Breakfast in Bermuda

Actually that was desert. Breakfast itself was on board Titti4 with Jan and Elli.

The last 12 hours or so of the passage over Friday night did indeed provide perfect sailing conditions. As evening fell on Friday the wind shifted further to the west requiring yet another sail change back to the slutter configuration for a beam/close reach. We probably had the fastest 12 hour period of the entire trip with Bonny cruising comfortably at 6 knots most of the time.

I adopted my, by now usual practice of 1 hour sleeps interspersed with waking to check the course, weather and watching out for other vessels.

Now I could really take notice of our ETA predicted by the chart plotter; 0600. 

At 0430 with the smallest hint of dawn approaching and about 10 miles to go, I got up and started preparing boat for our entry into St George's. That meant starting the engine which it reluctantly did, stowing the Spinnaker pole, handing the slutter jib and stowing the temporary forestay, preparing mooring lines and fenders and generally de-cluttering the decks as much as possible. 

At 0530 with the engine having run in neutral for an hour without misbehaving, I placed the obligatory call to "Bermuda Radio" to request permission to enter the harbour in about an hour's time. Permission granted.

30 minutes later the engine coughed and died. Oh F..k, it's never actually stopped before. "Now what the hell am I going to do?" Could we tack up the narrow "Town Cut?" It's about 50 metres wide and 500 in length, boarded by hard rock on either side. No nice forgiving soft mud here! The wind was blowing directly out of it!!

The Town Cut from inside St George's Harbour

More in hope than expectation therefore I kept my finger on the starting button. Relief, eventually it ran again. What to do? Abandon entry under our own steam and call for help. How much would that cost? No friendly RNLI here just itching to mix it with the cruel sea. A tow would come at a high price, but if the engine stopped in the middle of the Town Cut we were most probably toast and would need more than just a tow! The sensible thing to do was to back off and try and arrange a tow through 'The Cut' to the anchorage. 

I pressed on!

In the event we passed through the Town Cut unscathed at 0630. 

Once through I headed for the Customs Dock, passing Titt4 at anchor on the way. The dock was jammed with boats with others waiting so I went off to anchor behind Titti4. I passed our friend Rob on the way. He had left St Martin a few days before us bound for the Azores. Later when I stopped for a chat, I found out that he had lost his balance in a blow and cracked a rib and had therfore diverted to Bermuda.

With the anchor down I was faced with a choice. Get some kip and dinghy ashore later to check in, or the opposite. It's a real faff getting the dinghy inflated and launched on your own and I really could do with a sleep, but I gritted my teeth and got on with it. Good job I did because an hour later Elli emerged on Titt4 and shouted over the invitation to breakfast.

An hour after that I was sitting in their cockpit on a pleasantly warm - not hot - morning enjoying a lovely breakfast with my now, very dear friends. I know they had been worried about me and were clearly very relieved that I had made it without mishap.

After breakfast we all went ashore to check in, with Jan and Elli stopping off to chat with other friends on the way. After check-in I went for my desert - $7! Jan and Elli joined me as I was finishing my Guinness and we then went for lunch.

I stopped off to chat with Rob on the way back. He told me his story over a cup of tea and offered to help me fix the engine tomorrow; an offer I gratefully accepted. 

So not a quick passage. 10 days to cover the straight line distance of 867 miles (including two spells of motoring for about 6 hours each). That's an average of 87 miles a day at an average speed of 3.6 knots. 

No matter - the main thing is, the Tortoises arrived!

To Bermuda 8: A cross dressing Tortoise and other tales

You'll remember I went on about boat characteristics a little while ago - why a longer boat is faster than a shorter one, but that Bonny, the smaller boat was still keeping up with Titti4; both of course slow when compared with modern planning boats. Well overnight in the stronger winds, Titti4 cast off her Tortoise persona and became a Hare. 

It seemed that she was able to maintain a steady 7 knots, whereas on Bonny, to maintain full control of the boat I needed to reduce sail and plod on at 5-6 knots. Additionally, because the forecast was for pretty consistent 25 knot winds I set the sails with that in mind; 2 reefs in the mainsail and about a quarter of the polled out genoa rolled away. The wind, right from behind, was though anything but consistent; sometimes blowing at 25 knots (and chucking it down with rain) and at others no more than 15. In those winds we needed all sail set to maintain a decent speed but there was no way I was going to spend the night reefing and un-reefing the mainsail. I did though adjust the size of the genoa from time to time. I could do that from the cockpit. The sea too was pretty variable, sometimes pretty smooth and at others very lumpy.

Titti4 disappeared from my AIS screen around 0200. We had scheduled a call at 0900 this morning, but whilst I could hear Elli, she could not hear me.

It was a pretty crappy night sleepwise; the boat was sometimes rolling violently and anxiety about whether I might have to put a third reef in kept sleep at bay. To make matters worse, the AIS alarm kept going off as various ARC boats caught us up and passed us.

By lunchtime it was clear the blow had blown itself out and so I shook out the reefs. Then as the winds died further, I swapped the main for the cruising chute with the Genoa polled out to port. However, the wind veered further west and pushed us further east off our course for Bermuda. To sail closer to the wind meant dumping the chute, re-hoisting the mainsail and re-deploying the slutter jib. By the time all that was finished it was 1700.

As of 1750 we have 66 miles to run, are making 5-6 knots in exactly the right direction and should therefore be in tomorrow morning.

Weather and position wise, that's how things look now; the yellow/orange area to the right is the blow we got last night. The red dot is Bonny with the dashed line showing her heading. The dark green smudge is Bermuda. The patch of yellow top left is another little blow but it's due to drift north of Bermuda by the time we arrive. The bluey area in the middle has wind speeds of 12-15 knots coming from the West. Perfect conditions for the last 12 or so hours of the passage.

To Bermuda 7: Indjuns!! (and Tortoises)

That's the AIS display screen on my VHF radio. Zoom in and you'll see a number of small circles with lines sticking out of them in the bottom left hand corner, a triangle in the middle and another small circle/line to the right of the triangle.

The group of circles/lines are the Injuns, or more accurately the leading pack of the ARC Europe fleet, also heading for Bermuda. These are the big fast boats. The ARC fleet left St Martin 2 days after us and the leading boats will probably overhaul us by the end of the day. The leader of the pack - Sea Dweller - is 3.5 miles behind us as at 1315 on 16/5 and probably averaging a knot faster. She has her Spinnaker set whereas I reluctantly doused Bonny's cruising chute, when at 2300 last night, my alarm woke me and I discovered that unlike an hour earlier when any remotely fit tortoise would have overtaken us, we were creaming along at 5 knots with the genoa also set and poled out to Starboard. 

Such a shame the sea was flat and it was great sailing under the stars but we were right on the end of the 'sensible' scale. Dark, rising wind, solo! Every ounce of common sense screamed, "get that bloody thing down NOW before we broach. I listened, decided to leave it for another hour - it was such fun, besides I was tired - and then I immediately changed my mind and reluctantly set about the task of wrestling hundreds of square feet of billowing nylon down on to the deck. I  switched the deck light on and donned safety harness and a head torch grabbed the fall end of the very long clew line having left a couple of turns round the winch to provide enough friction to hold the sail without me being pulled overboard and went up on the foredeck. "Oh fuck, it's even windier than I thought!". I rehearsed the drill... Untie the sock downhaul from the mast, move to the front of the foredeck holding on the safety spinnaker pole, pull on the sock downhaul to smother the billowing sail, move back to the mast, tie off the sock downhaul, lower the sock containing the chute to the deck. "Piece of piss" I said. Someone else said, "but look at that fucking sail, its enormous and I'm sure it's even windier than a couple of minutes ago". "So what do you suggest wise arse?" No response. Deep breath. And do you know what? To my great surprise it was a piece of piss!

An hour later I'd replaced the chute with the poled out jib hanked on to the second forestay. A check on the speed. 6 knots with less than half the sail area earlier. Glad I didn't wait any longer! Mind you an hour later the wind had dropped and the sea was up and we were flopping around at 2 knots heading the wrong way.

Meanwhile the other Tortoise, Titti4 was showing on the AIS as about 5 miles off to Starboard, seemingly maintaining station. 

Long before all that kicked off, before it was even dark, whilst we were motoring,  I was in the galley preparing dinner of spaghetti and tinned meatballs when I looked out the window and saw a strange slick on the surface of the sea next to the boat. Whales? I went up to investigate. Nope. The bloody boat was going round and round in circles and the 'failing to maintain course alarm' was beeping. What the f*** is going on I thought. "Shit, I hope the rudder hasn't fallen off, or the steering rods broken." An hour later, after trying to convince myself I had just accidentally switched the auto steering off - which I hadn't - through a wave of mounting panic, I managed to work out through a process of elimination that the rudder was intact afterall and the boat's steering gear fully operational. Also the auto steering responded to changes of course being input, but it wouldn't hold the course. Rather relieved that we weren't rudderless in the 'middle' of the Atlantic, I reasoned that it must be a fault of some sort with the system compass. I decided to wait for the wind then sail so that the steering could be left to the Hydrovane. 

Next, I called up my fellow tortoise, Titti4, on the VHF to appraise them of the situation and left a WhatsApp message for Mick before shutting down Starlink for the night. After putting the engine in nuetral I noticed there was already a slight breeze from the south (ish) and so set about making sail. An hour later we were slipping along at 2 knots a couple of hours before my 2300 Alarm went off.

Next priority was to rescue dinner! The pasta was still warm so I re-heated the tinned meatballs, chucked in some tomatoe puree to get rid of their decidely anaemic looking appearance and tucked in and then went to bed.

I've already mentioned the first time my beauty sleep was disrupted. The second came at around 0530, when I decided that the persisting SW wind had pushed Bonny as far East as was desirable, so requiring yet another sail change. Down came the poled out jib to port. Next I had to ship the pole holding the Genoa out to Starboard, harden in on the genoa then head NW, then hoist the mainsail and head roughly north.

A couple of hours later the wind shifted again, forcing us East - again. The previous rig was now the perfect one, but I just couldn't be assed to start all over again. Instead I poled out the genoa to port where the jib had been, put the now southerly wind behind us and eased the main right out to starboard with a preventer to reduce the risk of an acidental gybe. With the wind gradually increasing, that's been our rig ever since (as at 1600). It's set to continue and so I'll probably have to reef before dark.

Meanwhile, the leading Injuns are snapping at our heals. It turns out the "Sea Dweller", now less than a mile behind us, is a 16 metre Catermaran! So she's longer than Bonny and (in theory anyway) capable of planing. I'm therefore surprised she's only making a knot to a knot and a half faster than Bonny. She ain't no 'Hare', that's for sure! She is however sporting one of those fancy chutes (not a spimmaker as I alleged before) with a slit across it, partly filled by a sort of horizontal sock. A "parasail" I think it's called...

1745 here and the wind has just started to noticeably increase, so two reefs just gone in the main and a couple of rolls in the genoa.

191 miles to go. ETA Saturday morning.