ARC 2019 – Day 10 – Having a whale of time

Tuesday 3 Dec 2019 – Jason

As I sit at the PC we have 1672Nm to St Lucia and we are currently travelling at 10.5Kts I won’t write our estimated ETA as it is a little optimistic and the one thing you learn on-board is that things change regularly.

As mentioned in some of the earlier posts whilst aiming into the mid-Atlantic we have had some real treats.  Flying fish and dolphins are a regular sight but seeing Fin whales following us for at least half an hour was amazing.

A fin whale

The Mexican

With the different watches we tend to come together as a team in the afternoons and this is where we get some free time to share stories and photos of friends and family.  There is some great banter amongst the team and I feel like I haven’t stopped laughing for the last week. I have affectionately been labelled the Mexican by a few of the group.  Facial hair and tan is coming on nicely and it makes the fancy dress decision easier for our halfway party that is coming soon.

Arc 2019 halfway fancy dress party

The winds are now rising and so is the swell and I am sat here now after completing a day of mother watch which is basically 16 hours of cooking and cleaning below deck. For dinner we (Jim and I) have negotiated cooking a beef stew whilst simply trying to stand up and not scald ourselves.  We did manage to sneak some red wine into the cooking.  I’m sure the alcohol would have boiled off after 2 hours on the hob but it added to the taste nicely. I am very much looking forward to being back on deck tomorrow am after an extended break tonight.   Note to self…….tie myself into bed.  Fell out onto Martins bunk a couple of nights ago and we are moving around a lot more now.  In fact I am sliding all over this seat as I type this blog.

Thoughts as always go to my loved ones.  Can’t wait to facetime you when I get to St Lucia and tell you all about it xx

Wed 3rd Dec 2019

This morning the crew have eased in to a quiet easy rhythm.  Steph is celebrating a big birthday today (21 and a bit!) so a few of us were up early (04.30 boat time) to blow up balloons and put up home made bunting (Christine).  A raucous round of happy birthday at 06.30 was hugely appreciated but Steph (did I spot a tear?) but a bit less so by our skipper who was rudely roused by it!!  Ricky is super chilled I’m sure he will soon get over it?!?!? J

Happy Birthday Steph

Crew is a bit more subdued that usual this morning, we had fast downwind sailing in oceanic rolling seas last night, which provided a test on the helm,  it got a bit lively at a few points and you needed to tie up you lee cloths to stay in your bunks.

In these conditions we are clicking down the miles quite rapidly but for some it comes at the cost of less sleep was and SS.  I remain good and managed to sleep through it all, as I did through the sightings of the whales yesterday! Ah well, I feel highly privileged to be here.

Down Below

Looking after the crew today (mother) is a highly prized and glamorous job and today its Bex and my turn.   So far we’ve cleaned the heads (bogs if you are not familiar with nautical terms).  I removed and replaced the toilet paper ( a crew of 14 gets through quite a few rolls a day and personally I think someone* is stashing it and hoping to make a tidy sum in St Lucia from the fine quilted paper!)

Breakfast is served at 06.30 first to the watch going on at 0700 and then to the watch coming off.  The watch that’s just been woken doesn’t eat much but the off watch is always starving, we cooked 24 eggs worth of scrambled eggs this morning!  Next job is to clean the boat, sweep and mop and tidy up after breakfast.  Blog is one of the (mothers) many days jobs, I now need to go hunting for overripe fruit, an over ripe pineapple stewing in a hot boat is a minor emergency!

OK more jobs to do, perhaps more later. Xx x x Paul

My suspicions are its Baz he spends a long time in the Heads and Lazarette! 😉

Skippers Log

Date : Tuesday 3 December 2019
Time : 12:00 GMT (10am Boat Time)
Position : 20.34 N 34.28 W
Position : 4790m above the sea bed, lots of fish below. Approaching the Mid Atlantic Ridge
Destination : Rodney Bay, St Lucia
ETA : 0000 Dec 11 (GPS)
DTF : 1567 Distance Run 1351
24 Hour Run : 210 DMG in 24 Hours : 205
Required Knots for 15 Dec : 5.4, Arrival at 8 Knots : 11 Dec
Wind : AWA : 140 AWS : 15
Sailplan : Full Main, Yankee 1, Staysail
POB : 14, all in good health and happy
Today on Challenger 2 :
Breakfast : Scrambled Egg, Lunch : Pate, Ham, Cheese, Crispbread, Dinner : Chicken and Chorizzo
Music : None for a while, everyone enjoying the surfing
Fishing Score : 27/11 1x Large Dorado (Nothing for a while – losing faith in our fishermen/women)

ARC Position Day 10

Notes and comments:

I’m tempted to head off course to salvage the two abandoned mini transat boats. May be able to fit them in the sail locker ?

Pod of two or three Fin Wales spent an hour or so buzzing the boat and entertaining the whole crew. Shouts of there he is… followed by much pointing towards empty sea. They did surface on occasion to lend credence to the spotting and were close enough to see through the water torpedoing alongside Challenger 2. Oddly while we were all watching the whales a bright yellow butterfly also fluttered onto the boat. Not sure how or where that came from. Probably stranger sighting than the whales though – this far from land.

Even stranger sight was the skipper baking Chocolate Brownies without setting the galley on fire !

Ricky, Skipper

A bit of a rocky rolly night up front in the mates cabin and some semi awake dreams to add to it!
Steph celebrates her birthday today.  Balloons and bunting galore!

Somehow seem to have contracted a sore throat and cough as have a couple of other crew members.  Seems odd this late in the voyage.
Keen to jury rig and race the mini transat boats!

Kirstie, Mate

“Fly Like an Eagle, Into the Future”

Those lyrics were coursing through my veins as I took the helm last evening for the first of two exciting overnight shifts. The wind and the seas had been steadily building all afternoon and I was presented with 18-20 kt winds and 10-12 foot seas, a sailor’s delight. Thankfully the growing sliver of moon was still high enough in the sky to provide reasonable illumination of the gnarly seas. The moon would be setting soon so it was great to get my bearings before helming in such conditions in the pitch black.

Twists and Turns

We were running downwind with a full mainsail, a staysail, and a yankee headsail poled out on the opposite side of the mainsail. This sail plan is ideal for running downwind and is generally easy to helm in flat seas or seas following directly behind the boat. Unfortunately our conditions were anything but that. The 10-12 foot swells were spaced quite close together and striking us at a 45 degree angle, directly on our aft starboard quarter panel.

Each new attack by a wave needed to be countered with a fast, perfectly timed, turn of the helm to port to prevent the massive wave energy from pitching our bow to starboard. Once the offending wave crest passed under our keel you needed to be equally nimble with a turn to starboard to prevent the momentum of our 48 ton boat from carrying our bow to port. This game needed to be played, and replayed, continuously every 10-15 seconds over a typical 30 minute turn at the helm. Our sail plan only allowed a narrow 30 degree safety band, if you allowed the boat to fall off to port you risked a crash gybe, if you allowed her to pitch too far to starboard she might roundup uncontrollably and cause the boat to broach. In true nautical terms, we were caught between a rock and a hard place.

Challenger with one of our previous ARC crews

Helming under such conditions is both exhilarating and exhausted at the same time. An E Ticket Ride, for the uninitiated, is a term used to describe the most expensive rides at Disneyland, usually associated with a scary mountain descent and almost always associated with getting drenched. Halfway through my first watch I was treated to my E Ticket Ride when luck, and perhaps some helming skills, allowed me to balance the keel squarely on top of a huge crashing wave crest and surf down her backside totally level. Physics did everything else and our boat hit 13.5 kts, my highest known speed on a monohull.

We swapped the helm every 30 minutes during our 4 hour watch shifts to keep the helmsman as relaxed and alert as possible. The net result was 40 miles covered during that first evening watch. Nowhere was this more evident than on our trip computer which graphically displayed a 2 day decrease in our ETA.

Thanking all those at home for allowing us this great indulgence.

Love and kisses

Gary

Posted by: First Class Sailing