Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Fernando do Noronha and onwards

Yesterday at about midday we could start making out the outline of the
archipelago called Fernando do Noronha. We decided to run in close to have
a good look and feast our eyes on land again. Haven't seen any for about
two weeks and what a stunningly beautiful group of islands this is. Green
and lush with high peaks here and there, we were greeted by a small pod of
dolphins, albeit only for a very short time. Which reminds me that I want
to copy and paste some interesting collective nouns for fish at the end of
this blog. Haven't seen any dolphins on the trip so far and what an
immense pleasure to watch their antics around the boat. On one of my
previous trips I stopped here for a day or so,and had a most fabulous
time. We were invited to some traditional dancing and was completely swept
away by the rhythm and movement as we joined the circle of dancers. Was a
big problem to get on and off the island as there is no ferry service and
we had to rely on local fisherman to give us a ride in and out. And pretty
expensive as well to clear in and out, but in the end it was worth it.

I have carefully plotted our next few waypoints to find the best possible
currents running up the north eastern Brazilian coast, and already it is
paying dividends. At the moment just about 8kts of wind from behind, twin
headsails up front and one motor running and we are doing between 7 and 8
kts. The boat is very still, hardly any swell or movement, nearly surreal.
And we expect it to get even better, much better. Our weather forecast
shows us some wind coming in from the east to northeast which will place
us on a beam reach, and we will be able to use our main and headsail
again. And with the ever-increasing current, we may just take off and
start flying. Or think we are flying at least. We have a fairly tough
schedule to keep to and keep to it we will. I nearly said come hell or
high water but that will be a bit presumptuous.

An interesting observation I read recently is that we call our planet
earth, although it really is mostly water. I know the pacific Ocean alone
covers more than 70% of our planet, and from outer space we are clearly
the blue planet. It is disconcerting how we mostly see things only from
our own limited point of view. If we travel really far back in time, we
will also discover that the earth once rotated in the opposite direction.
We got struck by a huge meteorite which threw us completely out of orbit
and caused unimaginable havoc. Where there was once sea, there is now
mountain peaks, and we find remnants and fossils of sea creatures on some
of the highest peaks. Such a planet, this. To use a phrase from mail I
recently received from a yacht called True Blue. Satellite pictures also
reveal ancient and huge river systems where there is now desert. And
evidence of pre-ancient civilizations, far older than we ever imagined.
Not too long ago we thought we were the centre of the universe and that
the earth was flat. It was preposterous to consider that the earth was
round and the first observers of this fact was burned at the stake for
being heretics. It was far easier to see heaven above and hell below for
the religious fraternity and this little observation alone turned their
theories upside down, inside out, and really a fallacy. If you follow art
from the very beginning you will find how we evolved in our knowledge of
who and what we are, although I don't think we even have a clue of what we
really are as human beings. Over the estimated 160 billion years planet
earth has been in orbit, we have only been here for a very, very short
time, and we have made a royal mess of it so far.

But inherent in every one of us is the real truth, if only we can reach
that deep. The brave seafarers of old that ventured into uncharted
territory conjured up images of grandiose monsters from above and below,
and brave they were indeed. My daughter really made me smile once, as she
does so many times. She came to the conclusion that we all relate back to
Noah as him and his family and his zoo and his garden were the only living
things left after the flood. Except for the creatures that lived in the
water of course. And from Noah and his ark all living things on land must
then have evolved. And we are therefore all mariners at the core. Can you
for a little while place yourself in Noah's position ? Adrift on this
rapidly receding body of water, looking for a piece of dry land to safely
land his ark. In a very real sense we have evolved from mammals. Have you
ever seen a sperm cell swimming around looking for an egg cell to swim
into. And then the trouble starts, or rather the miracle. But that is how
we all started, as a little swimming tadpole kind of thing. And then we
grew into a foetus, surrounded by water and survived there for roughly
nine months before we were pushed or pulled into the world as we know it.
And the first thing we do when we are born with our very first breath is
let out a heart rendering cry. So our affinity with water runs really
deep. It is in a most and very real way where we all come from.

Now for an interesting little copy and paste. My 1st Mate Malcolms
daughter Carla did some research and found all these amuzing collective
nouns for fish. I hope it makes you smile a little and gives wings to your
visual capacity.

Collective Nouns : One of the many oddities of the English language is the
multitude of different names given to collections or groups, be they
beasts, birds, people or things. Many of these collective nouns are
beautiful and evocative, even poetic :

A company of angel fish
A company of archer fish
A battery of barracudas
A shoal of barbels
A fleet of bass (or shoal)
A grind of blackfish
A school of butterfly fish
A school of cod
A swarm of dragonet fish
A troop of dogfish
A swarm of eels
A shoal of fish (or catch or draught or fray or haul or run or school)
A glide of flying fish (:))
A glint of goldfish (or troubling)
A glean of herrings (or army or shoal)
A shoal of mackerels
A shoal of minnows (or steam or stream or swarm)
A pack of perch
A shoal of pilchards (or school)
A cluster of porcupine fish
A party of rainbow fish
A shoal of roach
A bind of salmons (or draught or leap or run or school or shoal)
A family of sardines
A herd of seahorses
A shoal of shad
A shiver of sharks (or school or shoal)
A troupe of shrimps
A quanity of smelts
A shoal of sticklebacks (or spread)
A flotilla of swordfish
A hover of trouts (or shoal)
A float of tunas (troup)
A pod of whitings

And with that I wish you a wonderful day and week ahead. After Tuesday
even the days of the weeks reads W.T.F. Very fishy, very.

Paul

Friday, March 8, 2013

Halfway there

We are only about two days away from Fernando de Noronha, a small but
exquisite little island off the coast of Brazil. A hundred miles or so
later we have Athol dos Rocas, another amazing little jewel on the ocean.
Google these two names and eat your heart out. And then the fast run up
the coast of Brazil, and fast we have to go. A charter date has been set
for our boat and we have to maintain 7kts to make it in time. Fortunately
we have enough diesel to assist the sails a bit when the wind is just not
strong enough to keep us in contention. Two days ago we caught up with a
yacht that left St.Helena 36 hours before we left. So seldom that one sees
another yacht on the open ocean, and to know the yachties, even more rare.
French couple, and the damn Frenchman laughed at me when I said bonsoir
and bon voyage. He thought I could only speak English. Another yacht we
met in St.Helena had to detour to Ascension Island due to technical
difficulties, yacht True Blue. They are circumnavigating and started in
Hawaii.

Motorsailing is the term we use when we are motoring and sailing. Up the
coast of Brazil we have a strong current and good winds that will also
come into play, and we aim not to only meet but to exceed expectations on
our estimate time of arrival in Tortola, in short our ETA. Our POA ( plan
of action ) was to sail more leisurely and save engine hours, but since
there has been a slight COP ( change of plan ) we are doing all in our
power to keep going AFAP( as fast as possible ) Enough of these
abbreviations, ok, one last one, TGIF !!! And if you don't know what that
means, Thank God It's Friday. We work 24/7 so if you work 9 - 5, this
one's just for you.

I woke up this morning to take the 3am - 6am watch and the awesome smell
of freshly baked rusks drifted in from the saloon. Malcolm has been at it
again, baking another batch of rusks from his secret recipe. Outside the
big blue is black, with no moon yet, and all around us the skies are also
black, sprinkled with gazilions of little blue dots, morse-coding secret
messages to those in the know. ET come home. Back to the saloon, it is
what we call the living room inside the boat. Inside the saloon you also
find the galley, which is the boat term for kitchen, and then the nav
station, which is where I am sitting at the moment. My very good friend
Llewellyn, who popped in for a visit in Cape Town, will attest to the fact
that our saloon is big enough to swing the proverbial two cats
comfortably. Not that I would ever swing any cat, I love these little
feline creatures far too much for that. But do google Leopard 48
Catamaran, and you will check the lay-out of our little humble abode.
Comfortable to the max.

My turn to prepare supper tonight and I have been discreetly requested to
make some rotis. Mix some flour, water and a bit of salt, make little
balls and roll them into very thin pan size discs. Fry them a minute or
two on both sides and voila ! For filling I will also prepare some minced
meat, beans etc, and a bit of coleslaw to add crunchiness. It's quite a
bit of work and once we sit down to eat it is gone in ten minutes. One of
the reasons I love rotis is that you eat it with your hands, no cutlery.
There is just something about eating with your hands. It is a closer
culinary experience than eating with a knife and fork, you really get into
it. More primal, earthy. Like her daddy, my darling daughter also loves
eating with her hands. Sigh.......I miss her badly.

Today we will reach the halfway mark, 3000nm behind us and 3000nm ahead of
us. The second half will go much faster than the first half, and before we
know it, we will be sitting on an aeroplane flying back over the easter
weekend. Mind boggling to think that we will cover a distance we covered
in approximately 6 weeks in two days. Not my favourite mode of transport
by a long shot, jet-setting, but what can one do. Make the most of it I
guess.

I unfortunately have no access to internet on the boat and therefore
cannot read and reply to your comments, just in case you were wondering,
but I sincerely do appreciate your comments and eagerly read them when I
get the chance. Hope you have a most wonderful weekend.

Until next time

Paul

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

From the heart

It's now been twenty days since we left Cape Town and five days since we
left St.Helena. We have sailed about 2500 nautical miles,which equates to
roughly 4600 kms. The ocean have warmed from 14*C in Cape Town to 27*C
where we are now at 10*47'S and 016*41'W. And strange that we haven't seen
any dolphins so far besides a few when we got to St.Helena. Our lures have
been trolling behind us for most of the time and just about no fish, the
one dorado we did hook got away, lucky fish. One whale when we left Cape
Town, other than that just a lot of flying fish scattering around. Have
we really depleted the ocean of fish and now dolphins as well ??? And the
whales ??? WHAT DO WE LEAVE BEHIND FOR OUR KIDS ??? And the generations
that will follow our generation. Out here one becomes acutely aware of the
atrocities we commit as so-called custodians of our planet. Our insatiable
thirst for violence and destruction and consumption. Our ignorance of how
we are being indoctrinated, blinded, misled. How we are being manipulated
to make war against each other. All in the name of progress !!! I ask
again, where are the dolphins, the whales, the fish. I am crying, and I am
deeply ashamed to be part of the human species when I look around me and
see what we have done and what we are doing to ourselves, our fellow
human beings, and all the creatures we share our planet with. Our
rainforests, our rivers, our atmosphere and so we can carry on and on.

The greatest atrocity of all is that we have lost contact with who and
what we really are. Spirit. Spirit is that which we have conveniently left
to worry about when we die. We are too busy trying to make a living to
worry about that now. Leave that for later, for now we first have to
secure our material needs, satisfy our greed and accumulate so called
wealth. Sure, we can set aside an hour or so once a week and fool
ourselves believing that we may be ok when we die. Our lives are neatly
packaged and divided into quick and convenient solutions. But do we ever
for a moment take a moment and count the cost.

There is no need for hate, and yet we hate ourselves, and that flows over
into our actions. There is no need for greed and yet we just can't enough.
There is no need for war, and yet we make war against each other. There is
a dire need to get in touch with our spirit again. It is a faint little
flickering flame that we have have pushed to the deepest recesses of our
instant lives. The sun has just peeped over the horizon in the background,
golden bright ball of fire. I am going to look for my little flickering
flame of spirit. I have to. I have no choice. I know the truth. And I want
to bring it back to where it belongs. I want to carry it in front of me.
And I hope you will do the same. And hopefully together we can start a
brand new day. That is the only true hope we have. To be one in the spirit.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

St.Helena - The most extraordinary place on earth

These are the exact words on their tourism brochure and a most
extraordinary place it is indeed. Two days before we arrived at Jamestown,
the anchorage at St.Helena, we discovered that our fridge was no longer
working. 30 days worth of meat supplies could go to waste if we don't find
a solution to our problem and quick. We moved all our still frozen meat
from the fridge and stored them in an airtight container in the coolest
place on the yacht. The red meat and boerewors we may still salvage but
the chicken we had to use asap. I prepared Thai green curry chicken with
coconut milk served on a bed of rice. The prospect of perhaps loosing all
our meat placed a bit of a damper on our mood. We had some corned beef but
no soya beans which we sometimes bring with as a supplement for beef.
Fortunately we had plenty tins of chick peas which would provide some
protein. Fishing was also a possibility but the sea is not full of fish as
you may have been told.

We arrived at St.Helena in the early hours of Monday morning and tied up
to the brand new bank of buoys installed recently. To anchor at St.Helena
was always a problem. Being a volcanic island the seabed was mostly rocky
and does not provide good holding grounds for an anchor. A lot of yachts
start dragging their anchors but this problem was now solved. Customs and
immigration boarded our vessel at about 9am and by 10am we were granted
clearance. The ferry boat took us ashore with our precious cargo of red
meat now wrapped in black bags. Peter, a friend of ours was waiting at the
wharf with a moped and carted our load of meat and our gas bottle to the
Consulate Hotel and placed our meat in their freezer room. There was now
hope again. My first mate Malcolm has been at the helm of Shamus Rennie,
and aircon and fridge company in SA for about 40+ years and if anyone
could fix it, it would be him. He had just spend two months on the island
prior to our departure from Cape Town, staying in the consulate hotel and
fixing freezers, fridges and aircons on the island. A leak detector found
the problem on our fridge on the boat and our hopes were once again
getting stronger. Getting on and off the island turned out to be a
nightmare of note as the full moon late February also coincided with the
equinox in March, causing huge swells to slam onto the jetty where we
disembark from the ferry. At times it was so dangerous that we had to wear
lifejackets just in case we got overturned. Carrying equipment on and off
the island, filling our waterdrums etc became a dangerous exercise. Our
full 30 ltr waterdrums were washed off the platform as another huge swell
pounded into the jetty. The drums were fortunately floating and could be
retrieved, and the only way to get our drums onto the ferry boat was to
fill them up, tie them all together, board the ferry quickly and dragged
the drums off the platform into the water. Once we were in a safer area we
would then lift the drums onto the ferry boat.

There were at anytime about ten yachts on tied to the buoys and we had to
sometimes wait till 11am befroe the ferryman deemed conditions "safe"
enough to run his errands. most of these yachties were people in their
seventies and we assisted them in getting on and off the ferry. The
ferryman would read the swells, run in quick, drop a few people and then
run for safety again. My stomach was in a continious knot getting on and
off. Malcom sourced all the right equipment to fix our fridge and thanks
goodness got the fridge up and running again on Wednesday and we could
transfer our meat back into our fridge. Quite a process to get all the
vacuum pumps, generators, leak detectors etc but it was mission succesful.

Monday afternoon at six when the ferry services close the conditions were
extreme and instead we had a braai at Ann's Place with about fifteen other
yachties, sharing our experiences, good food and so on. My friends at
Ann's Place, Richard and Jane always treats us like royalty when we visit
their island, and for a while we could unwind a bit. 9pm the ferryman
informed us that conditions eased a bit and we all moved to the jetty. We
all had to wear lifejackets and two loads of about 9 people were ferried
back to our yachts safely in fairly hairy conditions.

Back to St.Helena, the place oozes with history. Google it a bit and you
may find that some of your forefathers perished here as prisoners of war.
Napoleon also died here a long time ago. And the only way the island can
be reached is by boat. For now. After sixty years of debating they are now
busy building an airport to make it more accessible to the world. The cost
is close to 300 million British Pound and they hope to be up and running
by 2016 if I am not mistaken. The airport will change the character of the
island for ever, in some respects good and in some bad. Already the influx
of construction workers, big machinery etc is having a huge impact on the
island.The local population ranges between three to four thousand people.

At the Consulate Hotel I once again read Desiderata and will finish this
little post with the words. We departed on Thursday morning and are now
sailing towards Brazil. So all fun and games as you can gather, and
sometimes not, but we do the best we can and enjoy it thoroughly.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be
in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the
dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and
aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for
always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your
achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career,
however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of
trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons
strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be
yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about
love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as
the grass.
Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the
things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden
misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are
born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of
the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be
here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is
unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and
whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep
peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful
world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.