Sail with Jenny in the fjords of Norway

Archive for October, 2013

2300 NM TO MAURITIUS

Just a little status from our first days at sea on one of our longest passages.

Day 1 and 2 – very rough and disturbed sea, sleeping and eating and no fun to write the blog.

Friday morning 05.00, -day 3
We left Cocos Keeling Wednesday 25 September and have 10-12 days sailing to Mauritius.
The wind has been good to us, but the sea has been very rough, the Indian Ocean has broken two of my favorite cups 🙁
We have now been three days at sea and we have almost got our sea legs sorted out, the sea has slowly come down and the wind has also dropped from 25 to 20 knots which is nice.

The crew are getting in to the watches and it is very nice to have Svein-Jarle on board, he is a good quiet big man and he has after almost two months on board got to know Jenny and the routines well.
The watches for us now is four on and eight off so very good for all of us.
We talk on the short wave radio two times a day with the boats we met in Cocos Keeling. There are six boats on the net and at the moment there is only one boat left at Cocos Keeling which is on the net all the others are sailing the same route to Mauritius.

The sea has been to rough for fishing but maybe today if the sea has come down so much that it will be possible – and the boys will be very happy.

Saturday morning 06.00 – day 4

No fishing today, but some sunbathing and reading in the cockpit – all over a good day for us with less wind and sea. We had to take out the 2. reef, at the moment we have 17 knots of wind and are sailing with full Yankee, Staysail and one reef in the main – the speed is between 8 and 9 knots – nice.

The coffee maker made a jump from the stove today when the door from the aft cabin stopped the galley from swinging and the glass mug broke in 100 pieces so now we have to find a new way of making coffee. We will have to buy a new one in Mauritius – it is not the first one who brakes or the second one or the third one…. say no more. But we still have 8-9 days of sailing before that will happen…. so meanwhile we have to manage without the coffee maker – but not the coffee.

Trygve (Jan’s brother) are watching the weather for us and it looks good for the next couple of days and that is a good feeling.

We may have a shower and a sun-downer in the cockpit today since it is Saturday (not because we need it after 4 days in the sea 🙂 – depending on the weather. If not we may use the survival kit we got from our good friends “The Bickhams in Singapore” before we left.

Sunday morning 05.00 -day 5
Another good day on board with reading, sunbathing and some fishing.
We had a Marlin or a Sailfish on the hook for a couple of minutes and that was all the excitement today. We also had a shower and rum sun-downer in the cockpit – the weather has been good to us, the wind is now down to 11 knots sometime and therefore the speed has gone down. We took the reef out yesterday all sail with full main, but before dark we put it in again so the night watch would be easier if the wind picked up. At the moment
we are sailing in 11 knots of wind with a speed around 7 knots not to bad but we will take out the reef again when everybody is up in the morning.
The moon is up and the sky is sparkling with nice shiny stars – a good watch and only one hour until daylight. I guess there will be more
fishing if the weather stays like this.
1585 miles to go and a lot more night watches, but as long as the weather stays like this – no problem….

Monday – day 6
But that was not the case this time either…. as usual things tend to change.
This morning we are sailing with our big main sail and full Yankee and Staysail, but around mid day the wind picked up and we had to put in the reefs again. I had just commented on the fishing line because it was getting to windy to fish when we heard the line go and we managed to land a good size Dorado behind the steering wheel but blood all over but we had a very good fish dinner and tomorrow I will make fish cakes. Alan it is not like gutting a wine fish 🙂 a lot more blood and no good for drinking.

The night was rough and we did not got very much sleep, it was a lot of squalls with no rain but very much wind and the sea was very disturbed.
And on top of that the autopilot stopped working for a while, the boat turned to the right and the sail backed in the wind. I was on watch and had just gone outside to have a look out when it happened. I called Jan and got him out of the bed and he went in the cockpit to steer the boat. We got it going again on apparent wind, but we had to keep changing the course all the time as the wind changed.
With two reefs in the main and only the Staysail up, we where fine but very tired.
We had a lot of sea spray in the cockpit all the time, but not so much that we had to close the hatches under the spray hood, but when the wind picked up “green sea” came on board and one hit the hatch on my side and the bed was all wet. I was luckily not there but there was no more sleeping there for a couple of hours.

After having a good sleep I made some fish cakes, but it was hard in the rough sea. It was still blowing a lot and it felt like driving on a very bad road but I managed and they came out good. In the afternoon the wind was going down and after a couple of hours the sea also improved a lot.

Tuesday morning 05.00 -day 7
May be one week to go…. depending on the wind, at least we will be celebrating half way today.
After a very good sleep I am now on my sixth night watch and we have 1197nm to go.
The wind has dropped dramatically and as soon as the daylights come we have to take out the reef in the main, but I will not wake the boys because they need their sleep and it is harder to do it in the dark because it is difficult to see if something jams when we hoist the sail up.
There is no moon tonight therefore very very dark outside and since we have sailed west I will not see any daylight before 06.30 there are three hours time different between Cocos Keeling and Mauritius but we will not change the time on board before we come to Mauritius because of the night watches and the radio schedule we have every day with the other boats.

Today I think we will pass the two boats that sailed off two days before us, so we will now be the first boat in the “fleet”. That means that there will be not boats to talk to about the conditions in the harbor in Mauritius, but we know there might bee some Norwegian boats there to talk to.
We have heard that there was three Norwegian boats on Cocos Keeling the week before we came and it would be very fun the meet up with them. We have only meet two Norwegian boats before on the hole trip.

Wednesday morning 05.00 – day 8
Yesterday was a day with little wind and the sea slowly got down, we actually had to little wind for a while and there was a lot of noise in the boat from the sails slamming, but the wind picked up a little and we where able to sail again. With full main, Yankee and the stay sail. The boys put out the fishing line and after only a few hours we got a new Dorado on board, so at the moment we have plenty of fish. Jan filleted the fish and Svein-Jarle washed the cockpit so nice that there was no trace of blood, and as usual I took care of the fish. Svein-Jarle will make fish soup for us which we really look forward too and for me it will be nice to not do the cooking. Today at 11.00 it is one week since we left Cocos Keeling and the logs shows that we are more then half way so in a couple of hours we have “only” 1000nm to go…..

It is getting a lot colder at night so we soon have to put on long trousers on the night watches, which we have not had for a year and a half. We are now on 17 degree south so it is a big change from Singapore, but we miss our friends there and the good time we had together with them.
We hope that we one day will see all of them in Norway.