Our First Ocean Crossing
by Lynne & Chris Morgan

Both our crew members (friends) abandoned ship in Simonstown, Cape Town, because South Africa's notorious Cape Aghulas proved to be the religious experience it is proclaimed to be. Hence our first time sailing alone we crossed the South Atlantic Ocean.

Scared? Yes!!! Definitely.

	Destination: St. Helena.

We were told by Gladys May, a British cruiser, that the first four or five days out of Cape Town is the roughest. Once into the horse latitudes, you will see little train clouds and flying fish, she said, and then you will know that you are in the trade winds and it is smooth sailing from then on. Well, it was rough, but nothing like the Indian Ocean, which would have to be classed as violent!

On day 5 we were still awaiting the blow, when we were abruptly becalmed. Chris panicked! This is the calm before the storm. That is what our fishing experience had taught us. "Batten down the hatches!," Which he did, and re-lashed everything on deck.

"Chris, we're headed for the equator, not the South Pole!" You can take the captain off the fishing boat, but you can't take the captain out of the man!

We had put the Valdivia Banks in as a danger waypoint on the first day, and were aiming high of it from the start. The Atlantic Ridge runs up the middle of the African and South American continents. The depth soundings go from 5400 feet up to 13- and 11-foot soundings, with freak breaking waves reported. These banks are fished by both continents.

Days 6, 7 and 8 we drifted over them.

Our recently replaced damper plate had once again disintegrated, hence we drifted, along with huge schools of yellowtail and turtles.

I swam, butt naked, in 5400 feet of aquamarine water pierced by a shaft of sunlight that looked like it shone all the way down. Chris stood on deck armed with the gaff. "Lynne, we are like a big piece of drift wood, which has its own ecosystem. The giants of the deep know we are here!" Well, that ruined the trans-fixation I had going. Back on deck, refreshed and still scoffing Chris, the fishing line with bungee extended to max, and then snapped. Chris was on it, and quickly hauled in a 20kg longfin tuna, without a tail!

"Keen to go for a swim after dinner, Lynne?"

Speaking of dinner...food, food glorious food. There was so much time to think about what to cook or bake...or in this case how to use 20kg of fish in the next day or two, as the refrigerator had recently been renamed "The Hot Box". We kept 5kg for eating immediately, ceviche, fried fillets, fish cakes etc. In the cooler box we packed fillets in layers of salt - only needing to pour off the water everyday in order to preserve until St. Helena. We also made biltong, a South African delicacy of dried game or fish. With a simple vinegar mix we soaked, salted and/or spiced long thin strips of fish, which hung on S-shaped hooks all over the cockpit. What an absolute treat that turned out to be, and the beginning of our drying careers. We now dry everything from tomatoes, pineapple, bananas, mangos etc. in addition to fish.

On day 9 the bank of cloud on the horizon was now overhead, and a flock of swallows took off from under the bow. Swallows don't swim...Those aren't birds...They're gremlins! The flying fish looked like a cosmic joke. Huge googly eyes with tiny body's dangling between 2 translucent wings. We're in the trades!!!

Smooth sailing it was to St. Helena, and on to Ascension. In the day we would have as much sail up as possible, and at night we would reef the boat right down, but somehow we always seemed to do 6 knots in the trades.

The night sky was consuming, so close, and alive with shooting stars. Ascension is one of the darkest places on earth; it has been used for celestial observation for hundreds of years, as it still is today by NASA.

The luminescence from the plankton and the jellyfish cities can be seen as a constant highway in our wake...Dazzling. Except on the full moon, which dominates all.

I liked the nighttime watches, when it was cool and generally calm. As we approached the mainland, all this changed with the introduction of squalls. We had heard about the squalls, and the general rule of sail is, if you cant see through them, REEF. My first thought on hearing this was "How do you spot them at night?". Well, you don't. The first sign of a massive black atomic mushroom descending on you is when the stars disappear. You're bombed with winds up to 40 knots for a half an hour, and then, in what feels like all at once, the bottom of the mushroom drops out on your head. On dusk when the air cools you see them forming; once we slipped past eight, untouched. The final night of our crossing we watched a mushroom pass on the starboard, only to turn and come back at us, blowing our reaching jib clean in half.