Welcome back viewers.
Guess what, we have wind now so the sail boat will actually be sailing and the familiar thrum of the engine has been replaced by blissful silence. This is excellent news.
Also excellent news is our daily chat with an accompanying French boat who also loved a good check in over VHF. When in line of sight with other boats, we call them up on the VHF and see what's what. Generally, we're alone and can't see any boats and this is usually the case for about 99% of the trip as all boats sail at different speeds so it's always nice to touch base with other boats and see how they are going. Weirdly, this had varying degrees of success across the Atlantic, with some boats not returning the call, or maybe understanding kiwi over a radio is tricky. Possible.
But for 3 days as the winds shifted we were in range of 1 French boat who were always up for a natter. Meals were compared, sail plans and conditions. On that particular boat, only 1 lady spoke English so one day Penny called and was keen to show off her school French so started an impressive monologue of the French words she knew. In no particular order it went something like this. "Potatoe, wind, bathtub, Wednesday, mosquito, cushion, pinetree". An impressive array in anyone's language. Helen wasn't far away so came over and had a slightly less interesting chat, but no less enjoyable. This remains a highlight.
Just another sunrise. Easily the most coveted watch
As the days went on a daily quiz was had with the questions being made up on the day. These were good fun and took time to create, and meant everyone turned up to the daily sunset gathering. That sounds weird as 7 people sitting in what is a small space you'd think we were always gathered, but everyone had a different sleep (or resting...) pattern and alone chill out time is important, so really the only time we all consistently were together was lunch and the sunset / dinner time. Tu Meke on the grand scale of things is a big yacht, but cast your mind back to Covid, remove the daily walk, reduce the area you have by 90 - 95%, remove the washing machine, supermarket, dairy, backyard, shove a few more people in there then have some twat on the outside shaking the whole place violently and making creaking noises and you have some idea of what it's like for 2 weeks. All while you cook, make tea, use the loo and lots of other things accepted as best done without errors. Crazy when you describe it like that but for us, we were very lucky to have an awesome vibe on board, with the occasional instance of a lack of sleep causing someone to lose their shit. To that end, everyone had a lose their shit voucher and I certainly needed to play mine.
It's actually not as bad as it sounds though! While the boat is always moving, for the most part it's a predictable motion that you do get used to and can anticipate so you can get into a rhythm.
Catching fish!
Small, but success nonetheless!!!
I'm sorry how would you describe lunch again? Penny the wonder women prepares for another amazing meal.
On past passages, I remember each day going quickly and the end coming around fast, but an extra week is quite a while so the days really did start to blend into 1 and I'm grateful for the daily blog which reminds me what happened on each day.
On reflection, we were really lucky with the weather. The most overriding memory of the trip was that the sea state was terrible once the wind picked up, but actually the most important aspect was that the wind was about 17-22knots - absolutely perfect. Yes, it was a bit rolly, but in speaking to other boats they had to endue some horrendous conditions where they went days without sleep where they were fighting 35knots as a base and weren't able to leave it to the autopilot, and a shit seastate. So while it wasn't the Pacific, it could easily have been much, much worse. I was able to sleep / not sleep without worrying about wind.
A trademark of all Tu Meke passages are Colette's patented beauty salons. Everyone is invited for a mani-pedi, face mask, cucumbers on the eyes. It's the works and a far cry from the usual all male passage fare of 4-6 guys sitting around farting (admittedly hilarious). Colette is great at this and everyone agreed it was a highlight of the crossing, plus we were all sporting delightful shades of toenail polish, with some of it applied during large swells so there may have been a bit of overspill.
Ollie's turn
I'll say there was a bigger wave than normal. I'll also go with the feet on the right came from NZ's "summer"
The master at work with Maddy the beneficiary
At this point of the trip we were in a pretty decent rhythm. I had asked the crew to do a bit more helming at ease the load on the Autopilot during the day with just Penny and I (plus a bit of Ollie) helming at night, old skool styly. It was great to watch Ollie and Maddy really get into this and they picked it up very quickly. Ollie especially was a natural with a great feel for the boat and it wasn't long until a fierce top speed competition was formed. To cut to the chase, Ollie and Ant shared the legitimate top speed of 12.3 knots. Not bad but I was hoping for more. This was sailing as low as we could for the most part with reduced sail. Getting there in one piece was the main goal so it's ok I guess. The unofficial top speed was held after a gybe as I came up a tad too much, caught a wave and hit 16.9knots. Massively fun and Tu Meke felt as solid as a rock surfing down that wave. However, it wasn't an angle we could sail so I graciously offered it be struck from the record and this was surprisingly quickly accepted. Still...
With all the sargassum about, it collected around the rudders and put a lot of strain on the steering gear. The autopilot just kind of churned on and you had to watch it to recognise the extra load as it makes the steering inputs less smooth. Whereas helming, you could feel it so we could do our clearout manoeuvre when it needed it. This involved turning the engine on - which was a bit of a pain as invariably someone would be asleep right beside it - coming around nearly into wind and waves and giving it the beans in reverse. You'd end up in irons and then steer back onto course and away we went. faster with buttery smooth steering once more and with everyone most definitely awake. Later in the Caribbean I'd get this down pat and not need the engine but out in the ocean I did not want to come about so no risks taken.
Smaile man! Looks fast to me though, especially after Colette's spa day
Penny trying to grab the record. If conditions were anything less than ideal, we clipped on.
We had excellent meals prepared for this trip and Helen had organised all of this while the boat was out of the water in Spain, plus extra things sourced from the English supermarkets in Gib (still got it). I ensured we were close to sinking from lollies and chocolate and luckily and less luckily we were given stroopwaffles and liquorice from the Dutch family that the crew visited on their way to the boat. Now, while I love liquorice but the Dutch equivalent is too much for me but Stroopwaffles is where it's at. Look them up if you haven't had the pleasure. A tea or coffee without one is like a wee without a fart.
2 packets were provided and the first was shared around and consumed with the aforementioned beverage. There's little more satisfying that starting a watch with a cup of tea and a snack. It's just a nice way to wake up properly and there's a tradition to it. It's pretty much mandatory. For this trip, despite Steve's excellent advice that the captain doesn't have to do the graveyard shift, I felt better for knowing what was going on halfway through the night so barring a few occasions always picked one of these. To recap, the shifts were 8-11, 11-2, 2-5 and 5 - 8 before normal service resumed during the day. I took either the 11 -2 or 2 - 5 most often so that's a lot of tea. After a while, the 2nd packet of stroopwaffles became mysteriously depleted! There were some nasty allegations thrown around the boat as to what happened and an equal amount of innocence and hurt that such things could be said out loud.
One year on, I feel enough water has passed under our collective keels and that the healing process is complete. It was me, I'm not sorry.
In my defense they are a) delicious and b) I thought someone else would notice before the raiding got out of hand!
As for encounters we had a few. Our first was when Helen was helming and we hit something on a rudder. We turned around and a large turtle was doing rolly pollys behind the boat and must've been terrified, but fortunately do damage was done.
Several days after that I was helming again and once more we felt a bit of a thud, again on the rudder but not as hard. We looked around behind the boat but didn't see anything immediately, then Helen spotted something in a wave behind us following along. It was very large and it's fins were electric blue - a swordfish of some kind and massive at about 4m long. Looking down we noticed the bracket for the hydro generator was slightly bent so we opened the transom and raised it up. There was some very rough scratching near it's propellor where it had attacked it, plus a scrape on the starboard rudder. Once you're over 9 knots the generator makes a bit of noise and once it was pulled out the Marlin trailed behind us a bit longer then lost interest. Amazing to have seen such an impressive animal in its element. Swim anyone?
Scratching on the hydro generator
You can see the Marlin in the water about half way up the photo. Mostly it's electric blue fins and dark body as I try and lift the generator
The other big encounter was right near the end of a day was what turned out to be something described as type 2 fun. It was late on an afternoon when Helen spotted what we though was another swordfish in a wave behind us. Actually when we were looking at it we saw more than one and then they broke the surface. Whales and lots of them! They were following the boat very closely and while there were some smaller ones some were as big as the boat. Many a boat has sunk after striking a whale at sea so this was a tense time. Light would be fading soon but they just loved playing around Tu Meke. They'd swim very close and dive under the boat, surfing waves and come within 5m sometimes. This lasted for about 1 1/2 hours and just didn't go away. We changed course to see if we were just in their path sailing north for a time then correcting back, but they found us again and resumed their game. By this time it was dusk and we were getting very nervous about them being around and an incident at night, so we turned on the engine in the hope they wouldn't like that and thankfully, that did the trick. So type 2 fun, not fun at the time but fun on reflection - it was an incredible experience to have them so close and playing with us but massive consequences weren't far away so properly nerve-wracking.
But by far the most worrying moment was the discovery of water on the keel bolts one morning. Penny was getting something out of the stores when she found it, and tasted very salty and as the bilge on Tu Meke is always without fail bone dry, I thought we were in trouble. We mopped it up and no sign of water coming in could be seen, so we monitored it regularly until Maddy woke up and said there was a far amount of rain in the night and it came suddenly, so the hatches had to be closed. The salty taste was just because everything is salty after that long at sea so I was very relieved. Bit of a rinse too, bonus.
While we did have a very limited connection to download the weather twice a day and text emails, those 2 tasks took about 30mins so no internet for all intents and purposes. But the emails were a great source of joy for everyone, especially our daily update from the Tu Meke Mascot Uncle Steve. Steve is known for his energy so this was a daily highlight as the daily news headlines were read out, or a fun fact about Flying Fish or the seaweed. He was also a paragon of clarity when it came to settling any dispute that might arise, surprisingly in my favour. A wise, wise man.
All good or very long things had to come to an end though and soon the daily bet on nautical miles covered at 10am every morning revealed we only had 200nm to go, just over our daily average. One last day at sea when the only view would be ocean, one last go at sleeping in a rocking plastic tub and we'd be bathing in Rum. On our final day approaching Barbados, the wind decided it had given us enough so eased right back. I spotted Barbados first amidst wild allegations of cheating (using polarised glasses) and whether I could actually see it, but one by one it came closer and closer. We all congregated on the bow and a pod of massive dolphins took up station below us and guided us around the bottom of the island and into sheltered waters once more. It was an epic journey and I'm really proud to have captained a yacht across what can be unforgiving waters. For Maddy and Ollie it really was a pretty tough trail by fire as their first yachting expedition ever, but really did an amazing job as crew. Nat was the undisputed quiz master and the one to have on your team, plus also a budding director as Nat and Colette made a number of trailers on Helen's phone keeping us entertained. Colette simply entertains and was my roomy for the trip so a got lots of laughs in the middle of the night. Always was on the watches in the wee hours too with her hand permanently in the lolly jar. Both kids never missed a night on watch and helmed their share, and did their jobs gybing. They can be very proud of what they achieved.
Helen's planning and prep for the trip began far before mine. The meals were all amazing and catering for that long and the numbers and keeping things interesting is really hard. It's also critical to moral and the food was such a highlight. She also embraced the helming and her skills took off and gained confidence, and of course non of this would have ever happened if not for her so thank you for being there and supporting us across.
And Penny, oh Penny. With your years of sailing experience and beautiful French Tourette's. It was amazing of you to come on the trip with your family and we all appreciated your experience. You allowed me to sleep, were amazing in doing nearly all of the cooking. We would have struggled without you.
So we made it. We actually arrived on the afternoon of the 22nd Dec, far earlier than I thought we would so completed the trip in 14 days and change. Impressive for having plodded along under motor for the first 3 1/2 days. We averaged 7.1knots for the crossing.
Made it!!!!
We had Christmas altogether in before Maddy and Ollie flew out later that day. Penny stayed with us all the way to Martinique, actually completing the crossing.
Cheers for following the journey!
Hazard crew at Chrismas
Colette's present was one of her selfies underwater on a towel
Christmas night with Nat's present of Lottie on a cushion
Nat discovering Lottie
A merry ride back from Christmas dinner and drinks
Welcome to the Caribbean!
