BERMUDA TO THE AZORES IN 1986 Chris Burry

Transcription

1 BERMUDA TO THE AZORES IN 1986 Chris Burry We departed St George s, Bermuda on 20 June bound for the Azores in Plover, our Dickerson 41 ketch. There were three of us on board, having dropped one crew member from our Norfolk to Bermuda passage. Over 1600 miles lay ahead of us double what we had done from Norfolk to Bermuda, and that passage had been fraught with rough weather in the wake of tropical storm Andrew, the first named storm of the 1986 hurricane season. We hoped for a better passage to the Azores. St George s, Bermuda I was 30 years old at the time, but though I had been sailing my entire life this was my first transatlantic voyage and I knew little about offshore passages. Fortunately, the old adage what we lack in wisdom we make up for in youth held true. We recorded our passage notes on a tape recorder while on watch in the cockpit, and mailed the cassettes home to our families, a stroke of brilliance which made it possible to re-create the voyage today as if it happened just yesterday. The cassettes tell a slightly different story than our memories. Both my husband Bill and I remember a tranquil passage compared to the 50 knot winds and steep seas we experienced on the leg from Norfolk to Bermuda. We recollect the influence of an Azores High leaving us in unusually calm, mirror-glass seas in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; taking sun showers on the aft deck; and at night observing some of the most interesting phosphorescence we have ever seen in the open ocean. We remember 112

2 the spinnaker halyard parting in the middle of the night (isn t that always when such things happen?) and hoisting Bill up the mast mid-ocean to replace the halyard. What we didn t remember, as recorded on the tapes, were the constant squalls every night, the incessant howl of the wind, and the ocean swells. The background noise of the ship groaning, the wind blowing and the Monitor windvane moaning was neverending. Bill s trip up the mast was recorded as a day-time event during which the seas were so rolly that he got seasick at the masthead and felt he couldn t count on his crew to pass the correct end of the halyard back up the mast. There was constant chafe on both the halyards and the windvane steering lines, something we had not anticipated. Nor did we remember the overwhelming influence of ham radio communications on our daily lives at sea. We reported our position back home every day via a transatlantic ham net and learned about the locations of other vessels crossing either ahead of or behind us. We could track the weather ahead of us thanks to those communications. We were also able to make a few phone calls to our parents, courtesy of phone patches placed by the ham radio operators. Every night we watched for a green flash on the ocean horizon and on rare occasions got one, although many of the sunsets were spectacular. We were amazed to cross paths one day with a westbound sailing vessel, which we hailed on the VHF without response. After passing us he finally responded, and we learned that he was singlehanding on his way to Bermuda. We were also surprised one day to hear a freighter talking about icebergs on the VHF radio. We got worried that we might be near icebergs until he transmitted his position and we learned that he was 200 miles north of us, above 39 N, and only strange radio ducting permitted us to hear him. Final preparations for the Atlantic crossing 113

3 Landfall in Flores There was the monotony of the four-hour watches we set each evening after dinner, and the rise of the moon over the horizon that often first appeared to be the light of an approaching ship. We entertained ourselves on watch listening to cassette tapes on headphones rigged to a speaker jack wired into the cockpit so as not to disturb the off-watch crew. There were the chores to complete, like the hourly updating of our dead reckoning position based on the miles recorded by our Walker towing log, which we had to crawl aft to read. The highlight of each day was the calculation of our daily distance run and miles made good on a large-scale planning chart as we inched across the ocean. Meal planning continued as if we were on shore, with the added challenge of rolling seas at every meal. Mid-way across the Atlantic, Bill commented on one of our tapes that although we had been sailing for a week (about 700 miles), we still had close to 1000 miles and another week to go and that seemed incredibly long. Today a transatlantic sailor would have all this information readily available via GPS. Weather routing services make the navigator s job simpler, and many vessels carry microwaves, generators, wind turbines, solar panels and spare autopilots. Back in 1986 we carried only a sextant and a satnav that gave us a fix whenever the satellites passed overhead, every six to eight hours or sometimes longer. We took sun sights when the weather and rolling seas permitted, but our exact location was not a problem until we closed in on the Azores archipelago. We relied on running our engine once a day to charge our batteries and keep our refrigeration running. When we encountered engine problems such as loss of the refrigeration cooling pump, we had to make a bypass to avoid losing all the food in the freezer. And although we had an autopilot, we did not generate enough power to keep it running day and night. As we approached the Azores we were advised via the ham radio net to divert slightly north and make landfall on the island of Flores, the island of flowers. Although we 114

4 had only a hand-drawn sketch of the harbour entrance, which someone had given us in Bermuda, we decided to give it a go. We made landfall on 4 of July after 14 days at sea. The appearance on the horizon of a lush green island with rolling hills and hydrangea hedges was a sight for sore eyes after the monotony of the ocean s grey seas and sky. As we rounded the north end of Flores we called on the VHF, and several dinghies came out to greet us and provide assistance entering the tiny harbour at Santa Cruz. As we rapidly learned, however, English was not a language common to all the sailors and confusion reigned as we made our entrance. Our local guides advised that we pass between a set of rocks and turn to starboard once inside. What they failed to mention was that every other sailboat, of which there were four, was facing bow out and that we would have to execute a 180 turn once inside. We had anticipated that the harbour would open up, but once the surge carried us through the rocks and we turned to starboard, it became apparent that there was no room to manoeuvre. Somehow we managed to swing the boat around, but not before scraping the keel on the rocky bottom and the dinghy davits on the concrete quay. We dropped our CQR and backed down into the anchorage Mediterranean-style, but there was no quay astern. Instead we secured two stern lines to massive 6 inch ship s hawsers secured across the harbour. We surged back and forth all night in tune with the other yachts and got our best night s sleep in 14 days. Welcome to the Azores! As I write this 30 years on, my husband and I are still sailing our beloved Plover with a third crew member aboard, our sailing dog Flaco, an American foxhound (you may remember seeing his photo in the 2014/2 issue of Flying Fish). We didn t learn of the Ocean Cruising Club until some twenty years later, thanks to fellow Dickerson owners Don and Dierdre Wogaman of Southern Cross, who encouraged us to join. Now when we Santa Cruz harbour, Flores 115

5 Leaving our mark on the wall of Horta s new marina cruise we fly the flying fish burgee and look for others in the anchorage. It has become our way of meeting long-distance sailors, with whom we have a common bond. We also enjoy hosting OCC cruisers at our dock in Mathews, near Deltaville, Virginia on the southern Chesapeake Bay. And that is why I joined the OCC. 116