Back at the helm - sailing the Yaghan to Antarctica, Patagonia and the South Pacific

by Martensson, Helene

  I steered manually, following the compass reading of 220 degrees. For a while we thought we had a tough twenty-four hours in front of us with many more hours at the wheel than we usually do and taking turns all the way. In normal circumstances a crew of two is perfect, but if you have to steer the boat manually for a long period, it is not optimal.

  With the help of Arne's reserve routine, which involved connecting the GPS function of our AIS system to the main computer, we could continue without any problems and with functioning position co-ordinates.

  These kinds of problems are not much fun, but there is always something to learn. You often emerge a stronger, even happier, person when you find a reasonably well-functioning, temporary solution to a problem. This is how we felt. I was also very grateful for being married to someone who never leaves anything to chance and who does things properly. He is meticulous, very meticulous.

  When I left Handelsbanken Liv/SPP I said, somewhat jokingly, that not only financial institutions are dependent on well-documented routines and manuals, it also applies to boats that are circumnavigating the world. Everyone laughed and probably thought it was a joke. But it was not, it is true. Most tasks we perform are of a technical nature, and we have manuals for most routine service jobs. You cannot trust your own memory, you do forget things, and if something happens, like it did this time, and you are under stress, you need written instructions. It is of course possible to make a mistake even with a manual. Especially when you are so sure about what to do that you do not bother to read it. That is when things invariably go wrong.

  We contentedly continued our pleasant voyage. The sea was high with swell and wind waves. We did not see a single boat, nor were there any dolphins to accompany us en route to the Canary Islands. That was something we had got used to. Time goes quickly at sea when there are dolphins all around. They make you happy, and it makes you sad when they go.

  On Tuesday morning we were able to make out the mountains and barren coastline of Lanzarote. It was great to arrive at our first Canary Island. We had read about the Puerto Calero marina in sailing guides and on the Internet, and we were looking forward to staying there for a week or so. According to the literature, it was a well-reputed marina that offered every kind of facility.

  We had planned to explore Lanzarote on our bikes, but after our very first cycle trip we decided that the terrain was far too exhausting. It was hilly and you had to cycle too far for comfort. Instead, we rented a small blue car and went all over the island in it.

  Lanzarote is approximately sixty kilometres from north to south and about half that distance from east to west. It is almost entirely made up of mountains and volcanic sand. The volcanic island was created some thirty-five million years ago, and the latest eruption occurred as late as in 1824. It was not a major eruption, a worse one occurred in the 18th century when nearly all the inhabitants fled due to the devastation. This is now the home of some 140,000 people, not counting the tourists. We learned that they grow wine here, using small rocks to protect the plants from the wind in the traditional way. The vineyards are included on the UNESCO world heritage list. The white wine is excellent.

  We found our favourite beach on the south coast, at Punta del Papagayo, where we spent several days swimming and sunbathing. We had lunch at a small restaurant in the square of a charming village called Femès, which was full of white-washed houses. There was a formidable view from the restaurant over Playa Blanca with Fuerteventura in the distance. We ate the same lunch dish every day: a large salad made of golden, ripe, flawless avocado, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, fresh mushrooms and hardboiled eggs. It was served with iced beer in misty glasses straight out of the freezer. It was addictive. We simply could not pass the village without stopping for lunch and a chilled beer. It was perhaps not very healthy, but the ice cold, local beer was irresistible.

  In the end we came to spend ten days on the island, much because we needed to mend the GPS. The Raymarine repair man, who owned a shop in the marina, discovered that the reason it did not give our position was due to a fault in the boxes that translate the Seatalk data used by Raymarine to NMEA, which is used by all other systems on board. The boxes had to be replaced; new ones were sent for from England, which took a while. The Canary Islands are not Europe, and customs procedures are not straightforward. This was our first experience of the combination courier service and local customs, and we were not impressed. It would get worse, however. This was only the beginning.

  We ran a total of eight morning circuits of six or seven kilometres before breakfast. We jogged along the busy road to the Puerto Carmen tourist resort, and on the way home we passed a small shop where we could buy fresh bread. We had breakfast in the cockpit overlooking beautiful reddish mountains, bright against the deep-blue sea in the morning sun.

  We went out to buy sunscreen. A total of twenty bottles of Biotherm sunscreen 15 found their way to our stores. The shopkeeper was beyond himself when he realised we wanted to buy his entire stock. This is a good example of “male” shopping: when you find something good you buy large amounts. Only a man could ever think of buying three pairs of identical shoes when he finds a pair he likes. Women can buy three pairs too, but not all the same. Let us hope that our Atlantic crossing requires plenty of sunscreen so we get to use up our large stock. Fortunately, the best sell-by date is far in the future.

  Later that week we went scuba diving with one of the diving firms in the marina. We were picked up from Yaghan by their boat since we prefer to use our own equipment, including our own tubes. They are too heavy to carry, so it was convenient to be picked up.

  We did not go far. We dived near Puerto del Carmen, which is east of the marina and only fifteen minutes away by boat. It was our first diving experience during this voyage. The water was cold, only 18°C, and we were wearing our five-millimetre-thick rubber suits. As usual when we are wearing the thick suits and have not scuba dived for a while, we misjudged the weights we needed to wear in order to sink easily. As a result, we were left floating on the surface with empty vests and lungs; we would not sink any further without extra weights. Our diving instructor came swimming over with two extra kilos each, and then we sank as easy as anything. I sometimes wonder if we will every make decent scuba divers. Arne has potential, but I am far too anxious and nervous. It is a miracle that I can and want to dive at all since I am afraid of water.

  We left Lanzarote early in the morning of August 4, heading for Las Palmas, seventy nautical miles away. On our way south we passed close to Fuerteventura, but we did not stop. We had already decided to go straight to Gran Canaria. Moreover, we had already abandoned our original plan of visiting all the islands.

  According to the weather forecast there would be high wind, but there was not. The wind was light, and sailing was almost impossible. We had e-mailed the Las Palmas marina too, to tell them we were on our way, and unlike the marina at Lagos they replied. We had written confirmation that a mooring was reserved for us. The female harbour master also sent us her warmest welcome. It was a little early for the sailing boats that participate in the ARC rally to the West Indies in October to arrive at Las Palmas, but you never know, so I thought it better to book.

  We entered the harbour in the early evening and called the harbour master. The office was closed, so we had to guess where to go. After a while one of the marina staff came and showed us to our mooring at the outermost jetty at Puerto De La Luz. In the end we found a decent mooring for Yaghan. The shelter was poor so we had to tie some extra line to land in order to secure her. The little lady is heavy.

  Our week at Las Palmas went quickly. We cycled around town, ran along the Avenida Marítima Del Norte out of town and the same way back. The only charming feature of this circuit was that it was along the water.

  We bought new towels and food, lots of food, at the El Corte Inglès department store. What a wonderful, well-stocked food hall! They had everything, even Swedish anchovies. I bought a few tins for Christmas. We bought mas
ses of fruits and vegetables as well as cheese, fish and meat. During a cruise you have to take the opportunity to go shopping when you get a chance. We had to order a car to take us back to the boat. It was impossible to transport all the food and towels on our bikes.

  On Friday August 11 – the day after the great shopping day – we sailed on to Pasito Blanco, which is on the south coast of Gran Canaria, between Maspalomas and the small village of Arguineguin. It was a pleasant marina, which, according to our cruising guide, was very charming and nice.

  Unfortunately, it did not mention that it is badly built. The surge made sleep and going ashore without launching the dinghy impossible. To avoid the stern from hitting the quayside, the boat needed to be so far out that not even our gangway was long enough to reach ashore – it is three metres long! We could only go ashore in the dinghy. The swell at night was so strong that we had to eat seasickness pills to avoid feeling queasy. It took us a long time to go to sleep.

  We had paid for three nights, but we left as soon as we could the next morning. We were lucky in that someone out walking the dog was standing looking at Yaghan. We asked him to help us loosen the lines, so we did not need to use the dinghy, and we left the marina long before anyone had woken up.

  We phoned the Puerto Rico marina later that morning, but Yaghan was too large and our draft too deep, so it was no option.

  We had better luck with the Puerto Mogán marina. A woman greeted us cheerfully. She promised to fix a good mooring right in front of the harbour office, and we could stay for the rest of the month if we wanted. It sounded great since we did not know whether we were heading for La Gomera or whether we should stock up at Puerto Mogán before the long crossing to Brazil and Salvador de Bahia. We also needed spare parts. It would perhaps be easier to have them delivered to Gran Canaria than the considerably smaller island of La Gomera. The offer to stay was very tempting, and we sailed over as fast as we could.

  ≈

  Crossing the Atlantic to Brazil

  (Arne)

  We arrived at Puerto Mogán in Gran Canaria in the middle of August 2006. We had been feeling for some time that the Canary Islands did not quite live up to our expectations. We had cut our tour of the islands short, and we gave Fuerteventura a miss. We were now looking for a suitable last stop in the Canaries where we could buy provisions and make some repairs before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil. When we left Las Palmas we first went to Puerto Pausito Blanco, but we only stayed overnight even though we had paid in advance for several nights. The harbour is badly constructed and it is horribly choppy, even in a light breeze. After a sleepless night we continued along the south coast of Gran Canaria. First we tried to stay at Puerto Rico, but they did not admit boats Yaghan's size, so we continued to Puerto Mogán, another cramped harbour where we would not like to be moored in windy weather. Our gangway allowed us to moor a good distance away from the quay to avoid the rudder touching the bottom, but only just. We discovered the problem thanks to our aft echo sounder, which measures the water depth under the rudder. A Hallberg-Rassy 62 that had been moored there earlier had its rudder smashed because the water was not deep enough by the quay.

  We were wondering whether we should go straight from Puerto Mogán to Brazil or whether we should go via La Gomera. The problem was easily solved as there was no free space at La Gomera during the period in question. The two 64-foot moorings were taken by boats participating in the annual Columbus festival. Columbus sailed from La Gomera to America on September 6, 1492.

  This led us to determine that the Canary Islands are no good for cruising. There are only two marinas with decent facilities: Puerto Calero and Marina Rubicam on Lanzarote. You could call at Las Palmas in an emergency, the shopping is fine, but the harbour is not very good there either. The only acceptable harbour on Gran Canaria is Puerto Mogán.

  We had planned to spend six or seven weeks in the Canary Islands; I belonged to only a small number of Swedes who have never visited the islands. We were beginning to feel that we had seen enough, and we planned to leave as soon as we had stocked up on supplies and completed the repairs. We prepared to leave for Brazil already on August 31.

  Preparing to Leave Puerto Mogán

  We estimated that we would need about ten days before we could set off for Brazil.

  We made ourselves at home in Puerto Mogán. A German in a 75-footer, the Santana, which was moored a few boats away from us helped us moor when we arrived. We spent a lot of time with this pleasant family during our stay. Their plan was very different from ours. They had no fixed date when they had to be back. They were planning to stop at Puerto Mogán for a year so the children could go to school there. It is not uncommon that you meet people who are away for an indefinite period, but it is not something that appeals to us. We like to have a plan.

  One problem with arriving at a new harbour is that you need to build up an “infrastructure” as soon as possible. We have got better at it during our circumnavigation. One excellent strategy is to rent a car first thing, so you can get a quick idea of what the place has to offer. Another is to talk to people who have spent a long time in the harbour; so Santana was very useful to us.

  We soon found a good chandler, and I got to know the female harbour master well. It only took us a few days to build up a functioning infrastructure.

  There must have been a hundred restaurants in this place, but every single one we tried was bad. We were surprised since restaurants on the Spanish mainland are famous for their high standard. At La Coruña in Galicia – which is one of our favourite towns – masses of restaurants are listed in the Guide Michelin.

  The family on the Santana showed us to one of the few good restaurants they had found – Stefans. Stefan was a German who had run his restaurant in the square for a long time. He had been in a motorcycle accident in Jamaica a year or so before we arrived, and he was now in a wheel chair. He had continued to run his small quality restaurant from his wheelchair – very impressive. His cooking was several notches better than anything else we tried at Puerto Mogán.

  It started to occur to us that it would be a long time before we would eat at a restaurant of the same standard as we had experienced in Rotterdam during our voyage. Continental Europe has little to learn from the rest of the world when it comes to running a restaurant! One advantage of travelling is that you suddenly come to appreciate the good things at home. We had perhaps already suspected it; now it was blatantly clear.

  A busy time followed. We needed to do some repairs, polish the boat, analyse the weather and our route as well as replenish our stocks to last us for at least a month. In the midst of all this we tried to take a few hours off now and then in order to enjoy the sun at a nearby beach.

  Now was the first time we realised that the couriers’ three to five working day delivery assurance may have been a qualified truth. So far, we had received two deliveries to the Spanish and Portuguese mainland respectively. The goods had arrived within three to five working days.

  We did not worry since we were staying for ten more days, but our parcel did not arrive as planned.

  One important item we were expecting was a fan that was to be installed in the space where the onboard computer and other instruments are kept. On the way to the Canary Islands we lost contact with our co-ordinates in the Raymarine system because two of the interface boxes were out of order. We had also experienced problems with the radar. We were beginning to suspect that the cause was overheating. These problems were likely to get worse as the weather got warmer during the Atlantic crossing. We had not discovered this problem since all our test voyages were made in cold climates.

  We could deal with this position data failure because we had a backup routine for this kind of situation. I could pick up information on our coordinates by connecting the AIS GPS to the boat computer. I did this at sea, and we got our co-ordinates back. We were grateful for being well prepared for this kind of emergency.

  We had been away for almost three months, and the
boat needed cleaning before we crossed the Atlantic. We did it properly and polished the mast and rigging from top to bottom for the first time. It was hard work, but the result was nice. We paid the chandler's wife at Puerto Mogán to clean the hull. She did a fantastic job of it. We cleaned everything on deck and below deck ourselves. After a few days, Yaghan was as good as new. We think that a nice, clean boat is important for the general well-being on board; we did not want to sail a boat that was not fresh. We are very particular in this respect.

  Provisioning was no problem since there was a good grocer that delivered our purchases to our boat. We bought a lot of food. The longest crossing we had done so far was four days. This time we counted on fifteen to twenty days, which meant that we had to buy enough food for a month to be on the safe side. Heléne also cooked and froze sixteen dinners. It was our first proper ocean crossing, and we felt that we needed to take precautions. We wanted to be prepared to the hilt on our Atlantic crossing.

  The Debby Tropical Storm

  While we were stocking up I began to spend more time looking at weather forecasts and analyzing our route. We were now working with five-day forecasts, but without special forecasts for rain and thunderstorms. We were expecting an update to our system, however, which would provide us with rolling nine-day forecasts and a lot more information than previously, for instance special rain and thunderstorm forecasts, although the software would not be installed until we reached Brazil during the second half of September.

  Consequently, before crossing the Atlantic we had to make do with old five-day forecasts. I always like to start looking at the weather reports a few days before we set off, and on a long leg such as this, I considered it important to start a careful monitoring of the weather at least a week ahead of departure. It was the North Atlantic hurricane season, which goes on between August and November, but it was still safe to sail across to Brazil from the Canary Islands. The hurricanes and tropical storms that are born along the route we were following normally do not reach their full force until they have got closer to the American coast or the West Indies.