The Long and the Short of Atlantic Messages

It has been a calm day on the Atlantic Ocean and the FCS crew of Challenger 2 have set aside some time to write…

Day 10 Blog 17/01/2018

Another calm and sunny morning from the Atlantic. We’re still ploughing on ahead on course 085 degrees under diesel power at around 7 knots. Current depth is 4470m.
Big day for cooking yesterday as Ben and I made our first ever bread. Not bad was the general opinion of the crew. It was very good with marmalade this morning. Herbal tea, then bread making. I wonder what will be next.

Whilst helming this morning we all listened to Dark Side of the Moon on Steve’s mini ghetto blaster – a real blast from the past.

Paul – I am really into the Kingkiller book you put me onto.

Love to all
Hx/Dx/UHx

Hi Sarah, Kirsty & H

Still motor sailing and probably will be for another day. The winds should favour us by Friday, then a blast into Horta by Sunday. It is ok to have a few days of calmer conditions but you soon want to turn the engine off and start grafting for a bit.

Plenty of banter below and up on deck. Knowing we have broken the back of the first leg helps. Still no fish yet so still on normal rations. Saying that the food being prepared is grand, well done guys. A big Average from Stevie. The hot and cold beverages keep flowing and everyone just about knows who has tea with no or more sugar. I asked Nigel for a cup of tea with 8 sugars but not to stir it as it might be too sweet. X

Still in shorts bur need the leggings over at night as it is getting colder now. The rain is in short burst, but all the best to come. At least in a few days we can message our loved ones.
Take care at home and bucket full of love from Daddy Bear.

Steve.

Hey Lesley and the DreamCatcher gang.

So today’s topics are Boat Maintenance and Watch Changeover.

Boat Maintenance:
As I sure everyone is aware if you spend any time on a boat, something will always still, break, fall of or just basically go a bit wonky. And this has certainly been the case over the last couple of days. Let’s start with a simple issue, Toilet brushes, it’s a brush on a stick not much surely can go wrong with them, or so you would think, well as was found out by one of the crew if you stick it down the toilet as its function would suggest being able to do, then there is a distinct possibility that brush and handle will come apart leaving the brush stuck, and the handle a now useless conductors baton for the situation, the loo brush has now been retrieved and a temporary fix has been implemented by the maintenance crew, that apparently involves a bit of J cloth.

The next bit of maintenance was a slightly larger affair, and has to do with bunks and lee cloths. If you’re not up to date with what a lee cloth is I’ll give you a couple of minutes to look it up on the internet….. got it ? ok so Nigel and Tony were in the uphill bunks on port side cabin whilst we are on a starboard tack, need more time to do some figuring out of this ?

So Nigel in the top bunk, and tony in the bottom one, and the Lee cloth ties have been tied and fixed by a spider on LSD before we go on board, so after the first night of us loading Nigel into his bunk and no letting him out until morning, and Tony’s lee cloth allowed him around a foot square to get himself into his bunk using a manoeuvre he termed the reverser torpedo load.

After a couple of days, the unravelling of the spiders web and the strategic deployment on some paracord, Nigel and tony were a bit more comfortable, getting in and out of there bunks, that is until one overnight watch where tony felt his bunk was becoming a bit smaller than usual at one end, so switched ends, upon getting up if was found that the screws had come loose from one of the pipes on Nigel’s bunk, and he was slowly and surely decreasing the bodily distance from himself to be nearly laying on top of tony, with only 3 layers of cloth, and about 3 inches of fresh air (we’d had chili the day before, so not that fresh) between them.

It was at this point that we decided to forcefully and unceremoniously eject Nigel into the other cabin, at which point he declared he was glad to be out of steerage anyway and there is a better class of people in the starboard cabin. The bunks are now fixed, but Nigel has yet to return.

Watch Changeover, and the rules thereof:
A watch change over on a voyage such as the one we are on has many spoken and unspoken rules, which can change, be amended, and generally be abused for fun and profit.
Type of watch changeover now we aren’t doing mother watches.

Changeover with Food
Off watch should be woken up half an hour before watch change
If the off watch is woken early they can demand that breakfast is brought to their bunks by the offender, or just hurl insults with the general gist of, what blinking time do you call this matey ?

Changeover without food.
Off watch should be woken up 15 minutes before watch changeover.

Now the timings as mentioned above will also incorporate searching for lost boots, general enquiries about the state of the weather and if additional clothing will need to be sourced, requests about the state of the kettle, and if there is any Worcestershire sauce left if it is a food changeover, along a tentative query about does the food in anyway contain sweetcorn, openly of hidden.

Once everyone is kitted up in the relevant clothing, now comes the watch change hokey cokey, this is where you get one member of crew out into the cockpit and then another member of crew down to the saloon, so in-out, in-out….. and if you have just got up then you will be probably be shaking it about a little as well, and as the saying goes that’s what it is all about.

And there end my inane ramblings for another day, but If you asking yourself is this sort of voyaging for me then I’d like to point you to one of the sayings of the famous monk of time.
“If you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, then you will be a mile away and have his shoes.” – Luh Tze

SEA-FEVER

Jonh Mansfield 1878-1967

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel`s kick and the wind`s song and the white sail`s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea`s face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied: And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the sea again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull`s way and the whales way where the wind`s like a whetted knife: And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow- rover, And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick`s over.

Steve x

Fishing Advice Mid-Atlantic

All is quiet weather-wise aboard our merry ship, the sun still has a whole lotta warmth, and the crew are taking any moment, when not on the helm, in their bunks, cooking or cleaning, or writing this blog, to sunbathe and enjoy the heat whilst we still have it. Our fishing rods are still out but nothing in the deeps underneath or to the side of us has decided to risk a bite, the dolphins are much more adept and I think are taking anything that’s around. Curiously, idly flicking through The Atlantic Crossing Guide today I came across the following, alarming fishing advice:

“It’s not advisable to leave your line out overnight. Partly because you can end up catching some rather scary species which live deep during the day but come closer to the surface at night…”
Perhaps, understandably, we haven’t tried this method yet and so there hasn’t yet been fresh fish on the menu yet. Never mind, 14/15ths of this crew are great and successful food innovators and the ship’s stores seem virtually bottomless and despite the lack of alcohol we’ve have had one pretty wild mocktail deck party already.

It’s great when both watches come together, as you’ve probably already gathered we’ve been spilt into two ‘watches’ and each watch really only sees their own crew from day to day; ‘The Swallows’, that’s us, have now got pretty used to each other chatting and having fun day and night; ‘The Amazons’, that’s them, have some wildly varied conventions in their gang i-D!

Now the days to the Azores and running out and before we know it we’ll be there – a big chunk of the voyage too quickly over – fresh-food-wise it will be a feast to make landfall – and we’re all looking forward to a little drink or two. In the meantime we have the wherewithal to perfect our culinary skills and Challenger 2’s very own Bakeoff is well and truly in place, with all manner of fancy cakes and breads being shown off. When our flour runs out perhaps we’ll have to leave our fishing rods out overnight!

Hope all is well with you Jane (keep up the physio!) and Max, love to you both, and all family and friends too. Speak when we get to Horta!
Ben xx

Dearest Mum, Dad, Rosie Pose, the Grannies, gorgeous friends and Just So Crew,

Life continues to tick along on board. Half of me can’t wait to arrive in the Azores and have a long shower, dive into a massive bowl of salad and sleep for a full night but half of me doesn’t want this to end. It really has such been such an adventure in many respects from some off the funniest conversations I have ever had on a daily basis with some truly wonderful and fascinating people to some fantastic helming in the Atlantic swell.

As you may have gathered from all the messages above, we have been motor sailing for the past 24 hours. Waking up this morning was amazing. We were on the morning shift (7am-1pm), the sea had completely flattened out that we could no longer see any white horses and you could just see for miles and miles. Foulie jacket, sunnies and shorts – what more could you ask for?! Though it was noted by one crew member that the length of my shorts does look as though I’m naked under my jacket!

I feel like it is the Ionian islands trip all over again Hoebag– how to look naked on a boat when you’re not! It’s the calm before the storm as the wind is meant to be picking up tomorrow afternoon and pushing us on a beam reach with anything from 20 – 40 knots predicted across the deck for the final few days towards Horta.

My dolphin communication has finally paid off and we have had a number of encounters over the past 24 hours. They are not a dolphin variety I recognise though with brown freckly backs and white bellies. The first sighting came when I was on breakfast duty yesterday morning when 5 minutes before serving, the other watch called me to come up and see them. I was in my base layers (clean that morning after a rinse). I grabbed my life jacket and ran up on deck to the bow.

One brief glimpse and I proceeded to have a massive wave crash straight over my head – back to my less clean clothes until they dry off! I also served breakfast 5 minutes late! Neil our skipper sat down and announced ‘Rule no.95 – don’t tell the chef there are dolphins!’. Later that day we did however get blessed with a school of 10 or 12 playing in our bow wave for over half an hour. It was amazing! My whale calling on the other hand still needs perfecting as still no sightings as of yet!

The crazy dreams continue with Howard telling us this morning that him and Ben had been in a high octane plot where they were recruited to blow up a church in Sweden, Leo was aquaplaning his car through Newtown Creek in the Solent whilst Chris S was trying to moor up and I was upset when dad and I were about to go snorkelling in Tonga and I realised I had forgotten my snorkel gear! I also keep having dreams of driving – Neil reckons it’s me trying to work out where life will take me next! Who knows?!

Sea legs have almost firmly been located by the majority of the crew and the amount of spontaneous lunging has decreased – though whether the new windy conditions coming through will change this again, we shall see!

The levels of openness have also increased significantly as 15 of us continue to live in close quarters on a 72ft yacht. Nigel even served dinner in just his boxers (and top I hasten to add) the other day when his trousers got wet. He did assure me though that the front did not open so we were all safe!

Samson the lion came up for his photo shoot today Han! And it turns out he is not alone – he has fallen in love with Nut Brown, Chris S’s rabbit! They can’t be trusted now being left alone down below in the bunks. We’re keeping close tabs on the situation! They’re in a honeymoon phase currently.

It’s been fascinating learning about the Tall Ships Trust and once I sort out my career again, I definitely think I would like to get more involved in this charity. Watch this space.

We’ve seen a surprising number of boats over the past 9 days, predominantly massive tankers though yesterday a sailing yacht appeared on the horizon for a brief while which was exciting. I really wanted to invite them around via VHF for another cockpit mocktail party (a variety of fruit squashes served up with fruit cocktail slices from a tin plonked on the rim of each glass – it’s the best we could do from our provisioning!). Despite these boat sightings, I think only now have I have come to appreciate just how barren and wild this landscape really is. I thought we would be seeing a lot more but at times it can be 10 hours before we even see the sight of a bird let alone anything else.

I’m really looking forward to sailing again when the wind picks up tomorrow and being behind the helm. I just love it! You can feel the power of the boat in those conditions. She was built for this kind of sailing.

Mum, I really understand now why your transatlantic had such a significant effect on your life. I feel this one may well have the same for me. As Dire Straits sung (and your song) – it really is part of the ‘Walk of Life’! Leo doesn’t reckon I’ll do another ocean crossing due to having an attention span of a goldfish but I actually think otherwise – next time I may well opt for sailing with the prevailing winds though!

Anyway I must fly. About to clock off in under an hour for my 11pm – 3am snooze and then back to more 4am inspired cake baking – now fondly referred to as the ‘caking hour’. I’ve decided this is definitely the time of day to be creative in the kitchen! I also have been instructed to start using as much jam as I can as we are inundated – Victoria sponge it shall be then.

I hope you are all really well and look forward to being in touch in the next few days – rough date of arrival in the Azores – this Sunday. We are already getting our paints ready for the marina wall.

Lots and lots of love.
Alex xxxxxx

I’ve just improved on Sartre’s concept of existential freedom and authenticity. Hmmmm what now, a cup of coffee perhaps?

Update from Iain Blair (0500 UTC, 18 Jan)

Still motoring eastwards in light headwinds and flat sea. Horta is 650 nm ahead. We expect to be sailing again in 12-18 hours, winds may be up to 30 knots but from the south, they should take us to our destination by Sunday morning.

We are still on Antigua time although we have advanced through two time zones…so it gets dark at 4 pm and dawn is about 5 am. Cloudy, cooler with very +occasional rain. Currently it is the night watch, 2300-0300, I am making bread using a Tesco bread mix. All is fine. Everyone is healthy and cheerful. I am enjoying it. Settled into a routine.

Kit and clothing so far appropriate.

Regards to all. IB

Posted by: First Class Sailing