I managed to memorise (all to briefly) the various steps without ever really understanding them.
This time I have vowed it will be different. I have spent hours following this chap's Youtube tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5R5mrrGB0 and more hours working through various examples. I've only focussed on the sun thus far and think I have almost got the hang of the basics. I've enjoyed spending the time to (try) and understand the theory this time and am hopeful that I will be able to put it into practice when we put to sea. You never know, if Putin's outrageous war on Ukraine get's even more out of hand, the Americans might start pulling the plug on GPS!
What about the boat? Well the list of potential improvements and repairs is too extensive to cover here but the main ones, in no particular order are:
Replace the lost Hydrovane rudder. The original fell off off Lands End in 2021 and the replacement I made for it last year broke off within a couple of hours. I then found a second hand one on ebay complete with a downtube and shaft for £300.
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| Pictured above the "new" rudder with tube and shaft along with the now discarded skeleton of another 'to be made' rudder. |
Unfortunately, the tube/shaft turned out to be incompatible with my ancient Hydrovane system and so my pal Bernie, who is dab hand at these things, welded a new length of stainless steel rod onto the hinge (shown on top of the rudder skeleton in the above photo) onto which - thanks to a previous owner's modification - the lost rudder had been attached.
The other end of the rod that Bernie welded onto the hinge will insert into the head of the rudder..
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| Looking down on the head of the new rudder |
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| Side view of the head of the rudder |
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| The retaining pin - top left |
It doesn't look a particularly robust arrangement does it? Others have thought the same and have tried to make it stronger by using a larger pin or by replacing the pin with a larger bolt, only to lose their rudders!
The new assembly is now on board awaiting 'passivation' to remove the microscopic welding debris that would otherwise rust and then a test sail will be required.
Installation of the new Spectra water maker, bought last year, needs completing.
To keep up with the extra power that will be consumed by the new appliances and the new fridge installed last year, I'd also like to install a fourth solar panel to add another 100 Watts of generation capacity to the existing 380 Watts.
I've already attached chainplates for the Jordan's Drogue (a sort of emergency brake for yachts)
but need to finish the job by glassing the internal backing plates to the hull.
New attachment points for the spinnaker booms' halyards need to be riveted to the mast.
The deck fitting for the emergency forestay needs replacing with a stronger one.
The sacrificial strip on the Genoa as well as its leach line, needs replacing.
The life-raft needs servicing or replacing as do the fire extinguishers.
The bottom will need scrubbing off and I want to swap the existing 3 bladed propellor for a two bladed one to reduce the drag whilst sailing.
The engine's heat exchanger needs cleaning.
Some of the seams in the rather worn teak deck need caulking.
Various additional bits of running rigging and related pulley blocks and deck fittings are need to be purchased and fitted.
A host of other, relatively minor maintenance tasks are also required.
Well that's it for now. Hopefully, my next post will confirm good progress has been made on all appropriate fronts and that we're still on for departure in June.
Sorry about the lack of photos!
