On the Atlantic between St. John's and Horta

The trip is almost over and we're in Milton Keynes, England and will be flying back to Toronto on Friday but I want to keep the pictures going in order because it's my journal.
This is Tony Arujo a friend of Jim's at the helm.

What a beautiful sunset looking over the self-steering windvane. The Atlantic is very, very beautiful and we were out there and couldn't see anyone else. We didn't see any planes the whole time we were sailing on the Atlantic either. Birds would come by and visit us and dolphins. It was so nice when they did.

Me at the helm. We did 2 hours shifts with two people for the watches on the way to Horta. 2 hours steering with both Anth and me in the cockpit and 2 hours sleeping or reading or getting a bite to eat. It was very interesting. This lasted for the full 13 days that it took us to get to Horta. If there needed to be a sail change or something to be fixed on the boat you didn't get your 2 hours off. It actually worked out really well and you could sleep through anything.

This is looking down into the main salon of the boat, a cot on either side with lee cloths to hold you in your bed and a small Vberth straight ahead. The head is on your left beyond the cots and the galley is on both sides before you get to the setees. At first Tony and Anthony slept on the cots, I slept in the Vberth and Jim slept in the 1/4 berth. There were only 2 people sleeping at the same time because the other two people were in the cockpit, steering and watching for Freighters.

There we are on our watch. We have our life jacktes on and foul weather gear and fleece and....every bit of clothes we could get on. We wore 3 layers most of the 2 months when we were sailing. It was coooooollllll and rainy.

This is the Kiss Wind Geneator. It....went around reallly fast but didn't put out any power to the batteries. Oh well, eventually we tied it so it wouldn't go round and sometime it'll get hooked up.

We made good speed, about 100 nautical miles a day, some days 119 and some 78. We motored as well as sailing. If we were going less than 2 knots we would motor until the wind came back up. It was sooooo beautiful on the ocean.

Lots and lots of water and the horizon was very, very far away. This looks like a good wind, look at that flag blowing.

Here you can see the Genny way out there and we're moving along.

Sky and Sea, sky and sea, sky and sea and clouds.

The wind vane. We put it up one day but it didn't work so well so it didn't get put up again.

Clouds and sky and sea, clouds and sky and sea ....

What a beautiful sunset!!!!!

Another sunset. Sometimes the sun went down behind the clouds and we didn't get to see any colours so I was delighted when there were colours.

Me sleeping with the lee cloth up. It was soooo cozy, I loved the lee cloths.

Me navigating. We did it on paper charts and on the GPS, no chartfinder.

This is a wee peek at Ireland. Isn't it just beautttifullll. I loved it there.

We're still in Horta and it's AWESOME !!!!! Here are more shots of the Ocean Trip.

This is what we saw for 12 days before we finally spotted land, Corvo, a volcanic island in the Azores. This was a wet, foggy day and we were out there in the middle, all by ourselves, or it seemed that way. You can't see anything but sky and water. It is unreal.

Anth coming of watch. For 13 days and 1 hours, that's how long it took us to sail to Horta, we were on 2 and 3 hour watches. At night we were on watch for 2 hours and sleeping for 2 hours and 2 people on each watch. Did I already tell you this? And we hand steered the boat with the tiller the whole way.

Look at the smile. He is loving it. He's got the tiller in his right hand. We had the wind on our port side the whole way to Horta. Where were those Southwesterlies???? We never found them and we never had to change tack. For 13 days we sailed on a port tack. Unreal!!!!!!

This is Jim's friend, Tony.

Jim's up on the fore deck in the middle of the night with Tony... reefing the sail or putting up the whisker pole or... I can't remember what they did but they were up there. They wore survival suits and harnesses and clipped themselves onto the boat. We had pretty great sails, 4 knots, 5, 6, and even 7. Sometimes 1, 2 also. We motored twice, once because there was no wind and the second time to correct the course and the wind was on our nose. Most of the days were just beautiful, even the rainy days were beautiful.

There's sailor Jude, I think I look like I just am finishing a watch. I don't look too energetic. That's my lucky sailor hat. It's still cold, I've got 2 layers of clothes on and my lifejacket. Thank you Sally for the foul weather gear. I wore it every watch on the way from St. John's to Horta.

Peaceful as a baby. Sometimes while on watch, Anth and I did our watches together and one of us would sleep in the cockpit and the other steer and stare at the compass. Those cockpit benches sure are narrow and hard but you could still go to sleep on them. Anth took over my favourite little blue pillow.

The compass reads 145 degrees. We steered pretty straight or on the same course most of the way. We had to go around Faial to get to Horta so we had to change course for a bit and we went in between Corvo and Flores. That was an experience.....ROUGH... AND CHOPPY!!!!!

Crossing the Pond

Iºm way behind on my blogging and I have soooo many pictures. Iºm using a Portugese key board so there will be some typos. Sorry. This is me being SCREECHED IN at the Foggy Rock Hostel by Angela and her grandparents. You had to down a jigger of SCREECH and not leave a drop, have some Newfie steak, bologna, Kiss the Puffinºs bottom and say something in Newfie, ´May you jib be full, or something like that. The Grandpa wore oilskins and told us what to repeat and then we were ummmmm touched on our shoulders with a wooden, sword and delcared Newfies. It was a lot of fun.

This is me and Angela the young woman who ran the Foggy Rock Hostel. She gave us bedding for the boat and was so helpful and good to us. She drove us around and was there everyday to give us information.

Well we actually started out of St. Johnºs Harbour twice. Here is our first, first day of our trip at sea, June 26th around noon. As you can see Anthony is very happy to get going and is holding the tiller in his hand which we held for two hours every two hours all the way across the Atlantic, yes, we hand steered the boat for 13 days.

Here we are on the first, first day still trynig to leave the St. Johnºs Harbour. As you can see it was very, very foggy. We called the Coast Guard to tell them we were leaving and to let them know our plans so they could keep an eye on us and they informed us, first that it was too busy right then for us to go when the fog was so thick, just outside the harbour were a bunch of fishing boats coming and it would be better if we waited till the next day and they said that once we were out of Canadian Waters they would not be following our progress. Ummm that was a surprise to us, so we called Jim Lewis and told him if he didntºt hear from us in 3 weeks that he should do what he needed to do to find us or let the powers that be that we were missing. He was our Canada Coast Guard.

Captain James Christie at the helm, checking out that fog.

This the next day and is our Day 1 at sea, June 27 at noon. This is the battery on the port side of St. Johnºs Harbour just below Signal Hill. I love the colours.

Here we are at sea. What you see in front is Cape Spear. We sailed around that and then off to the Azores.

Anthony at the helm. We saw one iceberg in the water. We did 2 hour shifts at night and 3 hour shifts in the days with some variations. At night we had 2 in the cock pit and 2 sleeping. Often we had dolphins swimming beside us and squeaking at us and once we saw a whale spouting water in the distance. There were always birds playing in the wind and the waves and lots and lots of water. It was quite cold, three layers of clothes whenever we were in the cockpit.

Sally the rain suit you gave me for the bike was great, warm and dry and big enough to put two layers on underneath it. Captain James gave me a crew hat to wear. The soft bimini and the soft dodger were great for keeping us dry. The first two days were very foggy, lumpy and wet.