Starting the Long Route South
by Kate and Hamish Laird

We haven't done very well by our Setsail updates this summer. We were in Scotland for most of the summer, with non-stop guests and school for Helen, and lots of Munroes (3000-foot mountains) for Hamish to climb.

We're now in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, and our next passage is looming in front of us: 5000 miles to Mar del Plata, Argentina. We've come down from England in two hops, one to Madeira, the other just two days on to the Canaries. We're hoping to get off early next week, but we have some parts held up in customs, so we'll see.

It was a delight to be back on the ocean again, finally on a long passage where one can really get sea legs and become accustomed to the watch pattern. It takes about a week to become truly acclimated, I think, and most of our passages on Seal have been around the one-week mark...not long enough to really have time to stay awake much when off watch.

Last year, we hand-steered to Belize with a third crew, and exulted in doing only 15 miles over the rhumb line course of about 1000 miles. This year we had an Aires wind vane at the helm, and did about 150 miles extra on 1300 miles between England and Madeira. That's roughly an extra day on passage, but it was still a treat not to be on the helm. The only other long trip I'd done with a wind pilot was to South Georgia from the Falklands, and when the wind really built up we went back on the helm again. At 56 feet and 30 tons, Seal is the top end of what an Aires can steer, but with a lot of trimming it seems to work pretty well. In Scotland, Hamish added two additional struts to the standard system, and that has taken all the play out of it when we sail at high speeds.

The outer lock gate at half tide in Lydney, England (you can see Seal's mast in the waiting lock).

We set off from Lydney, England, which is well up the Bristol Channel, with its 10-meter tides. Hamish's sister lives near there, and told us about the Lydney canal, which proved a perfect place for us to provision for the Atlantic. It had friends & relations nearby and a very welcoming yacht club. They even let me varnish some new seats for SEAL in the men's room. As we headed out, we felt a bit like a race horse at the starting gate, waiting in the lock for the Severn to make its extraordinary rise and the lock gates to open. In Lydney, there are nine hours of ebb and three hours of flood every tide...it's extraordinary. At spring tides, the water actually comes in with a bore (we came and left at neaps, which made things easier). At ten in the morning, it was hard to believe the water could ever rise to the top of the gate (7 meters) by lunchtime.

It did, and the lock keepers opened the lock, and we motored out into the brown water of the Severn, heading for the opposite shore where the water ran deeper. We didn't bump, but the lifting keel and rudder gave us a good feeling of security - one would not want to be stuck waiting for the next tide around here. Even at neaps it comes in a big rush.

The winds were light, so we motored and sailed, and motored again for a bit. We'd decided to keep our number 2 jib on until we were past Biscay, though the weather reports were quite mild. But we know of too many people who have gotten nailed in Biscay to flaunt it, so we changed sails midway off the coast of Portugal for the Number 1.

Suddenly, we were able to sail properly. The big yankee cut jib balanced the main, and Jimmy the wind pilot was able to manage even in really light winds. We were even managing 4 knots of boat speed in not much more apparent, heading dead down wind. We certainly prefer 8 knots, but it beat motoring! It's one thing motoring when it's cold and windy, and the engine isn't heating up the boat, and you've got a schedule to keep, but quite another when there are 6500 miles in front of you and it's hot.

The Number 1 poled out.

We had a lot of practice handling the spinnaker pole. In the past, this was the one maneuver on the boat that I didn't like doing single-handed at all, but now it's fine (at least when it's easy sailing) - though Hamish still does it in half the time it takes me. I often thought back to the advice the designer had for us - buy a carbon pole - but Hamish said, "Ah, but can you guarantee the rudder won't fall off?" Our designer looked blank, but Hamish had good reason - in the first iterations of Pelagic's rudder, they had done more miles under spinnaker pole as rudder than under spinnaker. We haven't had any trouble with Seal's rudder (knock wood), but at least there's a spare on the foredeck, even if it's a bit of a pig to handle.

One thing I didn't learn how to manage was the heat, which became more of an issue the farther south we sailed. I'm going to have to learn this lesson sometime in the next 5000 miles.

Back when we were sailing up the coast of Newfoundland, reefing and unreefing with each curve of the shore, I remember longing for the open sea, where the wind is more constant and you only have to reef once in a while. Sailing from Greenland to Scotland was just that...one reef every 20 hours or so until we were under fourth reef and staysail and 45 knots, then slowly back up again, until we arrived in Loch Sunart under full sail seven days later.

Four-inch hawser that we picked up on our keel. We gave it away in Madeira.

No such luck on our latest passage, with light wind and a wind pilot. Put the first reef in, take it out again. Stick a cunningham on. Take it off. Put the reef in again. Shake it out. But more than the reefing and unreefing, it was the heat that got to me! One morning, I luxuriated in a cold salt water shower while Hamish was on watch. Ten minutes later I was on watch, sunscreened and hatted, and the apparent was down to 5 knots. Better shake the reef out. I did so. Running with sweat, I went back to check on the course. The wind was up to 20 knots apparent, about 28 knots true.

Question: Do I stand out here in the heat and steer for the next two hours, which means I can skip shaking the reef, because the boat can handle it, or do I go forward and sweat again for half an hour and then spend the rest of my watch standing lookout in the shade? (We don't have a bimini - it would blow away in the high latitudes - but maybe we should reconsider for these tropical commutes.)

I put the reef back in and sat in the shade, watching Jimmy wave back and forth off the stern. (Helen named the autopilot "Jimmy" after Jimmy Buffett because the vane waving from side to side when we sail dead downwind looks like Parrotheads waving their arms over their heads to "Fins to the left, fins to the right...") I had just about cooled off by the time my watch was over.

Hamish bringing in a fish while Jimmy the wind pilot steers .

The other big change since we went to Belize is a little 24-volt Waeco 18-litre fridge. In a boat designed for high latitudes, we didn't feel the need to put in a full-on engine-driven fridge - who needs the maintenance headache when the whole world is a fridge outside? But ironically, we bought the fridge to freeze ice packs for an Antarctic ice core project we were to do this coming February - the scientists needed to keep the cores at a stable temperature while they analyzed them. Unfortunately, they had to postpone their expedition. We really ought to return the fridge, Hamish and I said to each other, without any conviction at all. It's bliss. We still keep the butter cool with a damp cloth on top of it (who likes really cold butter?), but the milk is cold and leftovers keep.

This morning in Las Palmas, Hamish got up early to go for a run before the sun came up. "I think the boat next to us has lost a seawater hose," he said. "Their bilge pumps were going the whole time I was out running." I went out for my walk...sure enough, three bilge pumps were going full bore.

Arriving in Madeira.

We discussed it until 9:30, then knocked on the hull, to no reply. "They can't be on board," I said, "All the hatches are closed." Hamish banged on the hull some more. Have they gone back to England? Hamish climbed on board to see, knocked some more, discovered the main hatch was locked. They must definitely have left! Then he discovered the forehatch was open, and decided to go see if he could find the seacock.

Then an arm appeared.

Turns out, they have three air conditioners on board, all of which were running. Seriously embarrassing.

Meanwhile, our own boat flooded a bit because we were taking on water and were so abashedly apologizing that we didn't hear it start to overflow.

We've got to get out of here!

For some reason, we still have all our fleece hats in their rack over the diesel heater. I walk past them twenty times a day and think I ought to put them away, but I never do. They serve as a promise that soon we'll be back in the cold.

You can learn more about the Lairds and Seal at their website www.expeditionsail.com.