hm.

at sea
39.03.45 N
011.56.00 W
S\Y Fruits De Mer
25.07.08
2000 UTC+1
_______________________



~the neighbourhood in cascais



russ has attempted fishing. bought a heavy duty dyneema line and a windy thing. no fishin' poles here, mate. this is the old fashioned way. i look forward to seeing this.

aparently cascais is a suburb (at least nowadays) of lisboa, and we're possibly there until tuesday, depending on what the portuguese rep from fontaine-pajot says.

MOUNTING THE WINCH:
Warning: Couple the centering between mounting plate (14) and gear box (13) by hands supporting the gear box from down below into the centering while someone else tights bolts (12) from above.



useful stuff.

buys-ballot's law: to determine the centre of a depression (low atmospheric pressure). face true wind. right arm extend 90 degrees from your nose. that's the centre of the depression as wind activity in the northern hemisphere is anti-clockwise, as we say in Ol' Blighty.

the sunbath

at sea
39.23.45 N
012.34.30 W
S\Y Fruits De Mer
25.07.08
_______________________

new watch rota to be in effect after cascais. what i have gleaned from the grapevine is that we'll be there for the wknd. woo. this does potentially add a week. still, sailing is sailing, and water is water wherever it is.

my little plan of putting in and shaking out 20 or 30 reefs is coming to fruition. regrettably, the reason for the change in watch rota is nearly the same as the reason i have so much opportunity to perform the machanics of sailing. our deckhand is a little less experienced with the actual sailing stuff than our skipper wishes. on a boat with more crew this would be, as they say, not a problem, when a crew of 3 is doing an atlantic crossing, everyone is 'on' nearly all the time. things are getting smoother, but we're still working at getting the bugs out of the process. mostly i am very happy to be radically accelerating the learning curve. but this isn't terribly relaxing or anything.


right. so the new development is that dude is no longer on watch at night.

CAUTION: NOT TO GO UP ON THE SUNBATH IN NAVIGATION

wee beadies

at sea
40.15.30 N
014.05.45 W
S\Y Fruits De Mer
24.07.08
_______________________


uh-oh. trouble in paradise. we are headed for cascais, portugal. as there was water coming in the engine room through a wee hole. our yanmar 55 hp diesel engine sits atop a 'plinth,' and though i am not 100% certain quite what a plinth is, both of our yanmar units sit on 'em. the plinth is held in place by, i believe, great gobs of 5200 and then there's this wee beadie of salt water beading through it. so 'skip' contacted the delivery company forthwith and word is we turn around and head straight back to the continent. at least we are comparitively kicking ass in terms of the actual sailing bit, though we are actually headed /away/ from our destination. i made 10 knots for a good long while this afternoon and had decided to give my watch relief an extra half an hour sleep. on this vessel, one wakes the watch relief 10-15 min in advance of the handover. though now that i am in the routine, i have been waking early. i actually went to my dog watch last night a full hour early (by mistake). it was fine, though i was slightly less patient with the relief's 'island time' approach to the latest handover. at 620 AM we finished manually pumping the engine bay dry. this only takes a few minutes. no more sleepy-inny, if it's gonna go like that.

not sure what happens when we're in cascais, except that shower, laundry and a trip to super-mercado are in order. as well as, i hope, some new english books. i have nearly exahausted the latest and greatest... 'the last templar,' another undersea-archaeology-meet-fiction-meets-the-bloodline-of-jesus thing. apparently, the templars fleeing europe departed from la rochelle. neat-o.

on again off again jiggity jig.

at sea
41.16.45 N
014.39.00 W
S\Y Fruits De Mer
23.07.08
_______________________

leaving la rochelle was classic. the on again, off again jiggity jig. i think on no less than 3 occasions we were to be staying the weekend. on three occasions we got sorted out and were suddenly leaving again within 10 minutes of the declaration. had we stayed, it would have been fun. as it went, it was pretty great anyway. is pretty great.



once we got away from the continental shelf the ocean became suddenly blue again. the rich, full colour the paintings try to get but never quite reach. there was one point between antigua - açores when the sea was nearly purple. lovely. you never (i never) get bored of looking at the seascape. today we're headed southwest, skirting a large depression and making about 4 knots VMG (velocity made good) toward our waypoint at terciera. trivia factoid: terciera is portuguese for 'third' and is the third biggest island in the açores archipelago. if i remember right anyhoo. i was supposed to be getting myself there at one point, but matthew decided that we should hang in faial and that's the way that went. easier than transporting a windsurfer by ferry. i would have to say that i spent around 6 hours of actual labour in the noonday sun over a couple days dragging that thing around horta. i am sure it got a few laughs, and i was teased, not exactly mercilessly by les and pierre the tatoo artist from the netherlands, who epsied my progress (or struggle) from their perch in Club Naval on the patio. it was particularly funny on the last day when i was als trying to carry a backpack AND my violin. i did deposit the violin with the laundrette near monte de guia. i was grateful and i suspect i shall take a small gift to them if i have enough cash (or something appropriate) when i get back to horta.

matt did say he could get some storage for his crap, but i had a pretty good idea about how franticaly busy (and how much was realistically possible) everything was right before the owner and fam showed up. as it went, i was still scrubbing the deck wheile matty went to the airport to collect them. i crept back on board to shut a hatch i'd left ajar and retreated, wearing my socks, carefuly wiping my footprints away as i rushed to get off the boat. and i thought my socks were clean! it's true though that you did need sunglasses to actually look at the boat, and it was as bit cloudy that day. positively gleaming. 'too bright to see' as the wise acres say.


looking forward to açores, but there's a possibility that we are going to go to madiera. whatever works, hey?

tagged off cooking detail with skip tonight. that works well. i like cooking and then i have the enjoyable opportunity to cok without having to do dishes. as i prefer. really, it's no big deal but there is something nice about sitting around whise someone else cleans the dish mess. relaxy. thing is, on a crew of 3 there's just not enough time in the schedule for that. still 3 hour watch, but then 6 hours off in which all the rest has to get done. every three deays, the pattern repeats. one of the days is tiring. you are up for dinner at 6 ish and on 9 - midnight. still, it's sailing and worth the weird sleep thing. so far i am right into it except that i am going to run out of books to read before we get 'there,' wherever there might be. there will hopefully be a book exchange, and i'll trade in everything except my precious 'everything is illuminated' book, which i do intend to add to the permanent collection. our autopilot is now in english. we also now have wind- mode. blwe a sheet and exploded the starboard jib car. took some water in the port eng. rm. all that while i slept this morning.

oops

at sea
42.48.30 N
012.21.45 W
S\Y Fruits De Mer
22.07.08
1845 UTC +1
_______________________




oops. missed a day. force 8 overnight, so it was a busy one. Also i now first mate, promoted after i think 2 days at sea. Sada, Spain was interesting, though i actually didn't set foot ashore ~and only really saw the gas dock. managed to squeak in a fast shower, filled the H2O tanks. quickly rinsed, and then refilled the H2O tanks. ha! trying out curry for super. we'll see mostly the cuisine is.. not. i see no reason to eat out of a can every day of an atlantic crossing. and so i bought with my own money some fresh veg. also i am the master of disguise and you might not know what food came from which can when it's actually made it as far as the plate or bowl.



the saloon.



engine trouble today. run the port engine and the vessel veers uncontrollably to starboard. ruyn the starboard engine and the vessel veers uncontrollably to port. this sucks because in order to motor, then or even to morot-sail, we'd have to run both engines and consume waay more fuel than is really a good idea. a big problem. not so much en route to açores, but from there to bermuda it could make things rather impossible. mechanics and tech suprt exists in açores, fortunately.

my 'promotion' is basicaly in title only as far as i can tell; as on flying cloud, there's no real difference in the way i perceive my role to be and how much work there is to do. but, there seems to me that there is more of it here, as there are simply fewer of us. and less sleep. speaking of sleep.

all the blue is....is

at sea

44.26.45 N
006.31.30 W
S\Y Fruits De Mer
20.07.08
_______________________

off the continental shelf. headed for a point on the north coast of spain. i actually hadn't noticed that the sea wasn't as blue until today, when i noticed it was suddenly really blue. something very special about being in 4000 m of water. not only the colour.

some spouty action after the end of my watch and i saw a whale hanging about on the surface for a little while. slick and black with a (relatively) tiny dorsal fin. white or grayish white nearer to the head ~never say the head proper though. i did have the binocs out and was scanning away. good fun.

put in a reef today. and had a first opportunity to use the twin engine throttle. pretty cool ~our vessel is rather wide. far more spacious, though shorter than flying cloud. (don't compare.don't compare.)
we've got twin 55 hp Yanmar Diesel engines. both in now immaculately clean and spacious engine bays. my cabin is quite massive as well. ensuite. double bed. pleanty of storage space all over the boat. this is certainly not designed for racing. there are more than a few rather curious naval architecture decisions. the cockpit, or 'binnacle' as we have come to call it, is quite isolated from both the saloon and the al fresco dining area \ lounge. probably good if the pilot would rather be isolated from revelry on charter. the downside is that the steering station is totally exposed to the weather; not so great if it's hot and sunny' not so gerat if it's cold and yukky.



A) Electrical Installations
1) Lighting Saloon

For the lighting of the saloon, the 4 switches of order are located at the side entry cooks.

rotating watch is not so bad so far. again no sunrise. my watch ended 1 hr before the event and so i stayed awake. i was rewarded with putting in a reef, in which i mostly watched 'skip' put in a reef. i hesitate to make calling the skip by 'skip' for fear or apprehension that it might lead to each of us getting assigned a character from Gilligan's Island. i think in the event i'd lobby for Thurston Howell III. in any event i am a lowly deckhand and therefore chris gets gilligan by default.



FARUNO OPERATOR'S MANUAL
IMPORTANT NOTICES: The descriptions in this manual are intended for readers with a solid knowledge of English..

s / y fruits de mer. ahem.

at sea

45.37.00 N
002.58.30 W
S\Y Fruits De Mer
0850 UTC +1
19.07.08
_______________________

INFORMATIONS OF SAFETY; file under franglais



CAUTION: In heavy weather, it is necessary to reef as described in the information manual. Please maintain the steering wheel strictly in reverse gear.

now. what this actually means i am not yet certain. but these two fine examples of fine translation have piqued my interest.
it's important toview this business of joining a new \ different vessel as a step forward - this trip will get me well past the 10000 mile mark and thus i will have certainly surpassed my goal of 8000 nm by the time i get 'back.'

has

i pod, car stereo

4 ensuite cabins
i.e. each has its own facilities

new sails

3 crew including russ aka 'skip' and christian, aka first matey.

12 V DC x 3 domestic batteries, 12 V DC x 1 engine battery

hikim 8 x 30 field glasses

dolphins!

bermuda rig, main and genoa



The extinguishers must be in conformity with the national regulation of the house of the ship


has not

TV \ DVD. No Problem, as we say.

AIS \ Radar. less great but probably not a problem.

Sat Modem.

Kitchen Implements. there is a chef knife, and a sharpening steel, but not the deluxe galley i enjoyed aboard that other vessel.

heaps of fresh veg. mostly cans. i hope this will change. i purchased lettuce carrots, avocadoes, an apricot upon seeing the provisions. i decided that i should not have to eat out of cans 1 day into an ocean crossing.

dedicated jack lines. we're using the mooring lines and i am definitely going to be monitoring and inspecting the knots used. so far, seems fine.

220 VAC

mostly i am going to make an effort to not compare this one with the last one. it's about gaining experience and acquiring the skills that will get me more and better sailing opportunities.