Azores Bound

06/21/02

    Well, the boat motion finally got to me yesterday.  After beating all day with 18-20 knot SouthEast winds (we are headed East), and constantly crashing into big waves (sometimes it seems like the entire boat is airborne), I was feeling quite queasy.  I tried to eat my dinner, but was unable to finish half of it.  After a stern reprimand from Eric for taking more than I could  eat, I took what was left out to the cockpit to “feed the fishes”, and briefly regurgitated on the plate as I threw it over.  I then went down to the galley to do the dishes (it was my day) and was  immediately overcome with a “Yack Attack”.  I ran out to the cockpit, but did not quite get my head over the rail before it hit.  At that point, Eric advised me to stay in the cockpit and get some air while he and David did the dishes.  Afterwards they got a bucket with a rope and picked up some seawater to wash away my mess.  Miraculously, at this time the wind died and the motion of the boat became more tolerable.  I began to feel better, and my watch was coming up (2000-2200),  so I spent that whole time in the cockpit.

    Overnight, the wind continued to be light.  We ran the engine for a bit, then decided to stick it out.  Finally, on my watch the next morning, the wind picked up to a favorable speed and direction, and we have been sailing comfortably.  Eric was able to contact Trudi successfully this morning, after reconfiguring the antenna again.  We had moved the running backstay to midships before, to prevent interfering with the SSB antenna on the backstay, so we reconnected the regular antenna again.  He was also able to contact Mike McEwan, his neighbor  from around the corner in Brookhaven, and give him our position.  Mike will contact Red and Brenda with the news, and I’m sure Sue will get this information too.  Last night there was a brilliant moon showing during my 0200-0400 watch.

    This morning Eric dissected the Seagull and found that the thing which caused it to jam in Block Island was a part that had stuck in the magnetic flywheel.

    We checked our position on the ocean chart.  At this point we are on the Sohm Abyssal Plain, an area of ocean that is over three miles deep!  On looking at the chart and our progress, Eric decided we should stop in Horta,  Azores for a couple of days.  He figured we’d do this, since we have to pass near the Azores to avoid the Azores-Bermuda High anyway.  We would travel to the Canary Islands (Santa Cruz, in Tenerife), then stop at the Cape Verde Islands on the way to Fernando de Noronha.

    We have been learning celestial navigation for the last few days.  Eric had given classes on this at the Bellport library a few years ago.  We have learned all the principles, and how to look up things in the Nautical Almanac, and today we took our first sun sight.  We will take another one tomorrow and establish a running fix.