Karen M. Eaton
Now that we are here in St. Lucia we are hearing many stories of blown out sails, broken booms and other equipment so we were not overblowing the difficulty of coping with the conditions. Unfortunately, John Thompson the owner of Avocet who was hit by the boom in a jibe did not regain consciousness and died yesterday in a Barbados hospital where he had been transported by a diverted cruise ship. Avocet is due to arrive here today with his son and other crew aboard.
Yesterday we had lunch with the Dutch captain (who has been around the world five times) of the largest boat in the fleet, Scorpione dei Mari, a 96 foot custom built beauty, with a professional crew of four and three guests including the owner. He said that they destroyed sails worth 100,000 euros (about $140,000).
The crew of sturdy Blue Heron is happy to be here safe and sound.
Blue Heron arrived in St. Lucia at a little after 7PM. It was a fast sail today with gales including gusts up to 40 knots. We were boat number 100 across the line finishing just after dark. We completed the trip without any malfunctions or breakage - a remarkable feat given the conditions. But after the finish line the roller furling malfunctioned and we had to drop the jib onto the deck. Blue Heron is now tied up at Rodney Bay marina in slip A67. We just had our first dinner on shore and we are off to the showers. To be honest the restaurant food wasn't any better than what we had on board - but at least we don't have to do the dishes.
The good news is that the Captain has stopped torturing the crew. The bad news is that he has broken out the oars in case the wind slackens such that yesterday?s 180 mile record pace cannot be maintained. For the first time in two weeks we are starting to see signs of life other than ourselves: three ships all of which required evasive action to avoid an incident; a bird identified as a blue footed booby; two pieces of plastic garbage or fishing net; and one sail boat that crossed our path twice on two separate days last week. Blue Heron has distinguished herself as an efficient fishing boat so that no further fishing is planned to avoid depletion of the ocean?s fish stock. Box score for the three brief times that fishing gear was deployed: two bonitos (released); two 85 to 100 pound tunas (one released, one eaten and frozen); two dorados (one eaten, one self-released along with the lure). Each time two fish were caught simultaneously. Book review: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (family life in Afganistan); Next by Michael Crichton (where the genetic world might be headed); Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (why history turned out the way it did); The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig (escape by canoe from a 19th century Russian outpost in Alaska); Two Years before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (first person account of sailing on a merchant sailing ship to California); The Emperor?s Children by Claire Messud (bi-costal chick book); The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford (best book that goes nowhere); The Covenant by James Michener (homework for trip to Africa); Desperate Voyage by John Caldwell (hardship of crossing an ocean by sailboat). We can testify that they did not make up the stuff about hardship at sea. Wyman
 Monday December 10, 2007 @ 08:55 PM GMT+00:00
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| The Pool, the Fish & the Ships |
Lat:16.2210° Lon:-54.3509°
Wind: ENE 18.0 kt | Temp:79° | 
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First the pool, not the kind in which you swim, but the betting kind. Last night (Sunday the 11th) the crew of Blue Heron placed bets on our arrival time in St Lucia. Each of us wrote a time and date on a piece of paper, then once everybody had made their bet, the times were revealed:
Nick 12/13/07 2 am
Walter 12/13/07 2 am
Wyman 12/13/07 11:02 am
Jerry 12/13/07 8:30 pm
To resolve the possible tie between Walter & Nick, Walter wins if the arrival is before 2 am and Nick wins if it is after 2 am, but closer than either Wyman or Jerry's bet. We will each put $25 into the pot, so winner gets $100. We now have 407 miles to go, and if the wind holds strong and favorable, Walter is looking like a winner. Stay tuned for further updates.
The fish was a dorado, aka dolphin fish & mahi mahi. Wyman and Walter put out two lines at about 10:30 this morning. Just about the time I was ready to make sandwiches (I'm the cook today), we got strikes on both lines. The one on the hand line bit through the leader and got away. Wyman fought the other one for about 15 minutes. No easy task because we were sailing downwind so it took us a while to slow down the boat. Wyman brought it along side, Walter gaffed it, Wyman cut the filets, and Walter cooked them for lunch. Not only were they delicious, but I didn't have to make lunch. Fishing isn't so bad when someone else does all the work.
The ships, now two in the last 12 hours, require that we be much more watchful than we were during that part of the passage where we didn't see another boat for days at a time. Even though the Colregs give us the right of way, we aren't inclined to press the point with a vessel that outweighs us by thousands of times and may be traveling at 20-25 knots. Between the time the ship first appears and a potential collision may be only 15-20 minutes. We use our eyes and MARPA (mini automatic radar plotting aid) on our chartplotter to determine if a potential for collision exists. If it does, we alter course to pass behind the ship. Like airplane pilots say, a midair collision could ruin your whole day.
The skipper keeps telling us that we shouldn't count our chickens just yet. The wind may die, something might break, etc etc. I'm not sure he believes it himself, as for me, I can almost taste the rum and see Phyllis (my wife) and Karen's smiling faces as we pull up to the dock in St Lucia.
Nick
We are finally drying out after 3 days of rough weather. We are all fine but weary. It sure is nice to see a bit of sunshine.
Each of the past two nights we have had fire drill situations. Here are the highlights:
At about 11 PM last night a large wave at just the right angle broke over the stern and filled the cockpit. Luckily Wyman, who was up on deck for his watch, was tethered in. Blue Heron is a center cockpit boat with a rigid dodger/cabin top. The wave was high enough that it cleaned the loose gear off the shelf up under the cabin top and dumped it through the companionway into the main cabin. We found Nick?s SkyScout in the galley sink. As you might expect, it was pandemonium. The wave hit with such force that it spun the boat into the wind and the sails were luffing. Wyman jumped on the wheel, disengaged the autopilot and got us back on course. The skipper, thinking that were taking on water called for all hands on deck while we assessed the damage. After checking under the floor boards and determining that the water level in the bilge was going down rather than up we wearily went back to our bunks. Not that anyone really was sleeping in the tossing seas.
At 1 AM the continuous shifting of the wind was sending us too far off course so we were back on deck to put away our genoa and shift to reaching on the staysail. Since the wind was blowing 30 ? 40 knots the staysail alone was fine.
At 4 AM the bilge pump switched on unexpectedly so Jerry did another inspection of the bilge looking for possible leaks.
At 6 AM the wind had died down to 20 ? 30 knots so we decided to put out more sail. We dropped the staysail, shipped the pole and running backstay and unfurled the main and genoa.
And this was on top of the night before when we had lashing rain, 50+ knot gusts and in the middle of the night the strap on the end of the boom broke sending our genoa sheet free and launching the snatch block that had been holding the sheet into the shrouds.
We feel very fortunate to be in such a solid, well maintained boat. A number of others have fared much worse than us. Yesterday there was a mayday call from a catamaran that had lost its rig and was sinking and today we heard about another boat abandoned because of a broken rudder. Needless to say, we are really appreciating the sunny sky today and catching up on sleep.
Walter
Drying Out
We are finally drying out after 3 days of rough weather. We are all fine but weary. It sure is nice to see a bit of sunshine.
Each of the past two nights we have had fire drill situations. Here are the highlights:
At about 11 PM last night a large wave at just the right angle broke over the stern and filled the cockpit. Luckily Wyman, who was up on deck for his watch, was tethered in. Blue Heron is a center cockpit boat with a rigid dodger/cabin top. The wave was high enough that it cleaned the loose gear off the shelf up under the cabin top and dumped it through the companionway into the main cabin. We found Nick?s SkyScout in the galley sink. As you might expect, it was pandemonium. The wave hit with such force that it spun the boat into the wind and the sails were luffing. Wyman jumped on the wheel, disengaged the autopilot and got us back on course. The skipper, thinking that were taking on water called for all hands on deck while we assessed the damage. After checking under the floor boards and determining that the water level in the bilge was going down rather than up we wearily went back to our bunks. Not that anyone really was sleeping in the tossing seas.
At 1 AM the continuous shifting of the wind was sending us too far off course so we were back on deck to put away our genoa and shift to reaching on the staysail. Since the wind was blowing 30 ? 40 knots the staysail alone was fine.
At 4 AM the bilge pump switched on unexpectedly so Jerry did another inspection of the bilge looking for possible leaks.
At 6 AM the wind had died down to 20 ? 30 knots so we decided to put out more sail. We dropped the staysail, shipped the pole and running backstay and unfurled the main and genoa.
And this was on top of the night before when we had lashing rain, 50+ knot gusts and in the middle of the night the strap on the end of the boom broke sending our genoa sheet free and launching the snatch block that had been holding the sheet into the shrouds.
We feel very fortunate to be in such a solid, well maintained boat. A number of others have fared much worse than us. Yesterday there was a mayday call from a catamaran that had lost its rig and was sinking and today we heard about another boat abandoned because of a broken rudder. Needless to say, we are really appreciating the sunny sky today and catching up on sleep.
Walter
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Saturday December 08, 2007 @ 12:56 PM GMT+00:00
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| The Truth Will Set You Free |
Lat:17.4202° Lon:-47.9301°
Wind: E 20.0 kt | Temp:77° | 
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All right, this has gone on long enough! The truth MUST be told. We are in fact NOT on a trans-Atlantic passage. We have two adjoining rooms at the Courtly Arms Motel on Rte. 72 in East Teaneck, New Jersey. For the past two week we have been sending blogs and watching free HBO.
There I?ve said it! J
(PS. If we WERE keeping up this sham, we would report that we are really sick of rain and snotty weather.)
The day before yesterday on Wednesday, December 5, Blue Heron finally arrived in the trade winds and was happily sailing downwind directly to St. Lucia in a steady breeze with blue sky and occasional squalls. The swimsuit clad crew enjoyed their first dinner together in the cockpit and settled down to the ?milk run? segment of the voyage. Alas, by midnight the dream sail was over when we entered a major storm system with heavy rain, high winds (30 to 40 knots gusting to 50), big waves (10 to 15 feet, sometimes more) and confused seas. Much of the day yesterday was spent changing sail configurations to find a rig that could handle the strong, gusty wind and violent motion caused by the giant waves. By sundown we settled on an arrangement that we call our double head rig with the mainsail furled into the mast, the genoa sheeted to the boom to port and the staysail poled out to starboard. With preventer lines fore and aft the rig is very stable and the genoa can easily be furled in or out from the cockpit as conditions warrant. These conditions continued throughout the day and night Thursday, into today and are forecast to continue for the next day or so with gusts over 50 knots in and near the squalls. Last night we cancelled plans for a gourmet meal of spaghetti due to fear of boiling water bouncing off the stove and instead warmed our insides with canned chili as our foul weather gear hung out to dry. Nobody is complaining because we all agree that we prefer going fast in rough weather to going slow with sails flapping in light air. Today with less than 1000 miles to go we set our watches back for the third time since we left the Canary Islands. During the past nine days we have only seen one sail boat, no ships, no airplanes, no whales, only flying fish and lots of bright stars. Wyman
The sun sets at about 6 pm and rises about 6 am in December at these latitudes, so we do half our sailing in the dark. Night watch can be just glorious when you?re alone in the cockpit with a warm wind at your back and a million stars overhead. I brought my SkyScout, which is a neat little gizmo that will identify nearly all of the visible stars and planets. We?ve all had fun identifying he stars.
Then again, night watch can be really unpleasant. When it?s cold or rainy, sitting alone in the dark peering into the murk isn?t much fun. Last night when I came up to relieve Walter at 3 am he pointed out a big storm cell on the radar. Most of the time these cells bring lots of wind but no rain. Last night we got both. It started about 10 minutes after I came on watch. I had been lulled into complacency by the previous warm nights so I left my foul weather bottoms in the hanging locker. I had to stay at the wheel while the storm passed, so by the time I could retrieve the bottoms, I was soaked. At least it was warm.
The other thing about night watch is that we have to go pretty much where the wind takes us. We?re rigged for downwind sailing with the genoa poled out to one side and the mainsail on the opposite side. Both are stabilized by guys for the pole and a preventer for the boom, so gybing requires at least 3 people, with two on the foredeck. As a matter of safety we just don?t do it at night ? too easy to trip over something you didn?t see in the dark. Last night the wind clocked around to the southeast during the storm so we had to sail northwest, rather than the due westerly course we wanted. I guess if we wanted to go in a straight line we?d be on a power boat.
Nick
Sometime last night we passed the halfway point on our voyage. We now have less than 1,350 miles to go. The trade winds have kicked in and we are moving along steadily directly towards our destination. When we look at our chart plotter St. Lucia is directly in front of us and it seems like we are almost there.
Then we do the math. If we keep on our pace we will reach St. Lucia in 8-9 days. Oh yea? this is the Atlantic Ocean that we are crossing.
The stargazing is getting better each night. The moon is now rising around 2 AM and even when it does, it has waned to about ¼ of full. The most prominent constellation is Orion which rises to nearly directly overhead around midnight. With an unobstructed view we can see a whole lot of sky. And with no light pollution it seems like the stars in the Milky Way are so thick that they go on and on. Our astronomy book says that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is approximately 100,000 light years across. We can also clearly see other objects beyond our Milky Way. Across the sky from Orion is the Andromeda galaxy. It?s one of the closer ones, two million light years from Earth. When you put it in that perspective it makes our sailing trip seem very, very small.
We tried to think of how to celebrate the half way point. Is there some tradition for celebrating the halfway point in an ocean voyage? We decided that all of us waking up in the middle of the night for a toast wasn?t our favorite plan (although we were getting tossed around and most of us were up at one point or another during the night). In the end we settled on celebrating today at lunch. We put on some reggae music in honor of the islands and broke out some chocolate truffles which had somehow managed to not melt this whole time. The lunch itself was tuna sandwiches using some of the leftover fish from our tuna dinner last night. There is no danger of us running out of tuna before the end of this trip.
Walter
While the weather on this trip hasn?t been extraordinary (Max: 30kt wind, 10? seas), ocean sailing is tough on boats. There have been a number of casualties so far. In Gran Canaria, four boats had to turn back right away for various problems. Since then three boats broke their booms, but are still moving ahead with reduced sail. One boat had to turn back to the Cape Verde Islands with leaking and cracking around the keel bolts. Their engine was also out. And one boat had to be abandoned. Apparently the chainplates which anchor the mast supporting shrouds were failing and they were about to lose the rig. At least, unlike last year, no one has gone nuts and jumped overboard.
We are ever vigilante to potential problems aboard Blue. She?s a good, strong vessel, but you never know. We do frequent rig checks and try to track down any odd noises aboard.
As for personal safety, we have some strict rules. Nobody leaves the cockpit without a harness and tether, and, at night, the one guy on watch is always tethered even in the cockpit. As for crew mental health, we are all nuts anyway to be out here. I am a bit worried about Nick, however. He?s become quiet and withdrawn ever since we figured out the cookie supply might not make it. JE
All is well on Blue Heron with good wind the last few days. The crew has evolved to a three hour watch schedule in which each day one mate get to skip his 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. watch in order to prepare dinner, take a shower, enter the blog report and do his laundry. Dinners have been surprisingly creative, tasty and somewhat elegant considering that they are served in a dog bowl and that any drink will spill unless it is held continuously. Quite a few flying fish have come aboard but so far we haven?t seen a need to add them to our menu. When we have room in the freezer we may use some of the flying fish for Wahoo bait. For the first three days Atlantic spotted dolphins came to play in our wake and we saw a few shearwaters but for now flying fish are the only wildlife that we see. For the first time in five days we just spotted another sailboat on the horizon on a course that will require a maneuver to avoid a mid-ocean collision. WCH
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Sunday December 02, 2007 @ 12:52 PM GMT+00:00
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| Mid-ocean life aboard a 43' boat |
Lat:22.2028° Lon:-32.0330°
Wind: ENE 18.0 kt | Temp:75° | 
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We have now come a little over 1,000 nautical miles. We're headed mostly downwind through big rollers. The constant motion makes even the simplest task a matter of timing and luck. Try to brush your teeth and the toothpaste skitters away before you can wet your toothbrush. Eating dinner is a matter of holding your drink (off watch is allowed one beer a day) with one hand, your spoon with the other hand, and your dog bowl with both hands. If your timing isn't good the trip from bowl to mouth can go terribly wrong. Cooking is a real challenge. Combine lack of cooking skill with the need for about 7 hands and you get the idea.
Despite all that we're having a ball. Today was our best day so far at 170 miles run from noon to noon. There's supposed to be a high pressure ridge with no wind building to our west so we're headed SW to get below it. Meanwhile we have lots of wind and we're making good speed.
Nick 12/02/07
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Saturday December 01, 2007 @ 08:42 PM GMT+00:00
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| Day 7 - 917 miles logged so far |
Lat:23.6896° Lon:-30.4941°
Wind: ENE 18.5 kt | Temp:73° | 
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We have had another excellent day of sailing logging 166 miles in the last 24 hours. For most of yesterday we were reaching on starboard with the main and genoa out. At dinnertime we reefed the main in order to make it easier for Wyman to make beef stew. The stew was excellent and we continued through the night averaging 7 knots. The seas are increasing so it was a bit bouncy.
We have not seen any other boats since yesterday afternoon when we saw someone on the horizon sailing in the opposite direction. We hailed them on the VHF and learned that they were the yacht Kaiso and they were returning to the Cape Verde islands. Evidently they had discovered cracks around their keel bolts and were going to the nearest landfall in order to do repairs. This is a pretty scary discovery when you are hundreds of miles offshore. They declined assistance so we agreed to keep in touch in case their situation got worse.
This morning we gybed onto port and we are now heading south. The weather report calls for light winds to the west of us with better opportunities for wind well to the south.
We went through our fresh stores today and made an interesting discovery. Of all the fresh food that we are carrying the citrus has done the worst. We had to throw out some of our lemons and oranges. The tangerines have fared the worst.
The last 24 hours have been great. Enough wind to make the boat go, without so much wind as to make it uncomfortable. We logged 166 miles from noon Thursday to noon Friday, our best day so far. Crew is happy and healthy, we've all fallen into sleep patterns that accomodate the watch schedule so everybody's getting enough sleep. Given a crew of four non cooks, our meals have been surprisingly good. That's mostly due to good meal planning by Wyman and Karen before we left Las Palmas, some nice meals that Karen prepared and froze before we set sail, and finally we've been pleasantly surprised at each crew members previously unrevealed talent in the galley. We even had warm scones for breakfast yesterday.
Not much wildlife out here in he middle of the Atlantic, but we see the occasional Great Shearwater (bird identification is Walter's department) and we've had lots of dolphin cavorting along the side of the boat. Some jump way out of the water, quite a sight. Speaking of sights, we occasionaly catch a glimpse of a sail on the horizon, but for the most part we haven't seen any other boats for the last 2-3 days.
Nick
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