Day 8: The halfway party is canceled.
Monday, July 5th 2021 - 8PM
37°34'04''N - 45°36'01''W
Yet another sleepless night onboard Polar Seal, this one filled with a little more anxiety than we all dare to admit.
Yesterday, as we were trying to figure out life without satellite communications, the weather started to deteriorate and the seas offered us another platter of confusion, filled with swell, shifty winds, and waves coming from different directions.
We had been preparing for a cold front to pass above us these days. But because, short of satellite communications, we had not received an updated forecast or recommendation from our weather router in two days, we did not know what it was going to do and when.
At this point, we believe that we had caught the tail end of the strong winds yesterday, but today proved us wrong.
Last night after dinner, we watched a giant grey cloud rolling over us right as the sun went down, and we wondered what it was going to bring upon us.
Ensued a night of even shiftier winds pushing us from South to North, going from 0 to 20 knots in a matter of moments, and of course, one gnarly crazy sea state that kept us up all night.
My bed once again turned into the drum of a washing machine, and I only managed to fall asleep right before my watch at 4AM.
Before taking my watch, I usually get out of bed, put some proper clothes on, wash my face and my teeth, do a little bit of a skincare routine with sunscreen, put on a warm vest and my boots, make myself a pot of coffee and go to the cockpit where I join Ryan for a quick brief.
This morning, Ryan came to wake me up one hour after I was supposed to take my watch, and already then I knew that we were off to a ”good” start.
I didn’t bother to wash my face, brush my teeth or even put clothes on. I went from the bed straight to the salon where, still in my PJs, I grabbed my boots, lifejacket, and a blanket, and rushed to the cockpit to crash on the settee.
The sea state wasn’t too bad this morning, but the sky was very grey and the air heavy with humidity. I could see droplets of water forming everywhere on the spray hood, and all surfaces were wet.
By the time my watch was over at 8 AM and Anett came to take over, the wind had shifted so drastically that we were now sailing South, so we decided to turn the boat and gybe the sails to continue our course North / North East.
Gybing is a long process during which someone needs to go on the foredeck to untie the boom preventer (a line that runs from the boom up to the bow and back in the cockpit to, as its name indicates, prevent the boom from going from one side of the boat to the other) on the side it is on.
If the headsail is poled out, the headsail first needs to be pulled in, and the pole needs to be taken down for the control lines to be switched.
We can then crank the mainsail with the winch so it is centered, turn the boat against the wind, and ease the main sheet for the mainsail to come on the other side.
We then need to go back on the foredeck to tie the boom preventer on the new side of the boom and unfurl the headsail on its pole. Finally, we tie the control lines that prevent the pole from hitting our standing rigging if the headsail backfills.
Did you just read the description of this maneuver and were like "this sounds very complicated"? Well, it is for us too.
We prefer to have everyone on deck to carry out a gybe, and even with that, it can take up to half an hour, depending on the wind and the sea state.
After Anett and I gybed this morning, today turned into a "1000 sail changes day".
The fluky winds gave us sometimes no wind, a bit of wind, then a lot of wind coming from completely different directions. Today, we gybed at least 5 times, poled in, poled out, and ended up taking in and taking out more sail than I can count.
The very light winds started to make our sails flog and flap, which is both hard on our rigging and extremely loud and annoying, so we eventually decided to turn the engine on again. But without the sails to stabilize the boat, we were getting bashed in the waves and caught in a very unpleasant rolly motion.
Ryan was getting seasick, I was trying to get some rest but couldn’t, and Anett was visibly fatigued.
On top of it all, the sky was grey, everything in the cockpit was wet, and while we all tried to keep our spirits up after we lost our satellite communications and all got a short night of sleep, the atmosphere onboard was noticeably gloomier than normal.
I tried to lift everyone’s spirits by baking some chocolate fondants, but I burned the chocolate in the butter and managed to burn them in the oven.
Since we had slowed down so much, we were wondering (with very little hope) if our buddy boat Zanzibar hadn’t caught up to us. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to catch their AIS signal and see them on our chart plotter if they were farther than 10 nautical miles from us. But we have a considerably longer range on our VHF so we kept shooting in the dark:
“Sailing vessel Zanzibar, Zanzibar, Zanzibar, this is sailing vessel Polar Seal, Polar Seal, Polar Seal on channel 16, do you hear me? Over”
We heard nothing all day, until all of a sudden, we heard a voice on the radio:
“Sailing vessel Polar Seal, this is sailing vessel Alforra, did you try to reach Zanzibar?”
“Affirmative. We have lost our Iridium Go and our satellite communications with it. Would you be able to assist us?”
“Polar Seal, this is Alforra, Alforra, I was in touch with Zanzibar two days ago, and they turned North. We are bound to Saõ Miguel and I have also had issues with our Iridium Go. It stopped connecting to the satellite network two days ago”
What a downer I thought.... No Iridium Go either?! What is going on?!
“Copy that Alforra, what is your passage plan for the coming days?”
“We are continuing our way to San Miguel. Our last forecast showed very light winds at our current latitude. We will try to turn North to catch some wind”.
The guy on the radio did not sound very comfortable in English and didn't seem to have a lot more information, so the conversation was short.
But learning that Zanzibar had turned North was both surprising and very interesting.
A few hours before we left Bermuda, Zanzibar had sent us their weather router's contact, a guy named Charlie with who we have a few friends in common. Charlie had then started to send us weather forecasts and sailing recommendations that we found very helpful, and we liked being in contact with him.
Because we were so close, we had been receiving the exact same forecasts and recommendations as Zanzibar all along.
But three days ago, when we received Charlie's last email before our Iridium Go died, his plan for us was to continue on a course Eastwards all the way until tomorrow, not to turn North as Zanzibar had now done.
This meant that Charlie's recommendations had changed. This could mean that Charlie was now routing Zanzibar for them to avoid the zone of no wind we are currently navigating.
Does it mean that we should turn North now as well? Tonight, we are still a little confused, tired and a bit anxious.
And as it turns out, we just reached halfway through our Atlantic crossing.
But we are tired, and none of us feel for celebrating. We just finished dinner and ate my burned chocolate (which I am not sure helped the atmosphere onboard).
Ryan and I just got in bed where I am writing this update from. We are exhausted.
Tomorrow is another day.