Tradewinds Sailing Blog

We anchored right off the mouth of the Suriname River last night, then celebrated the 4th of July with Steve and Marianne enjoying rum and cokes, and I had Baileys in my coffee. We all had a good, long night’s rest at anchor.

This morning about 7am we started up the river going about 10 miles to the Shell station. It was a fascinating ride, as we passed an old Dutch fort, some more modern homes and buildings, dikes with below-river-level homes behind them, and lots of jungle. The main city of Paramaribo seems to be a decent city, and even has one 10-story high-rise- a bank.  We had hoped the Shell station would be near town, and maybe we could sneak around a little (we weren’t doing customs or immigration, just buying fuel and not getting off the boat), but it was a backwater place with nothing near it but the tank farm.

They delivered as promised, giving us three pretty red drums with yellow lids (courtesy of Royal Dutch Shell), and filled everything with a ton of diesel. Literally, we now have a ton of diesel aboard.

I didn’t have time to explore the jungle, nor see any toucans, macaws, jaguars, tapirs or anteaters which the area is famous for, but I was able to grab an armload of mangoes from a nearby tree. All too soon we had to leave to allow another ship to dock, so it was back down the river and out to sea.

We decided to name our 3 new crew members Larry, Mo and Curly, so as to avoid any confusion, and duly labeled them with a Sharpie. In the process I made a wonderful discovery- these fuel drums play like timpani drums, and each with a different pitch!  It wasn’t long before I was singing the dramatic theme from 2001- A Space Odyssey, with me covering all the parts except the key timpani drum solos, which I played to perfection. The performance was very well received, albeit by a limited audience.

We are back at sea now, finally on our way again, and expect to cross into French Guiana around midnight tonight.

06.06N  54.57W   1172nm gone, 3754nm to go.  3pm  7/5

Sailors can be a superstitious bunch, but I don’t think of this crew as really being that way. But yesterday, we got some signs…

With the winds remaining very light, we decided to try going in to Neiuw Nickerbie, a small port on the border river between Guyana and Suriname that my charts showed as having fuel. About 8 miles out, the big outside GPS plotter lost its fix. No big deal, GPS’s sometimes do that- even this one did it once before. It just restarts itself and a minute later has a fix again.  Then about 10 minutes later, and a mile closer, it loses the fix again. Hmmm. Another minute or two, and it reacquires a fix, and can show us exactly where we are. About 2 miles from the river entrance buoy, when knowing our exact position really starts to matter, and it loses the fix again!  What’s going on?  The inside GPS has had no problem, but also doesn’t have the detailed maps.

It gets a fix once again, and not a minute later the engine dies. What now?  So a quick tack out to sea and safety while we figure things out. Turns out we finally used enough fuel in one tank to start sucking up what  appeared to be the creature from the black lagoon, and the fuel filters were plugged.

While removing the filters, draining the fuel-water separator and making everything smell nice, we had sailed a way down the coast, and it was now getting dark, so we decided not to double back, and skip Nieuw Nickerbie. In reflection this morning,and realizing the GPS had no issues since,  we wonder if someone was giving us a sign to avoid that place. Guess we’ll never know.

We got the engine running again, but not for long. There was enough gunk still in the fuel line to plug everything up again. Being dark out, and us being a bit sleep deprived, and there being some wind for sailing, we put off the repairs till morning, and sailed slowly through the night, tacking upwind.

This morning we did the same drill with the filters, and this time the engine has been running for a few hours now, so there has been progress. But we decided to make a pit stop to load up on fuel, and maybe source some more filters. So we are now headed for the grand Dutch metropolis (maybe an exaggeration) of Paramaribo, Suriname, just a few miles up the Suriname River. I’ve already called ahead to confirm fuel availability, which they have (Shirley’s English was better than my Dutch), but we won’t know about filters till we get there. I did find out they close at 3pm today (no celebrating the 4th of July for them), so we won’t get there in time and will need to wait till tomorrow morning.

Our plan is to get close, maybe a mile or two offshore (its shallow) and anchor for the night, giving us all some nice rest. Then in the morning ride the rising tide up the river and go exploring!

We know this puts us a few days behind the schedule we insist we don’t have, but it is what it is. If we run out of July, we’ll see where we are and decide what to do then.

06.07N  55.39W    1080nm gone,  3794nm to go   2pm 7/4

Light winds and no squalls continue today, so perhaps we are in the doldrums? Although I really expected more squalls. Regardless, we motor a lot, sail a little, and make progress south and east.

The event of the day yesterday was the masthead VHF antenna working loose. As the seas were pretty flat, up I went, and it was a much less bruising experience this time. It seems the antenna hadn’t been secured that well at the yard, and didn’t have a lock nut, so the movement of the boat worked it loose. Fortunately there was no damage, and I was able to re-attach it and secure it properly. Since we were sailing at the time, I tried to take a few pictures from up top looking down, but I think I mostly got pictures of my feet .

Last night we passed Georgetown, Guyana, the main city, and a few dozen fishing boats out working their trade. Avoiding them kept us awake during the night shifts without any problem.  About midday today, the clear skies clouded over, although the winds (or lack of) hasn’t yet changed.

As we look ahead, we are considering taking on some more fuel before crossing the Amazon basin, just in case the light winds persist.

Looking into possible places for fuel can be pretty interesting down here, and all the other exotic stuff available (crocodile and monkey meat, fruits and veggies, etc.) make a brief stop sound rather appealing.  We’re not sure yet, and we said we wouldn’t stop, but it is kinda enticing… maybe just for a day, or even a few hours…

06.19N   57.10W    953nm gone, 3885 nm to go     3pm 7/3

Our first squall-less day so far. Mosty sunny with a few puffy clouds, but no squalls all day, and a temperature of 92. The winds have been light, too, just 5-10 knots, with very flat seas. This has made for pleasant motor sailing off and on all day, making 6-7 knots with the wind help, and 5-6 without it. And we were thrilled to finally get along the coast of Guyana and out of most of the adverse current.

We are running about 15 miles offshore, in 20 to 30 feet of water.

It’s weird, like you’re just going over a shoal or something, but in fact that’s the way the coast is here for over a hundred miles- very shallow from the shore out about 20 miles. By staying in this shallow water we avoid the bad current farther out. We get little tastes now and then, when a tendril of evil current swirls into our path, disrupting our milky green expanse with the darker waters of the deep.

But at least we are making some progress again.

If things go as expected, there will be some balance in the second half of the voyage, as after rounding the corner of Brazil we should start to see a 1 knot current going with us. So hopefully the pace will pick up then. We are also encouraged about tomorrow and Monday, as the curvature of the coastline suggests we may get an eddy, or at least no bad current.

So what’s the dress code here in the equatorial latitudes? Swim trunks.  Day and night, nothing else.  Sometimes a T-shirt to avoid getting too much reflected sun and maybe a hat.

Incidentally, our time changed today, moving one hour ahead. This means we are now on the same time as Buenos Aires-  6am in California is 10am on the boat.

08.06N  58.59W   793nm gone,  4019nm to go.  3pm 7/2

A slow progress day. We knew this would be a tough spot, as the equatorial current can run very strong to the northwest here, as much as 4 knots offshore. Which is why we stayed very close to the coast of Trinidad, looking for current relief, and after rounding it are trying to get the coastline of Venezuela for the same reason.  I think the worst we saw was about 2 knots against us, which doesn’t sound like much, but makes a 6-knot sail into a 4-knot slog, and with the very light and flukey winds we experienced, sometimes turned a 4-knot sail into almost no progress at all. Being sailors, we were too reluctant to turn on the engine, and thus had a very very slow day.

There were a few times we did finally motor for 45 minutes or so, as the wind died completely and we didn’t want to drift back to Grenada.

All in all I think we are through the worst of it, but we are still seeing over a knot against us as we head south to the shoreline, but there is some improvement already as I write this. By this evening we will be on the shoreline and hopefully making better progress.

We had an amazing lightning storm last night, and really close, too.

Some flashes were so close everything just went white, and you couldn’t even tell where it  was, as the flash was all around us. Some jagged bolts lit up your retinas and you saw shadows of it for hours.

We were glad to be surrounded by tall oil rigs, that’s for sure!

Today has brought the usual passing squalls, along with sunshine and day and night temps in the mid-80’s. This afternoon we are finally seeing some better breeze, thankfully, so we can start making progress again. We’re in the single digit latitudes!

09.32N  60.20W    659nm gone, 4129nm to go.  3pm 7/1

After passing Grenada last night on approach to Trinidad and Tobago, we got out of the Caribbean trades and into a whole different kind of wind and sea. Its actually been very pleasant, with easy breezes and relatively calm seas, making for very nice sailing, although not as fast.

This morning we made the call to sail along the top of Trinidad, instead of going into the serpent’s mouth and between Trinidad and Venezuela. It’s shorter this way, and we didn’t feel like we needed relief from the ocean, that the other route would have provided. Plus the seprent’s mouth is famous for strong, adverse currents.

With the wind gone light at 10am, we decided it was time to charge the batteries, so we started the engine for the first time, and have been running refrigeration and the freezer as well, while we motor along the north coast of Trinidad, a very green and jungley place.

During all this calm, of course something happened. And for once it wasn’t in the middle of the night!  With the mainsail down, the main halyard shackle pin wiggled loose, allowing the main halyard to disengage from the sail and swing about all over the boat, dangling from the masthead. We tried catching it with a boathook, but it was always just out of reach, then would wrap itself around the backstay for a while. I was decided to pull into some local cove to get the boat calm so I could go back up the mast, when clever Steve thought of snaring the halyard like a rabbit.

He made a nice little snare trap out of small line, like a noose, and hoisted that up the backstay with the spinnaker halyard. When the main halyard drifted into the loop, he yanked the string and grabbed it! We then pulled the whole mess of snare and line and halyards back down to the deck where we sorted it all out and put everything back in order.

Steve gets the merit badge for today!

We ended up motoring a bit more than we had planned, but after a series of squalls passed through the wind is coming back, and we are just sailing again off the NE tip of Trinidad.

10.51N  61.04W  543nm gone,  4207nm to go.  3pm 6/30

After yesterday’s email, we continued along at much the same pace until 4:30am (when else?) when the jib halyard chafed through.  It really just supports the furler, so it seems a very odd thing. But the result was that the head slowly slide down as the jib fed itself out on the bottom of the luff.  Steve was on watch, and I was apparently dreaming, as his calls of “David, David” worked themselves oddly into my dream. But wake up I did, and we soon had the jib ut of the water and secured back on deck. As daylight was only an hour or so away, we decided to wait until then to deal with it, so we cruised under main only at 5 knots for a while.

With the daylight came the obvious solution that I needed to go up the mast to make the repair. What is no big deal at the dock can be pretty exciting at sea, as the mast is like a big pendulum, and every little movement of the boat in the waves is felt 10-fold atop the mast. So, while hanging on for dear life through what felt like 3 or 4 G’s, I re-ran the jib halyard and made a few adjustments up there to prevent the chafe from happening again. A few minutes later the jib was back up and we were back to full speed southbound.

Its been a mostly sunny day, but we did get hit by a line of squalls this afternoon, which brought short periods of rain, and great variations in wind strength and direction, keeping us busy adjusting through all the changes.

It looks like we’ll pass Grenada this evening sometime, and hope to thead between Trinidad and Tobago on our way to the South American coastline. There is a huge bad current through those parts, so we want to get through as quickly as possible and into the current relief along the shorelone. We’ll see how that goes…

12.49N  62.18W   377nm gone,  4343 to go.  3pm 6/29

We’re sailing!

We departed about 2:30pm yesterday, and the sea trial went well, with everything working as it was supposed to, so we kept going. A little after 3pm we had the sails up, the motor off, and were in Caribbean sailing mode. The tradewinds have been as forecasted, a bit stronger than normal (18-22 knots), and slightly north of east, which has been good for us. We have been rollicking along mostly between 8 and 9 knots, with a few hours of 10’s and a couple of 11’s in the puffs.

This made our first day’s 24-hour run right at 200 miles- an excellent start.

There is always some adjustment time on a new voyage, while everyone gets over the excitement of departure, gets their sea legs, and settles in to the routine. Marianne wears a scopalomine patch at the start of voyages, but even so needed to feed the fish once. Steve also started a bit woozy, and made 2 contributions, so he’s taken a stugeron an seems to be doing better. I’ve been lucky so far, other than not sleeping well in the heat (86 degrees was the low last night). So far we are just eating snack food, as nobody has felt like cooking just yet. And with the strong trades on the beam, our world is a bit canted anyway.

We started with full main and jib yesterday, under gray skies, but no rain. That worked well, but at 2:30am (why is it always at 2 in the

morning?) the skies cleared revealing a dense carpet of stars, and the wind picked up to 25 knots, so we put a reef in the main, which smoothed things out nicely. It was an easy procedure, all handled from behind the dodger in the cockpit.

Today has been clear and sunny, with a high of 92, and not much else to report so far, other than lots of flying fish, a few birds, one cruise ship and one private jet that circled us and waved.

15.25N 63.23W 200nm gone, 4507 to go 3pm 6/28

I think we are ready !
We’ve been working all morning on much of the last minute stuff, and although the masthead work didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, we made it work, and hope it will last for a month. The air conditioning units are all working, but we wont use them at sea anyway. Fuel and water tanks are full, fridge and freezer and supply cabinets are full, and the gear is stowed. So for now, the plan is to relax a bit and have lunch, then head out for a sea trial to make everything works right. If it does, we’ll keep going. If we discover an issues, then we’ll come back and get it fixed.

One small job we decided to save was installing pad eyes on deck, to mount the spinnaker turning blocks. Rather than guess at the correct location, we’ll hoist the sail at some point and see where the blocks need to be, then install the pad eyes. With the generator, we can drill and saw and do pretty much anything we can do at the dock, just with less stability…

Off we go…

Steve and Marianne have arrived!  Now I have friends aboard to share the trials and triumphs of preparing the boat for (hopefully) tomorrow’s departure. I picked them up at the airport at noon, then took them grocery shopping. They were well-prepared with lists, but Marianne kept having nagging thoughts, wondering “will this really be enough for 30 days?”. In the end, I think we’ll be fine, and the boat is now stocked up for the long voyage.

After they got all their stuff stowed and familiarized themselves with the boat a bit, we got to work. One of the last items on my list was to install the masthead transducer, that wand with the anemometer on the end, that provides electronic wind data. They hoisted me to the top of the mast, I starting drilling the mounting holes in the thick aluminum plate, and then somehow in my wrangling around the wand slipped out of the bosuns chair and gravity did its thing. I heard the sound of it sliding out of the pocket, and though to myself “what is that sound, its like something sliding out of the pocket”, and a moment later I heard the thunk as it hit the deck 60 feet below me. Surprisingly, the damage was not too severe, but what did break were the electronic connecting pins that extend from the mounting socket, and this is something I cannot repair myself. We spent some time trying to mickey mouse it, but it just wasn’t going to work. So, maybe we wont need that after all. There is a Raymarine dealer across the street, so I’ll check in the morning, but I don’t have much hope in finding the right part here. Ah well…  it wasn’t critical, just nice to have.

If we get the 3rd air conditioning unit fixed in the morning, I think we will be good to go, maybe departing around mid-day. Some of the other little jobs still on the list, like installing pad eyes on the deck for the spinnaker turning blocks, can be done at sea, and we’ll have plenty of time at sea.

Keep your fingers crossed for us, and this may be our last night at the dock!

-David