18 February Email from Will and Lucy
Date: 18/2/01 19:45:04 GMT Standard Time Time
Subj: much belated webdiary ! 3/2/01 to 18/2/01
Hello there all !
many apologies about this being so late - we have finally found a place to send our email from that takes disks, but we have had to bring the computor to a hotel at the other end of the island to do it !
hope all is well with everyone back at home.
much love Lucy & Will.
Dear all,
Here is the chatogram:
Saturday 3/2/01,
Set off mid-morning - wind NE3, broadreached past the many windmills on the E coast of Gran Canaria. As afternoon wore on, wind went more N, and we set the new double headsail arrangement. Overnight, more wind - 2 reefs, 3 reefs, dolphins, and at 4am the electronics fail - voltage v low, but enough to keep working Vicky, which is good.
Sunday 4/2/01
There is some water in the battery box - about 2 inches sloshing around in there. We hand steered to save power, after sorting out the seawater! Vicki steered overnight, we were under bare poles until dawn. NE 4-6.
Monday 5/2/01
Low bat at 6.30. Started handsteering again, but this time lashed the helms, which would work for a minute or two at a time. Soon gave up on this and hand steered again. 8pm - electrical trauma - unexplained leakage leaves bat at 11.9V, even after a whole day of charging. There was enough juice to run Vicki overnight, NE 5, with just full jib.
Tuesday 6/2/01
By 8am, goosewinged with 2 reefs in main. Multimeter failed, and voltage regulator failed. Decided to charge the bat straight from the Solar panels fro the day. Also managed to fix the multimeter mid morning. At 11am Will rigged the stormjib as a trisail, sheeted in fairly tight, with lines from the clew to the tillers. This made Meira steer herself an amazing course straight downwind - to within 5 degrees of her course all the time - spooky to see it working. This selfsteering is called 'Tom'.
Went on like that overnight, and by morning had a flying fish (our second ever) on deck to deal with!
Wednesday 7/2/01
Wind got up steadily through the day - bat now officially charging - and by 5pm were being steered by Vicki under barepoles again. By 9pm it was frighteningly windy - probably a gale - there were parellel strips of cloud running at an angle to the wind. Under clear sky it added about one force to the wind. The seas were mountainous and all of them breaking.
We were getting ready to stream the unreeved mainsheet in a bight when a larger than usual wave picked Meira up and flung her forward. She was hurtling fairly straight and Vicki was coping, until, quite late on, her Starboard bow dug into the water. Meira swung round to beam on to the seas in a flash. I thought she was going over, as the wave she had been surfing on came up to the port hull and broke over it, and us. Nothing of the sort, Meira recovered from her blow and lay quietly beam on to the seas. We were very frightened and got the drogue streamed, which was the mainsheet as a long bridle, the polypropylene long mooring rope, and a 3 foot parachute on the end of it - This did not work as it held Meira too firmly to the seas, and she was unable to rise up to them, taking water almost every wave.
After this we streamed the same arrangement but without the drogue, but with the dinghy anchor and many large shackles at the end. This was not enough, so we used our anchor bridle, and the whole of the rode for the fisherman anchor, minus the anchor, with the chain tied up in a bundle. This held Meiras speed down to about 4-5 knots, and allowed the waves to pass underneath for the most part.
We hand steered for the whole night, in half hour turns, as it was so windy and cold. The off watch crew slept in the galley in oilies in case of a nasty surprise. We sang hymns and the whole of "joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat" along with the whole of the Kirsty MacColl Album 'Electric Landlady', which reminded us that there are people who have to cope with far worse than just gales at the moment. (For the record Will is a huge KM fan)
Thursday 8/2/01
Still v windy with hugewaves. Throat halyard pulled itself loose and flapped about ahead of the boat. How on Earth are we going to get it down? Forestay started making odd noises - peak halyard lead to bridle as reinforcment. Hand steered all day, and 45mins about all night. Wind appeared to be going down and the bigger of the drogues was pulled in. This only lasted an hour and it was re-streamed at 4am.
Friday 9/2/01
Wind reduced enough for Vicki to be able to cope. She sustained a bent pushrod in the 'wipe-out', but is functioning. Retreived halyard, in the end, by 'skipping' with a loosened spinaker halyard, wrapping the loose end many times around it, and pulling it to Earth. Teamwork! Sunny, and now merely windy, as opposed to REALLY windy, as it had been.
Went to bed, but were both unable to sleep - full of adrenalin, unable to switch off despite exhaustion.
Wind continued to go down, put out 3 rolls of jib. Bounced about horribly in cross seas - getting as much water aboard as when it had been far windier. One hour watches overnight.
Saturday 10/1/01
Double headsails out again - feeling a bit more human. Waves still a problem - coming into the cockpit from below. Despite good breeze and strong sun, v difficult to dry our soaked thermals/oilies/fleeces/bed/pillows/hats/pants/socks. Quite disheartening. Still not managed to cook a decent meal - been reheated and eating the cabbage stew from the first night of the gale until now. At night, more jib - beautful sailing - phosphorescence is different here - like flashguns going off in the water - some deep and some shallow. Spooky! Also have seen many Portugese Men O'War (=similar to jellyfish, but body floats on surface of water).
Sunday 11/2/01
Finally got main up, for the first time since wednesday! Galloped along, with only 50 odd miles to go. Excitement! Sal finally came into view with only 2 miles to go! It was hidden behind the Harmattan (dust/sand from sahara blown out over the ocean) I am told it only reaches Sal when the wind it >17kn for a couple of days. Too Right!
Reached the port at 8pm, as the light was fading. Looks lovely, but we're going to bed!
Monday 12/1/01
Were visited by friendly Germans who offered a lift to the airport, which is where one clears in. This was completed without difficulty, but money needed to be changed in the town. On the beach I cut my foot, and a stranger named Joseph (who, it turned out, had lived v near me in Peckham for 2 years!) took me to the doctor, who sternly doused my foot in neat iodine (I did scream) and bandaged it up in about 3 seconds flat! Later enjoyed a shower, for which we were charged 15p. Unfeasibly early night.
Tuesday 13/2/01
Tidied the boat a bit, had the worlds worst meal ashore (worse than school dinners!), have found out where internet cafe is, (my phone not working for data here), and will send this off when we go there later.
The internet place wouldn't let me put the disc in the computers, for fear of virus infestation. Ate in Espargos (I can't get enough of those tuna steaks), and to bed.
Wednesday 14/2/01
Lay around all day and read, and late in the day, walked to the wrecked boat, which is the most recognisable thing on the approach from the NW, (16N45.037 022W58.677). Named Zalia, she is a junked rigged Trintella 29, belonging to a lady named Carrie, who went on the rocks in a gale in November. Carrie is now staying on another boat in the anchorage, and is arranging to buy a boat she has seen in Dakar, and continue her Atlantic Circuit.
Thursday 15/2/01
Walked to Espargo after leaving our washing with the local launderers, then spoke to a couple of shipping agents about the prospect of getting Meira shipped back to Europe (anywhere will do), then got a taxi to Pedra Lumes, which is on the windward side of the island, hoping to see some windsurfing (it is famous for this) in a charming tropical settlement. We discovered a "grapes of wrath" style dust bowl with some fishing boats, a wrecked yacht, a beautiful white ILAN voyager (=Modern british motorised trimaran)(ILAN=Incredibly Long And Narrow). There was also a derilict cable car run stretching away to the interior. We followed this and came to a volcanic crater with turquoise water at the bottom, along with huge piles of drying salt. The crater must have been a mile across, with a very pleasant cool microclimate in the bottom. The piles of salt were hard to the touch and easy to climb, a bit like a glacier. Most bizarrely, right in the middle, on a salty outcrop, were 20 or so sun loungers, with 20 or so Italians sun-lounging, after having bobbed about in the supersaturated solution of salt for a while. We dipped our hands in and were amazed at how quickly the salt crystallised out as the water dried in the hot equatorial sun. We thought about the Italians, and were reminded of an Old Testament story...
Friday 16/2/01
Made bread with the breadmix - giant success - definitely bread-like - massive! Now we are on our way to discovering another internet cafe - with luck one that will allow us to send prepared mail.
Cheers!
Will&Lucy
Saturday 17/2/01
Hmmm. Rather a disapointing lack of success with the email lastnight. We managed to get a lift down to Santa Maria in a minibus full of Italian tourists who had been diving in Palmeria during the day. Santa Maria is a very funny place. It is one massive long sandy beach with no other natural features at all. Inspite of this the developers have built a medium size resort complete with restaurants and bars, souvenier shops, windsurfing hire shops, dive boats and lots of low-lying hotels. It is pleasant enough, just very spooky. In the anchorage there was another wharram, probably a modified classic, slightly bigger than Meira. When we go down there we shall have to find the owners. The internet cafe was an eyeopener: a cafe with a laptop in one corner. You payed your money and waited in turn. They were perfectly happy for us to use the disk drive, but it didn't work. Aaaaaaagh. Most frustrating. Home via taxi for imaginitive meals made with potato mark 1. (We purchased a HUGE sack of spuds in the Canaries, for the trans-atlantic and are now trying to eat them before they go off).
During the day today we managed to find the house in the village where bread is sold, so we do not have to exhaust our supply of delicious breadmix, and purchase some locally grown tomatoes (very, very small and sweet). In the afternoon we walked across the scrubland to the two wind generators, amazing things. When up close you can hear them whooshing round, and hear the sound of the electric motor so it seems as if they are being turned by electricity, not making it ! After that we carried on walking up the coast to Barracona which is a little inlet in the rocks with a "Natural Piscine": a pool of rather stagnant water safely above the reach of the waves. We had been warned that someone was drowned there recently when a big wave broke right over.
We collected our laundry and dispensed some advice and analgesia to the woman who had washed it, as she had rather nasty toothache.
Sunday 18/2/01
We shall spend the day here in Palmeria and go down the coast to Santa Maria tomorrow once we have collected our ships papers.
Sunday