Atlantic

Our last sunset sight of The Rock; this is how it often looks, shrouded in clouds.

A strong current runs into the Med from the Atlantic, which makes timing the tides crucial to making it through in a timely manner. We therefore got up before dawn to make the departure around first light. The boat, however had a prank in mind, in this case a clogged toilet. We won't bore you or gross you out describing matters other than to say we almost lost our weather window as we desperately attempted to plunger our way out of town. The urgency was magnified knowing that we only had a day or so to arrive in Sale', Morocco, our intended destination. Sale' is often closed due to huge waves at the harbor entrance. The waves come from storms in the north Atlantic and can be fierce at this time of year. So, we finally decided to damn the potty, full speed ahead and weighed anchor for Morocco.

The passage through the Straits of Gibraltar was surprisingly rough. The Straits act like a big breezeway and a jet of wind 20-40 knots can roar through it. This is near Isla Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe. We finally got far enough down the African coast to escape the winds, at which point we motorsailed down to the notorious port of Sale', a pirates' lair for centuries.

As Hope and Crosby said in "Road to Morocco", "Like Webster's Dictionary we're Morocco bound..." Please join us!

After our unexpected return to the US for heart surgery, we got back to Sale' in early January to an unexpectedly cold and wet welcome. Much as we wanted to see Marrakech, rise camels in the Sahara, etc, it was just too damn cold. So, please join us for our brief visit to the Canary Islands!

This is a shot of Pico de las Nieves (Peak of the Snows) on Gran Canaria, our last glimpse of land for almost 17 days.

If you've never watched our position on winlink, this is what it looks like. We managed to make the 2800nm crossing in less than 17 days for a very respectable 7+ knots average speed. In the middle we were making 200 miles/day, about 8 knots, in winds of 20+ knots. It was all "wing-on-wing", where the jib is poled out and the main let out as far as you can. The horizontal vs diagonal stretches are different tacks. The wind was mostly ENE and we're too lazy to change tacks more than every couple of days. Anyway, we were very proud of Amante as she charged over a heavy following sea making more miles than many larger, fancier boats.

So, what's it like? If you're lucky, it's boring. After the first few sleepless nights we settled into a routine for the rest of the trip. We do 6-hour watches, which many may feel is too long, but so long as the trusty autopilot steers the boat we do fine as it gives us a longer rest period. For about 2 weeks we saw nothing but sky and sea, no birds, no planes, just an occasional ship on AIS, usually 50+ miles away.

The first half of the trip was quite chilly and we were glad to have fleece sweatsuits and the cockpit closed in. We kept the place sealed up for most of the trip and stayed warm and dry. This is part of the reason we didn't tack too often as we hate to get wet.

It wasn't always boring. The last third of the trip had many squalls, both night and day. Yet another reason to keep the cockpit closed, since the winds (and rain and seas) came from behind.

One beautiful side of the squalls were the rainbows, this one a double...

A sunrise with a wave breaking on the stern. We would get the occasional "boarding sea", meaning a wave breaking over the boat or trying to blow through the stern portlights. We only had a few messes from water getting in.

Here The Crew moves the pole over in a tacking operation. It was a lot of work re-rigging the pole, which was even more fun on a heaving, rolling deck.

As we got further west the seas and noise subsided and could enjoy the passage, even if our speed got down to less than 7 knots.

He's tired, but it's a good kind of tired. He's sunburned, too.

The admiral kept trying to catch Capt Hub in candid moments, even when he just wanted to sleep.

Toward the end of the trip we started to pick up lots of Sargasso, even if we stayed south of the Sargasso Sea.

This is what you catch when you try trolling through this stuff. It took an hour of struggle to haul this mess in and we finally stopped trying to fish as clearing the weed was too much effort.

We only had one bad day, which was the last. The winds became light and variable. Capt Hub tried to fly the chute but it had a rigging problem and fell in the sea, not fun after all that work. So, we raised the Iron Jib and motored the rest of the way.

The only other mishap was when a hose blew off and drained our fresh water tank, all 200 gallons. Our watermaker (desalination gadget) made up about a third of the tank on our way in. This could have been a problem if it had happened sooner and the watermaker was in a bad mood.

What's this? Antigua, mon! After almost 17 days we sight land at dawn and are ready to drop the anchor and sleep - well, actually we were too excited and used to the routine to be all that tired.

Well, that's the end of our Atlantic crossing. We do have pictures of Antigua but it will have to wait a couple of days while we rest up. Stay tuned...

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