less delivering. more floating.

AT ANCHOR
S/Y Safari
43°40.581'N
007°36.168'W
2200 UTC+1
18.08.08
_______________________________
In order to share as much new technology, new equipment and new materials with you as possible, our boats are constantly improved. This is why the specifications and information given are not contractual and can be modified without notice and we are not obliged to provide updates. - lagoon 440 manual


it has been decided that getting around the corner would simply not be cost effective. what with the price of diesel and all. 5 L an hour to burn for 20 hours making only 3 knots. no good. weighed against staying in a marina, russ decided to go for the marina, which turned out to be full. so i have learned some about setting an anchor and using the windlass. that sort of thing. i am now on my third anchor watch - actually rather uneventful, which is the way we like anchor watch to be, and have had a relaxing day. yet a relaxing day with less rest in it if that makes any sense. without the business of sailing to keep everyone distracted, everyone was underfoot all day. russ ducked out of making lunch. not really a problem, but it did break things up less. and make the galley a busier place longer. no problem.

so once again, i am in spain. but not really. no actual going ashore. no boots of spanish leather. no sea of carrots. no fresh bread!

went up the rig this afternoon. a big advantage on this smaller crew is that whatever there is to get done, i am the one often doing it if the skipper doesn't want to for anyreason whatsoever. not terrible. russ does skipper's share of the work, but as far as far as going up the rig today goes. i get to do it. of course when i got into the bosun chair, there were suddenly 20 knot winds and drizzly fun to contend with. but a mission hopefully mostly accomplished. my goal, besides a rig check, was to secure the radar reflector, held until now since recently by good luck and a wee spot of duct tape. i plastered more of each on up there and made efforts to secure the bits with some cable tie. used up all the cable tie. used up the last of the duct tape. fingers crossing. it should last we hope until cascais, when we get more of all of the above.

also today, a seminar on buys-ballot's law, dangerous / navigable sectors of tropical revolving storms and good stuff like that.

complain. complain. all i ever do is complain,

AT SEA
S/Y Safari
43°36'30"N
006°13'30"W
1100 UTC+1
17.08.08



Although everything possible has been designed and planned with the safety of the boat and its users in mind, remember that sailing is highly dependent on the weather conditions of the sea, and that only an experienced and fit crew, handling a well maintained boat, can sail satisfactorily.
- lagoon 440 manual



having said all that about the fork business. i struck a fork into a not baked boiled enough potato and crumpled two of the tines. flim-sy.

alas. since i am not buying the flatware, i can't complain, can i?

watch today has been entertaining, since i started standing watch, the star of the show has got to be this three-masted schooner. a tall ship, square-rigger. it was a wee speck against the french coast (or is it spain? i should check) and it has been a most lovely sight in the meantime. one by one the sails have come out. it's nearly in full sail now. first, a sail in the center mast, in the middle, now, a mizzen mast mainsail. might be called a bermuda. the anatomy of a tall ship is a bit out of my experience. perhaps one day.

we're considered a bermuda rig. mainsail and foresail. ours is called a Genoa, which is i gather a region of italy where someone invented the sail. or whoever decided it should be called that was from there (or something). i am thinking the Solent sail is called that because the innovation came from shipwrights there. similarly the Bimini and so on. occasionally russ called our foresail a 'yankee,' but it seems no so much since we acquired the american woman who owns a piece of the boat.

teri has an iridium sat phone and can use it to get weather information. which we like. she calls MacDonalds the 'american embassy.' which she likes. the iridium connection is actually pretty cost effective; not yet convinced i'd indulge, but she says it works great with a send /receive function. some of what i have been after, i think, is the phenomenon of 'unplugging,'
as leighana says. on the one hand, if i am going to be at sea, then i should oughta just be at seas sometimes. hey?


oh yeah! another lunar eclipse of the full moon while at sea. though partial and clouded over for a good portion of the event.

safari

AT SEA
S/Y Safari
45°22'45"N
004°54'15"W
1200 UTC+1
16.08.08
_________________________


Read this manual carefully before you put to sea so that you can make the most of her [i.e. the boat ~ ed. note] and avoid any damage and difficulties.
- lagoon 440 manual


whew! nice to be on passage again (finally). just getting settled briefly before lunch - a short pretend-nap, not so much an actual nap, but no worries. happy days, hey?

lost one of our instrument panels, regrettably. the one below decks, by our nav table.

lost a furling line, when it jammed its sorry self between a pulley wheel and its housing (or 'cage').
the boat comes from the factory with this covery thing that regrettably effectively obscures the view of the furling line skipping out of place. so now it's bare spectra, the sheath has been fully pulled off. the fellows in carriacou would say 'that will be not a problem' and continue to sail on it. the strength of the rope is in the core, not the sheath so they are mostly right. but the feeling of taking an unnecessary risk would tend to not leave me at least. and, seeing as we're not in carriacou, the sacrifice furling is being replaced with the factory furling line. one thing that happens with this delivery contract is that the lines are all replaced with cheaper, shittier lines for the ocean crossing. which is extra good, because when we're in 4000m of water and 1000 km from land in any direction, something breaks we have a replacement. (several replacements!)

and at the moment we're headed for france. are we supposed to be headed for france?

sail	area in square metres
full main	71.30 m2
first reef	59.10 m2
second reef	44.20 m2
third reef	29.46 m2

no. we're headed /from/ france, around cape finisterre - the so-called 'cape of death.' we're reached the blue part. just off the edge of the continental shelf and into the deep water. finisterre takes us down the coast of spain toward... cascais. it's not a dread thing; yet i think i might be just fine without seeing the sights again. they're fine and i know at least where everything mostly is.

a funny thing about this current crop of sailors, since we left (or should i say, since i left the caribbean, it seems like there are no 'young' people sailing. the demographic includes an large number of early retirees and a few under-40s, even fewer under-30s. i suppose, unless you're working in the luxury yacht i.e. service industry, you'd be either a delivery captain / crew or necessarily independently wealthy to be sailing up and down the spanish coast.

on this delivery, one of the owners is aboard, actually interesting in a way. i have heard that there's a rule about doing deliveries with the owner aboard. teri works hard, has sailing skills, and a great attitude. she's here to learn about the process and about the boat. this is her first atlantic crossing. a graet thing. we're still a crew of three so it's myself, russ and teri. chris went off to açores to do a delivery to ft. lauderdale. looks to me like i wouldn't be able to get back to canada before october at the very earliest, sort of defeating the purpose - if the purpose was to get to the SJR job teaching canoeing in pinawa bay at the end of sept. we'll see how things go on the next leg, but so far no delivery i know of has been early.

this vessel is a Lagoon 440 catamnaran. two refrigerators, 4 ensuite cabins and two forward berths. there's even airconditioning, but i certweainly don't expect that we'll be using it on delivery. like the 'fruits de mer' boat, the interior is covered in stylish cardboard, indoor/outdoor (grey) carpet and lovely orange plastic tape.

i'm glad-a i brought:

~ a cup. the one i found in the hot water shed(TM) when doing close a few years back.
~ chopsticks. these improve things more than slightly. unlike norm, i don't have a favourite fork, but i do appreciate and prefer a heavy 'nice' one to the flimsy excusese for a fork that we have aboard. i am pleased they're not plastic.

at sea
20.21.00 N
025.35.00 W
1100
s/y safari
12.08.08
___________________________

trouble in paradise. when we do watch handover, usually there's some direction about what our range of preferred course is based on the predictions about weather and wind behaviour. as we do get quite up-to-date data, it's usually pretty safe to predict that our wind will be x knots coming from y degrees until z time. when new conditions may or should apply. local conditions prevail, as they say, and sometimes the weather just doesn't do what anyone behind a desk in some other part of the world thinks it might.

we're on the edge of the range, see, and there's been all this talk of goosewinging, see, and i was even asked point blank if i had any experience with it, and i of course replied, 'a certain amount.' i was given a brief (perhaps superfluous), 'this is how we gybe the headsail' tutorial. no problem. all leading up to what? my directives said that our 'ideal' course was 245° and we'd been having some trouble making 270°. not undoable, but slightly noisy. i elected to go for the wing-on-wing.

not met with approval. after about four minutes, russ came on deck. i was given a royal 'bollocking,' as they say. we're often told that russ is not at his best when he immediately wakes. and usually for about 8 hours after that. this was quite exceptional though. when i assured him that it was not meant to be malicious, he said that he was just 'having a go' and continued to have it. whatever it takes. we immediately undid the goose-wing, went from 248° to about +5 of the maximum of our former range and remained so for the rest of my watch. curiously, we have been goose-winging for most of the rest of today. the problem is that i took too much initiative in the process. no decision-making allowed. maybe wing-on-wing is a bigger deal than i think it is. hm.

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..