CLEAR IN AT SAINT MARTIN

On December 20 John and crew sailed to Marina Port Louis, Marigot, Saint Martin.  It took three hours for John to clear in but no Covid tests were required.   Meanwhile the crew unlashed the dinghy and pumped it up. 

That evening the four celebrated at Bistro Nu.  The next day they moved Adventuress to Marigot Bay on anchor.   The dinghy motor started with the forth pull!

Werner will fly home to Holland; Dan and Jim will fly to Jacksonville FL.  John will be alone for Christmas but I will join him on December 31st in time for New Years!  We will double hand sail Adventuress, mainly day sails,  to our home in Punta Gorda Isles.  

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas 

Nancy

ADVENTURESS ARRIVES IN SAINT BARTS!

At approximately 8:00 pm Adventuress anchored in Anse de Colombier, a beautiful bay on Saint Barthélemy.   It is one of our favorite places.  

I haven't received a text from John but I'm sure a party is in process.   Congratulations to John, Werner, Dan and Jim.  

Nancy

ADVENTURESS UPDATE

 Since Adventuress left Mindelo, Cape Verde, the winds have been moderate (15 kts.) to strong (35 kts.) averaging 20 knots.  The sailing has been wonderful.  The only reason to run the engine several hours per day is to supplement the three solar panels.  With the refrigerator/freezer, autopilot, radar and other electronics, the house battery usage is significant.  The solar panels do an amazing job but with that much usage, the battery charger on the engine is necessary.  

Dan continues to catch fish:  seven mahi mahi have been caught and three tuna.  Only three mahis were too small to keep.  John has taken to "heaving to" when a fish is caught.  It gives a more stable cockpit for cleaning/filleting fish.  Dan is really good at that!   .....and I'll repeat myself.  There is nothing better than freshly caught fish, from the hook to the frying pan!  They are running a bit low on veggies but do have 2 frozen packs and some cans.  There is no fear of scurvy!!!

Werner baked bread.  He used the Spanish recipe on the bag of flour and it was a big success.  Well done Werner and glad that you can speak Spanish.

Everyone has enjoyed showers every other day.  These experienced sailors know how to conserve water, only a third of the 250 gallons on Adventuress has been used as of several days ago when the Captain "dipped" the tank.

The captain tells me that Adventuress will likely arrive at St. Martin during the coming week, if all goes well.

We wish them safety and great sailing on their last week of the passage.

Nancy

EMERGENCY REPAIR IN CAPE VERDE

EMERGENCY REPAIR IN CAPE VERDE

After leaving the Canary Islands on November 28^th, Adventuress experienced strong 30 knot plus winds and ten to fifteen foot waves from the stern.  Adventuress sailed at 7.5 knots but saw up to 9.5 knots when she rode a large swell.   All was perfectly fine and under control.  The sails were reefed and Adventuress easily handled the sea state.

On December 1 the autopilot stopped working and the rough seas did not allow them to recomission it.  They headed to Cape Verde which was three days away.  Hand steering is hard work downwind in a big sea so John changed the watch schedule to one hour on watch and three hours off.   I was so glad I wasn't on Adventuress because I would not have had the strength to hold watch.

They arrived in Mindelo December 5 at 4am.  Werner was on the bow with the search light looking for unlit buoys and the large wreck in the harbor.  All went well and they anchored in a safe calm place. Werner and Dan commissioned the autopilot.  It was a Happy Cappy who woke up from his nap to find out the autopilot was fixed so off they went on their voyage to St. Martin, only spending 10 hours in Mindelo.

Since then the sailing has been excellent.  John reports this morning and I quote: 

"1743 3232  Moving along as I start my 0400 two hour watch.  Wind pressure and direction is inconsistent, ranging from 18 to 30 kts and ENE to E.  But the sails are set to cope.  We have one reef in the jib, and a tiny four reefed main.  The cog at 280 degrees average is excellent.  And our speed over ground average is impressive at 7.2 kts.  Offshore, speed is not the objective:  you set up the boat and sails to go as fast as you can Without Stressing the Rigging!  If you break something racing around a course inshore then you boast about it at the yacht club.  If you break something offshore, then you have a big problem on your hands – perhaps even life threatening. 

Weather is fine with no rain and no squalls imminent.  We use our long range radar to monitor this.

Dan has been catching us dinner: but that's a large understatement: gutting and cleaning a fish on his hands and knees on the cockpit floor as the ship bounces around is the really hard work.  So last night we had tuna and yesterday afternoon we caught a small mahi mahi that is in the freezer."

End of quote.

My news is that John texted me several days ago that he missed me so much that he asked me to meet him in St. Martin and the two of us would sail to Punta Gorda.  He was a very Happy Cappy when I said YES of course!

Prayers for a continued safe passage,

Nancy

The Passage to the USA begins!!!!

 On Saturday, November 20, Adventuress left Estepona, Spain, to begin her voyage to the USA.  The first leg was a five day passage to the Canary Islands.  Her freezer was full of JFK meals prepared and frozen at a local Air B&B apartment.  Three hanging net bags were overflowing and every nook and cranny was stowed with dry goods.

…….and the crew was ready for adventure.  The crew includes:

Werner Brouwer from Holland.  He and his wife Ad have been friends of ours since we met them sailing about 5 years ago.  Werner, Ad and a friend built a 50 foot sailboat which they cruised Europe and the Med.  Since then it was sold.  Werner and Ad are now building a 40 foot sailboat.

Jim O’Shea we met in Marco Island when he and his wife Laurie were cruising on their Island Packet 350.  They are living on their Island Packet traveling to the Bahamas and New England annually.  Jim is a retired large animal Veterinarian.  Hopefully his medical skill wills not be needed on this trip.

Dan Gray and his wife Laurie own a Cabo Rico 38 which they restored and they spend six months per year sailing her south and back to New England.

Adventuress arrived in the Canaries Thursday November 25.  Unfortunately the winds were light and fickle for the five day passage.  The good news was that Dan, the resident fisherman, caught a mahi mahi and a tuna, and then a second tuna in the Canaries.  There is nothing like freshly caught fish for dinner.

Adventuress picked up fuel, water and a few provisions in the Canaries.  The weather forecast was perfect for a Sunday, November 28th departure.  So they are off again!  They will head southwest to a waypoint west of Cape Verde.  John says "We will sail the wind! So as long as we are heading about SW for the next 900 nm then we will get to where the wind takes us!"

They will ultimately head to St Martin which is approximately an eighteen to twenty day passage.  We will stay in touch by texts through the Zoleo and InReach satellite communicators.  The forecast is for northeast winds 20 to 30 knots through Friday, a sailor’s dream.

Here are some photos taken by our German friend, Jessie Schoeller, when Adventuress was leaving Marina Rubican in the Canaries.

 

Werner is keeping close watch at the bow

Jim at amidships  

 Dan handling the stern line and the Happy Cappy is at the helm.

.........and they are off!

Praying for a safe, enjoyable passage,

Nancy

Rejuvenation and Recuperation.

Adventuress has been 95% rejuvenated after her forced 26 month hibernation; we have been quite busy, and there is not much left to be done before we set sail Transatlantic. So we have been enjoying biking, dining, and relaxing in Estepona.

After biking about three miles from the Marina, Nancy is resting on the promenade seats - at the far end of Estepona.

We had a good berth at Estepona, near the office and the restaurants, and that worked well until Friday and Saturday nights, when the parties stopped at dawn.

Estepona Marina is a well-designed and managed marina, with kempt gardens and clean paths.

After a good lunch in the Old Town.

                             

                                                Jan and Jessie are young sailors from Germany...........

........enjoying a dream year or two on a Contest 48,  built in Medemblik, Netherlands. They found her for sale in England.

And here goes Adventuress onto the hard: this travel lift is huge - built to haul out fishing trawlers.

This was the primary reason we hauled her out for three hours: her keel was covered with barnacles and gunk......

.....which the boatyard's power washer soon removed.

All cleaned up, Maxprop greased, zincs changed, and ready to splash:

Here she goes: the tall chap is working the travel lift with a remote control gismo: hope it has a failsafe feature!

Two days later we sailed 30nm along to Gibraltar: and boy what a difference! All that gunk was costing us about one and a half knots of speed.

Back at Alcaidesa Marina in La Linea, Spain, just over the border from Gib.

In Gib we put in 500 litres of clean diesel at Gib Oil: UK pounds 0.75 a litre. (There are about 3.8 litres to a US gallon.) Also we picked up an important item that we had better never use..........

.......a new Life Raft.

These young sailors are from Geneva, Switzerland: Laurent is French, and Nathalie is Scottish. But all three - the Chichuahua "Mistrale" included - speak French and English.

Laurent had the most beautiful coffee machine I have ever seen: this work of art and science makes wonderful Expresso: it works by pressing down the two levers and forcing hot water through the grinds.

Of course our Corgi The Empress Cleo-patra must never see this photo! (Cleo is on vacation right now in Brentwood, Tennessee with her brother Cosmo, and Ralph and Laura.)

And here's another fun couple: the other new sailing friends we made in Estepona are Klaus and Yvonne from Stuttgart, also sailing a Contest 48.

And so we end this post with a strongly flying Stars and Stripes: and Nancy will be back soon in Punta Gorda Florida, via Malaga, Frankfurt, Washington DC and Nashville TN.

 

 So here is an unusual post! No pretty pictures. Instead you will be interested (or bored) to read a bit about diesel. This stuff is a necessary evil aboard a cruising sailboat. Yes, it's a SAIL boat! But it needs wind, and when that doesn't happen, a sailboat needs an engine and propeller - or a lot of patience.

What I insist on calling "The Wuhan Flu" prevented our return to Spain until September 2021.

So what? Simple: when we left, Adventuress had about a third of a tank of diesel fuel: call it about 50 gallons, or 190 litres. And that diesel fuel has a shelf life! It gets gummy after about 6 to 12 months: and as they say in Wuhan: "Engine no likee gummy!"

The ship's engineer/cook/bar tender/captain was nervous about the diesel: and his misgivings turned out to be correct. The engine said "Enough of this crap food!"  Now engineer John had a dozen fuel filters aboard: but three were soon used up, full of gummy crap. Nancy spotted a safe haven just five miles away, and, with no usable breeze about, and an engine gummed up and able to go at less than half speed, we turned Starboard 90 and at 2 mph we limped into Caleta de Velez.

There we waited for a weekend and a Spanish Holiday (seems like Holidays are once a week in Spain), and then we had excellent luck! We were berthed literally right next to the boatyard, and along they came with pump, hoses, and 200 litres' worth of jerry jugs. We emptied the tank into the jerry jugs using a sucking hose, and then we rinsed out the tank (with rinsing diesel put back and stirred up with an air compressor - attached to the boat's pick-up tube.)

Then off they took me in a van to a fuel station where I purchased 200 litres of fresh diesel in 8 jerry jugs. And into the empty tank it went, with quite a few prayers. So the happy ending is: the Yanmar diesel engine is purring, so is Admiral Nancy, and therefore: happy am I!

John: Estepona,  25 October, 2021

Back Aboard and Counting Blessings

It's been a weird time to be living in the USA and having a cruising sailboat in Europe: and so we were quite pleasantly surprised after 26 months of forced dereliction to find our stranded Adventuress in very good shape. True she was beyond dirty on deck: filthy would be more accurate. But although she was quite dusty down below she suffered no damage belowdecks.

We arrived and set to work. The cleaning was arduous but uneventful. There were two things that had caused us to worry: the water tank, and the diesel tank. Happily the water tank and pipes were soon emptied, cleaned, rinsed, and are now in good shape. The diesel was another story: and we will post separately about that: in a nutshell, the diesel was unusable, "uncleaneable", and we had to ditch it and start again.

So now we will sail her back to the USA. Nancy will fly home: her knee and arthritic wrists are not suitable for a long ocean passage; but she will rejoin the ship in the Islands and sail back to Punta Gorda in leisurely coastal sailing mode.

John has three excellent sailors joining him for the passage: in order of signing up:

Werner Brouwer, our Dutch sailing friend, engineer and boatbuilder: Werner is in the middle of building his second boat - a 40 footer whose steel hull he shipped in to his yard: in Holland we met him and Ad, and daughter Anne, on S/V Arwen, his first beauty that was 46 feet.

Jim O'Shea, who with wife Laurie has been living aboard and sailing the US Eastern Seabord on Kismet, an Island Packet 350 for many years.Jim has the advantage of having an identical sailing set up on Kismet as we have on Adventuress, just a bit smaller.

Dan Gray: who rescued a Cabo Rico 38 SV Windweaver, has been sailing also the Eastern Seabord part time with his wife Betsy; and part time at his home in New Hampshire. Dan and Betsy are regulars at the Annapolis Boat Show, where they help with the Lats and Atts booth for Bob Bitchin.

Ok so that's enough intro: here is what you came here to look at!

Admiral Nancy in her element! At the helm (in charge!) and in the pink!

OK so this is NOT about sailing: this is about anchoring. There's this gismo on the bow called a windlass, and it uses a sturdy electric motor to pick up the anchor chain and anchor. The ship's engineer is here servicing the windlass, and about time too!

How the devil do you get aboard when you are a*se - sorry, I mean STERN - to the dock? Well, you use a "passarelle", and if you are silly you buy for 2,000 Euros a custom stainless/kevlar jobby that tells the world you are a silly sailor! But John and Nancy use a rarely seen passarelle: it's a ramp to drive your dirt motor-bike up into a trailer to get it home! (105 Euros, delivered, to Gibraltar!)

So here's a pic to illustrate and celebrate Nancy's Bread on the Water! Thanks, Hayden, for a great Baking recipe for sailors!

                                         

It almost goes without saying that we had a long time to think about what we should change on the boat when we were finally allowed back into Spain. A Boom Brake is used to prevent an accidental jibe and the mast falling down (!) when we are sailing downwind. (Of course, the 3,500nm plus voyage back to the USA down the Trade winds will be downwind.) So here's a pic of our old Dutchman boom brake (top) and our new much beefier Dutchman boom brake. But don't despair: in this blog post there's not much technical stuff about sailing!

Just take a look at the green pea soup into which JFK is daring to immerse himself - and he is not even wearing a Wuhan Flu mask! This was after motoring a couple of miles from the Los Nietos Club, where the skipper just had to get in and take a look at the keel. The bits he could see were yukky ugly!

But he does clean up well.

Uh oh: I feel another technical sailing term coming along: this downwind point of sail is called "Wing on Wing" - and for this you do want a sturdy boom brake!

Nancy is a sailor and can you tell how happy she is to be back on her sailboat?

Here we go with a proud owner boat pic!

Looking west at a sunset....or East at a sunrise?  Clue; we are sailing South, and looking to Port.

And this chap, so I am told, is called a "Rock Star" among sailboat racers: he likes to sail as close to the rocks as he dares!

No prizes for guessing this one; leaving Cabo de Gato at 0720. That's right: sunrise astern.

Nancy the Brave is a demon for the up-close selfies!

And now we celebrate civilisation with a Cafe con Leiche. Tastes divine.

Squid anyone?  These are whole small Calamari and they are reeeally good!

So which end goes in first?

Nancy is practising for the USA Olympic Synchronised Shrimp-Peeling team.

So here we are, not a cloud in the sky, flat water, and sailing almost dead downwind with just the front sail (Jib) unfurled.

Now here's a thing: Nancy relaxing after devouring a Turbot - I believe for the very first time.

And just on the edge of the Old Town is a French style patisserie/boulangerie: we adopted it for brunches.

What a delightful surprise: the old part of the City of Estepona is magical.

In this ancient part of Estepona there are many lovely sights, and here is one of them....

                            

.....and when in Spain, why not enjoy a sensational Lasagne at a classic old Italian restaurant?
 

                                       

And then you burn off about 18 calories riding your stowaway folding bike back to the ship.

So we are now heading over to Gib for a couple of days: then we will reurn to Estepona Marina, which we have adopted as our "home port" before our Transatlantic Passage starting about November 20. Nancy has rightly decided to fly home to USA: and my passagemaking sailors Werner, Jim, and Dan will arrive here in Spain November 17 and 18.

October 23, 2021: Estepona Marina, Spain  36.41N  005.15W