Crossing The Atlantic - Part 1.2: Becalmed!

The watch system on Taniwha consisted of 3 hour watches with 2 people to a watch. With 5 of us on board, this meant that we had a repeating schedule of 3 hours on deck/steering, 3 hours off duty, 3 hours on deck/steering, followed by 6 hours off duty, repeated.

In the early hours of Friday August 24th, Nathan and I were on watch. The foresail, was poled out to catch as much wind as possible in the downwind direction we were sailing, and as the wind was fairly light, this sail frequently flapped about as the boat rolled with the ocean swell.

This repeated flapping eventually caused the sheet (rope) holding the sail out to wear through, and the sail fell down and flapped about uselessly. Nathan called Nick up from below, and the two of them furled the sail while I steered the boat to course.

Later in the morning, while I was on my 6-hour sleep break, the wind dropped off entirely. There we were in the middle of the ocean, idly rocking about, with not enough wind to sail, and not nearly enough diesel to get us on our way to England.

Fortunately, it was a nice sunny day, and we all took advantage of it, hanging clothes to dry, and making various attempts at washing. My attempt at a shower was as follows: I stripped, and installed myself under the front hatch, which was open. I attached a small towel to a length of string, and climbing partly out of the open hatch, I tossed the towel over the side of the boat, while holding onto the other end of the string. Retrieving the saltwater saturated towel, I then scrubbed myself all over, before repeating the process a couple of times.

A bit of castille soap smeared on one corner of the towel made for a further sense of cleanliness, and the whole process was most refreshing.

first breath of wind after the calm

The calm did not last too long - we had changed the foresail to a reaching sail, and by the time I was showered, there was enough wind to speed us along nicely.

An entry in my diary includes the following mantra for being out at sea:
(For each of the 4 repetitions of the phrase, a different point of the compass is pointed to)

Thar be nowt b'there,

Thar be nowt b'there,

Thar be nowt b'there,

...and...

Thar be nowt b'there!

"... Such is life on the ocean. Thar be nowt nowhere, and all that's to be done is to keep on going!
On setting out from St. John's, I had but an inkling of the enormity of the task ahead of us. Now we are out in the middle of it, and everything is simple. There really is nothing to be done but point the boat in the right direction, maintain whatever propellance we can, and wait."

Crossing the Atlantic - Part 1.1: Fog and Sea Monsters

A year or two ago, a friend told me an anecdote of a chap who had got high on ecstasy or some other recreational mind-bending substance. In a drug-induced stupour, the guy in question had found his way into a building site and climbed a crane, to watch the sunrise from a vantage point high above the city. By the time of said sunrise, the drugs were wearing off, and the lad came to his senses, to find himself up on top of a crane in the early morning, with no safety harness, and no real clue of how he had climbed up there.

 As we set out into the Atlantic, there was a similar sort of feeling, amongst some if not all of Taniwha's crewmembers. How had we got to this point? What series of decisions, events, and mindstates had led us to put ourselves into this situation? As far as I know, none of us had been consuming mind-bending drugs in the past little while, but somehow, it seemed, we had come to the decision to put ourselves through something that may be deemed a little risky.

Days before we left, we had seen a ketch with a broken mast limp its way back into harbour. This was Simon the Welshman, who we had met the day we arrived in St. John's. Simon had left and set out into the ocean, only to turn back when he found conditions unfavourable, and had lost part of his mast on his way back to the harbour. So we knew from second-hand experience that there was heavy weather out there. But all 5 of us had made the commitment to pursue this crossing and our individual decisions to make this commitment had brought us together to see the plan come to fruition. By golly, we were at least going to give it a go.

Setting out between the cliffs of the harbour entrance, we waved to Nathan's family who had gone up onto the headland to see us off. From then on, we were immediately into seas that would accurately be described as lumpy. It was not a bad or particularly large seastate, but it jolted us out of our harbour sensibilities, and reminded us that for the next 2-3 weeks (estimated) we would be at the mercy of the fluids, and constantly in motion. A mile or two offshore there was a bank of fog, into which we passed under sail. As the land behind us faded from view, we realized that not only would we be constantly in motion, but we would not even see anything that was fixed, for as long as it took to get across to the other side of "The Pond". On reflection, that's a funny name for a body of water containing several weather systems and being 1800 miles wide at the point we were starting to cross.

The fog (or "Faahg", as it is pronounced by many of Newfoundland's inhabitants) lasted for the first two days of the voyage, and was interspersed by bouts of that other great Newfoundland weather: FDR, or Fog-drizzle-rain, which is, as the name suggests, somewhere in between all three. During the foggy bit, we ran the radar at regular intervals, and successfully navigated our way around a variety of Oil Rig supply ships, fishing boats, and car transporters.

An excerpt from my diary:
"We have now been 30 hours at sea, and we are somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean. It's foggy. Lots of dolphins today. Lots in the morning, lots now."

That day, we saw 3 different species of cetacean, the most extraordinary of which did not look quite like dolphins, but had a much more bulbous, stocky form.

Photo courtesy Michelle

They were in a huge pod of over 50, or perhaps hundreds, and were having a whale of a time jumping in formation through the waves alongside and behind us. Down below deck, we could clearly hear their excited chattering. Looking through a book of cetaceans in the north-western Atlantic, I deduced that they were probably of the species known as Grampus. I never before had any inkling that such creatures existed, so for me, they qualify as sea monsters.

Aboard Taniwha - Part 8: Slipping the Lines

In St. John's, we have been waiting.

Waiting for the miracles to come.

Now the time has come, and so have the miracles: the miracle of the right weather to start out in, and the miracle of the right rope - a specialist very strong dyneema rope which will help the mast stay up (an essential thing for any sailing boat to have).

The rope got delayed due to a ferry breakdown between the mainland and Port-Aux-Basques. But now the weather is all good (except for a little bit of Newfoundland fog), and the rope arrived, so all we need to do is attach the rope, slip the lines, and set out between the cliffs and head for Falmouth!

Our location can probably be tracked by clicking on this link and entering the password Taniwha5C . Good luck with that, it's worth a try! This service is provided by our newest crewmember, Nathan. He is a local lad who came to see us at the dock and expressed an interest in crossing the pond, and he has tall ship experience and a good quick-learning attitude, so Nick our skipper snapped him up as the latest recruit!

The route we will be taking will approximately follow the reverse of the path of Marconi's first successful radio communication:

Our course is likely to wobble somewhat more: Electromagnetic waves might travel in straight lines (and bounce off the stratosphere), but sailing boats almost never do.

Crossing the North Atlantic should take between two and three weeks, so here's hoping for some good winds in the right direction!

Preparations and Incidents: A Newfoundland Folk Tale in the Making

The pontoon where the first incident occurred

A couple of days after we arrived in St.John's, a fellow Englishman joined the Taniwha crew. Matt Whitney, like me, has been travelling without flying: he left England by bus for Gibraltar 8 months ago, and having crossed the Atlantic on a catamaran has been travelling in the Caribbean and the Americas. 

During the time we have been spending in the harbour at St. John's, we have been spending time on various projects to ready the ship for the big crossing.

These projects included creating "The Snack Shack", a restraining area to store all the spare packets of crisps, nuts, biscuits and nibbly bits so that they don't fly around when we are on the lumpy ocean:

We also safely stowing the anchor and spare sails (a good chance to practice our knots), rigged the storm sails and series drogue to be ready for heavy weather, and cobbled together an autopilot system which will hopefully help us with the 1800-odd nautical miles of steering ahead of us. 

This involved wiring together the various electronic instruments of a tiller pilot as well as linking the electric ram of the tiller pilot to a windvane steering mechanism that was already in place. (More interesting knots to tie.)

This project in particular had a backdrop of events that could in time become a Newfoundland folk tale to rival the ones I mentioned in my previous post. The project necessitated the drilling of holes in the deck astern of the cockpit area, to hold an aluminium stanchion to support the motor arm of the tiller pilot. Drilling these holes and screwing bolts into them meant that at least one of us had to crawl into the dark narrow space behind the greasy steering mechanism in the back of the boat. Different stages of the project needed different activities in the cavity, so we took it in turns to crawl in there, using foam pads to cushion ourselves from the spars that form the shape of the hull against which the crawler is forced to lie. 

The dark hole into which we took turns to crawl

During my turn in the stern, Nick was drilling holes in the deck, and I was in voice contact with him to ensure that the holes went accurately either side of a beam that was supporting the deck. Being in voice contact made being in a narrow space relatively bearable. Nick had drilled the holes, and I was getting ready for a couple of bolts to be pushed through the holes, when suddenly all went eerily quiet. I heard a scream and a splash, and then nothing. I called out to Nick, but all voice contact was lost.

Lying there in the gloom, the hull struts pressing into my back through the cushion, I pondered my situation.

I could stay there and wait, or I could extricate myself and find out what was going on. 

The first option was problematic inasmuch as I was now, without the reassuring contact with Nick's voice, beginning to feel rather claustrophobic in that small space, from which a fast escape would not be easy.

The extrication option was no more favourable, however, as it would require no small effort to get out of the space, and in all likelihood, whatever disaster had occurred would, I guessed, be over by the time I emerged on deck, with very little that I could do to assist matters, and I would simply have to crawl back into the space to finish the job. So I stayed where I was, avoiding claustrophobia all the while by sheer force of willpower.

I called out from time to time, consistently getting no answer from either Nick or Matt, both of whom had been around and in earshot until just before the silence began. I began to think that perhaps a strangely calm apocalypse had occurred, and I would emerge from my aluminium cave to find the world in a state of disarray, or even perhaps no living being remaining. 

When I was on just on the verge of making the decision to get out of the space, Nick's voice reappeared, apologized for his sudden absence, and told me that a boat that had arrived opposite had had an incident that required both his and Matt's immediate attention.

After we finished attaching the aluminium stanchion to the deck, I crawled backwards out of the narrow space, and everything was explained to me. As I was not a primary witness, I will leave it to Matt's blog to provide a more accurate explanation of the story as seen from the outside. Suffice to say that it involved a boat and a falling dentist, and a lot of fending.

<== The boat that had arrived on the pontoon opposite was one we had first met at the harbour in Port-Aux-Basques

Very shortly after the incident, and while I was still under the deck wondering what was going on, there was another incident nearby which could not possibly have been linked, but elevates the whole scenario to the local gossip circuit, and possibly even to folkloric status. According to Nick, there were suddenly a lot of people running around the Harbourside Park area, (not 20 yards from our mooring) shouting such things as "Ya! Call tha Cops!"

By the time I had resurfaced, the cops had arrived and started an investigation, cordoning off the area with "POLICE - Do Not Cross" tape. They came to both boats asking for witnesses to interview. I did not offer my services as a witness, since I had only been able to hear the inside of the boat when the events took place.

Apparently there had been a stabbing, after which the stabbee, bleeding, had chased his assailant (apparently unknown to him) through the park and down the street, leaving a trail of blood drips that is still visible after several rain showers:

And there were we thinking we were in the more refined and calm end of St. John's harbour.

What with stabbings, wartime relics and repercussions, and enough ghost stories to fill volumes (being discussed by the staff of the laundromat I am in as I write this), don't ever tell anyone Newfoundland is a place where nothing ever happens.

Aboard Taniwha - Part 6: A Week In St. John's

St. John's is very much a working harbour. The only provision for cruising boats is a floating wooden pontoon attached by a wobbly gangway to the edge of the harbourside park.

The harbour authority man who welcomed us told us with a cheery smile that there was no water, no electricity, no toilets or showers, and no other facilities whatsoever. 

Fortunately, we were saved from thirst, hunger and uncleanliness by Ken Ryan, the ex-commodore of the Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club, who came down to see what boats were in. Ken and his wife Carol welcomed us into their immaculate and spacious home, which is full of beautiful pictures of yachts of various shapes and sizes. The following night, Ken and Carol drove us over to the yacht club - half an hour's drive or a day's sail away in Conception Bay on the other side of the peninsula.

Out in the bay we explored the beautiful rock formations of Bell Island, and dined like royalty aboard Ken and Carol's yacht, Relentless, while the sun set.

Bell Island and Clapper Rock

The coastline back on the St. John's side is just as rugged, or perhaps even more so.

 This landscape culminates in Signal Hill to the north of the harbour, which has a varied military history. It was also the site of the first successful reception of a radio signal across the Atlantic in 1901, by the radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.

There are a good many people in St. John's who, if you give them a grin and a minute or two, will relate the most extraordinary stories of local history and folklore. A self-described "homeless Canadian bum" who I met up Signal Hill told me about many things: the seal-hunters walking miles out to sea on the winter ice; the American bomber found frozen into the top of an iceberg that washed up in a nearby bay a few years ago (it had crashed in Greenland in 1942 and taken this long for the ice to work its way down to the sea and across the ocean to Newfoundland); and the fact that the Smithsonian Institute chose this area to study the condition known as SAD: Seasonal Affective Disorder - since the winters here are so cold and depressing.

Another guy I met near our mooring pointed to a metallic appendage sticking out of a nearby building, and after I confessed I had no idea what it could be, he said "think submarine". It was, he said, a periscope taken from a German U-Boat that had been captured during the war.

The periscope atop the building across the road

A firework display on Sunday evening gave us an accurate overview of the typical local weather: the firework display was on top of a hill, and the cloudbase was not much higher. As a result, the only visible effect of the rockets, once launched, was to turn the clouds pink and green and golden.

Nowadays, the town, like the fireworks, is booming - thanks to a handful of oil rigs offshore on the Grand Banks of the North Western Atlantic. The oil rig supply boats constantly coming and going from the dock next to where we are moored have loud engines that echo through the water directly into Taniwha's hull, meaning that we have an almost constant stereophonic remider that we are just an insignificant group of small pleasure-seekers in amongst the titans of heavy industry.

Aboard Taniwha - Part 5: Rolling around to St. John's, Newfoundland

We left St. Pierre in fog, set sail in fog, and the fog persisted until 24 hours later, when, on the same tack, we were out in the Atlantic Ocean, well clear of Newfoundland's south-west corner. Having thought it would take two days to sail to St. John's, we were happy to find ourselves approaching it fast, and gybed around to head straight for it. After the gybe manoeuvre, I went down to my bunk for a rest, and awoke an hour or two later to find the boat bouncing around a lot, with frying pans and buckets bouncing around inside. The waves had got rather large, so I went up on deck to help steer while Nick and Michelle pulled in the headsail.

The waves were steep, and about 6 to 8 feet high, and we were having to steer along them to make our course, which made for a rather bouncy ride.

After a while, a squally rain shower approached us to add to the challenge.

The sea changed somewhat after we had passed below a huge twisting horizontal cloud and were heading towards the lighthouses on Cape Spear, North America's most easterly point.

Heading around the point into St. John's Bay, the wind and sea settled down considerably.

We took down the sails and as we motored across St. John's Bay towards the dramatic cliffs marking the entrance to the harbour, a warm moist wind blew down off the land, scented with the freshness of pine forests, and bathing us in a welcoming Canadian warmth.

Aboard Taniwha - Part 4: A quick visit to France!

After a straightforward and beautiful sail from Port-Aux-Basques, we came across a long island called Miquelon, then had to use our wits to sail through a choppy sea to get around the headlands of the next island, St. Pierre, to arrive into the colourful town of St. Pierre. Made up of two main islands (or, it could be said, three islands, two of which are joined by a narrow isthmus), St. Pierre & Miquelon is one of the numerous French colonies around the world, known colloquially as the DOM-TOM, that France insists on holding on to. We wondered why they don't just let Canada have it, and figured it must be something to do with National Pride (q.v. Falklands, etc.)

 It is certainly well-protected, by decorative rusting cannons pointing out at the harbour, and also by a border policeman and a customs official who came aboard Taniwha to do a bit of a good-cop bad-cop routine. It was unclear whether they had a sense of irony, but I think they probably enjoy the whole palarver of coming onto people's boats and making sure they are not smuggling hoardes of immigrants...  I couldn't help wondering, after all, where would any immigrants go, once they arrived on this small island?

Perhaps they would go and try to claim asylum at the cathedral, with its decorative fish-shaped door handles...

Perhaps they would search for some industry that has not fallen by the wayside...

...or rob the bank under cover of fog...

Perhaps they would wander the cobbled streets, as we did, in search of some real French food...

Perhaps they would line up at St. Pierre's only boulangerie too late to get hold of any freshly baked goods.

In a small one-bakery town, (although I later found a second one) this turns out to be a real possibility. The first morning, I turned up at the boulangerie with Michelle at 7:30. There was a selection of breads, croissants, pains-au-chocolat, -au-raisins, and quiches. But I had to get some money changed (Euros here, not dollars!) and the bank was not open until 8:30. Back at the boulangerie at 8:35, the selection was all but obliterated. There were still some baguettes, but almost all the good things in the croissant line were gone.

The following morning, I got to the boulangerie at 7:00 and joined the smug people in the first queue who get to stock up on French bakery goods and nibble them on the way home.

And after 48 hours of French Fog and French culture (and a galette and some runny cheese and some not-so-runny cheese), it was time to move on, and we disappeared into the fog, like the immigrant smugglers that we are not.