Mojomo Update

tome

tome

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30/4 1712

We are 26 deg 15N 61deg 21 W and all fine. No significant gear problems. Gennaker up boat speed 4-5 knots. Wind veering now 190 T 6-8 knots. Sea slight, light clouds, sunny

Tested the harness this morning by swimming off the back whilst doing three knots and got pat to drag me round to knock on ljs's cabin window. LJS is warning me that some crew may be getting overworked - he had to test our hammock in the cockpit for thre hours yesterday whilst listening to Albatross and drinking Mohitos, so fair enough.

Match fishing in progress this morning with para satisfied at his first catch and Pwc working harder to even things up. Zefender's "mother watch" system 3hrs on 6hrs off with one day in each four as cook/botlewasher and no night watch is liked by all. My inability to hold any food/liquids after hull scraping lasted two days but vanished with Itinerol B6. - tcm
 
tome

tome

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Hee hee. Looks like a couple of ver light wind days ahead until Thursday so we should be prepared for some slowing down, which may give Pat a chance to even the score
 
No1_Moose

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"we should be prepared for some slowing down"

hehe, you're talking about a twin engined boat with tcm in command...I don't think there will be any slowing down /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
tome

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might want to do some range calcs on motoring, especially if not calling bermuda. Matt will be husbanding fuel so won't chuck it out early
 
tome

tome

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Re: Mojomo Latest

Darn it, looks like No1_Moose earns himself another pint...
=====================================
MaY 1, 1500 BST position 27deg 54.3N 59deg 47W. A sunny but almost windless day - 4knots from the south. We are rumbling along under power. The boat does around 8knots with engines on at 2000rpm, but we're taking the sensible and skinflinty option of doing 6.4 knots on 1 engine to conserve fuel. 300 miles ahead there should be some wind. We have 1100 litres in total, used around 140 so far, and we also need power to run the generator to run the watermaker, and charge batteries.

Everyone's fine. LJS had nasty sunburn on his feet , so Dr Para prescribed sitting on the stern draped in towel with his feet trailing in the water to cool everything down, which seems to have worked. PWC very jolly, and likes sleeping above a diesel engine doing 2000 rpm. Para is going native on the transat thing, with enthusiastic fishing, downloading weather forecasts, the lot. His turn as Mother today and his first shot at bread making is due out of the oven soon. No more fish yet - perhaps a good thing as more than half of the first one is stll in the freezer.

Addendum 1800 BST : Changed to stbd engine a couple of hours ago.and there's a shaking/vibration for which we slowed and stopped to investigate. It emanates from the rudder itself , when the stbd prop is rotating. Not present with port engine alone driving the boat, and only a mild shaking/vibration with both engines - but severe and untenable on stbd engine alone. I dived under boat to find no debris, and only 2mm vertical rudder play. Port engine alone for the time being.

Para's bread is fantastic, although his outrageously hot lunchtime thai curry has quietened us all down a bit.
 
tome

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Re: Mojomo Latest

Tuesday 9.30pm local, or Weds 0230 BST. Atlantic adventure continues, with all crew slightly bemused at the general mood of a very jolly extended weekend party, rather than a grim maritime voyage. The sea is smooth with a not-coastal rolling swell, but you can carry a coffee in each hand from galley to cockpit no problem. We've just completed a record (for me) 50 hours of continuous motor boating altho it is 0.5-1knot faster with mainsail up. Wind is up to a ripping 4 knots from F1 yesterday afternoon. Horta in the Azores is 1,620 miles away but I have toldem to stop counting until next week sometime, it's just too far. Actually, it's 1,608 miles now.

The boat is well enough - PWC found his loo had tripped this afternoon, so I spent half an hour looking for a fusebox or circuit board. I quite like busted boat bog problems as the perpetrator always feels they have to help out a bit in a rather servient manner, following me around whilst I quiz them as to what exactly happened and harumphing as they protest that it was only a wee, honest. LJS was a bit narked to hear that PWC had an ensuite loo in the first place for crissakes, but is smug that at least the running and not-shaking rudder/engine is on the other side so he can snooze in peace.

The lectrics seems an excellent installation, which is code for the fact that I couldn't find any wires or fuses for ages. But then I triumphantly found it all in his cabin, very neat, reset the fuse and another fix to me.

Para was on "mother watch" today, read cookbooks in the afternoon and made rather fab dinner with more steaks from Donald the Dorade, Para's now-legendary fish. Still more of Donald to go yet, a very tasty fish. PWC said he was also a very lively fish who wouldn't give up easily when he was landed. We poured rum into his gills but he was still keen to jump back in the water. So Paddy punched its head about fifteen times to make him stop flapping, and shouted "C'mon give it up now" at him menacingly, which worked pretty well But even now he's frozen, the tupperware boxes containing bits of Donald leap out of the freezer the moment the door is opened.

600 miles or so back at the Grand Marche supermarket in St Martin I initially thought that the provisioning was going to rats as everyone started with a trolley, meal plan discussions etc, but an hour later we ended up whizzing around individually getting anything we fancied. It stored okay on the boat tho, tons of room and has worked out quite beautifully.

Para revealed a ready-made Black Forest Gateau from the back of the freezer
for dinner this evening, which I did actually see in a trolley but somehow I mentally blanked it, deciding I must have been looking someone else's trolley, not one of ours. I mean, who'd buy a frozen black forest gateau for a transatlantic sailing trip? Or indeed, ever?

The saga of the Mint has subsided. What happened was, see, I got a packet of mint leaves back in that supermarket, but then LJS and I went back to the boat to empty the car leaving Para and pwc to finish shopping, and whilst we were away they vetted some of the purchases and my mint leaves didn't make the cut. Dang. So, in only a slight strop I had to go back and get more mint. Good job too else there would have been no afternoon mohitos and thenwhat, hm? Para was apologetic, tho only after having tasted a mohito. He didn't see how mint would fit into any meal plan at all. Pah! And that's after he loaded his trolley with that gateau thing! All turned out fine as second time around I got double qtys of mint, so maybe he was hinting I should get more mint anyway.

1 Mohito: a whole sliced squeezed lime, a decent sprig of mint bashed about or "muddled" to get it very minty, a sugar cube, a big slosh of sugar syrup, a slosh of raspberry syrup, dash of angostura if you have it (we haven't) then ice and fill with soda or sprite or Perrier. You can put a little or a lot of rum in, but the shock of the lime and mint makes alcohol incidental.

Unfortunately, five days into the trip the mint has run out, dammit, and what there was today had gone a bit greeby and brown at the edges. Next time I'll get a decent mint plant, or perhaps a small indoor potager and a trowel.

Oh yes, another thing about the pre-departure provisioning - the difficult question of Alcohol. Hm. On previous longish boat trips I haven't felt much like an alcoholic drink until it's all over. But this is much longer affair, with possible (and as it turns out, actual) long drones through calm water. Now, I hadn't said "it'll be a dry boat" which some skippers do, I'd just let it lie quietly for the moment, see how it goes, judge the mood, that sort of thing. It wouldn't be a big deal to have some drinks when things are slack, they're sensible chaps. Or perhaps they'll just agree or even volunteer that it should be a dry boat - it's a serious trip after all.

Ashore in St Martin on the very first evening, Para tackled the subject head-on. He suggested that perhaps we buy say just half a dozen bottles of wine. We all nod that this sounds reasonable, and I'm delighted that we have almost instant unanimity on the subject. Then, he continued, we should have a tasting session before proceeding to buy "industrial quantities" of the chosen wine. Para said this with full authority of his early career as an industrial chemist. He knows about "industrial quantities" alright. The rest of us fell about laughing. Now en route, we've got some wine, though not quite "industrial quantities" really. OK, we've got three wine boxes, maybe four. Each. Oh dear. Good job I took out the four boxes of white from one of the trolleys I suppose.

Anyway, back to today. Six knots so I suppose we must have done, um, another 150 miles. Perhaps a bit less with the swimming in the morning when I went to look at the rudder. I scraped some barnacles off to see if would stop the vibration - bit creepy as the noise might have alerted some distant shark.

Otherwise, though, this Atlantic lark is a bit of a doddle. We see one ship a day, always ten miles off or more. I'm supposedly on watch right at this moment. Hah! Radar at 30 miles shows nothing so, heh, at 6 knots with a 3-hour watch we'll do 18 miles - so I'm pretty much done straightaway, right? Well, ok, not quite. But it is much more dodgy in the Channel, or near any coast, really. I bet this ooer Atlantic thing is just ruse to sell yotmags, scary boating books and safety gear. I mean, really, so far I've had more dangerous trips to the paper shop! Altho admittedly that includes the time when my car caught fire and burnt out three others including the shopkeeper's Transit. Hopefully it won't be that adventurous.

I suppose just my luck there'll be a massive storm now, but the forecast charts say nope, there's some nice wind from behind the beam coming up one day soon that will sweep us to the Azores. Meanwhile the Ipod music plays, and LJS can always name that tune in one.
 
Lakesailor

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Re: Mojomo Latest

Frankly I was looking forward to a bit more than fused shithouses. I'm a bit let down. Can't you make up some exciting bits and insert them into Matt's rather pedestrian reports? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
davel

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Re: Mojomo Latest

No need to fret. It looks like there's an adventure awaiting them - at least according to the latest Google Earth update I've looked at. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif





Googleearthpic.jpg
 
Lakesailor

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Re: Mojomo Latest

Oooh. The mystery of the K-219. Even today LJS can't speak of the terrors of the moonlight encounter.

That's more like it. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
 
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