Day 104, Year 6 Atlantic Passage, Day 1
Date: Saturday, February 5, 2011 (1415 UTC)
Weather: Mostly Overcast; Winds S 8-10
Temperature: Water 74 degrees F; Air 78 degrees F
Latitude: 15 38.547 S
Longitude: 006 11.777 W
Miles Traveled: 32.49
Miles to Go: 3,750
Location: Passage from St. Helena to Caribbean (Grenada)

Windbird’s long anticipated voyage across the Atlantic Ocean is finally underway. There are 3,783 daunting nautical miles between St. Helena and Grenada in the Caribbean. Since much of this passage will be in light to no winds, we expect to take anywhere from 35 to 42 days. My projection-40 days and 40 nights wandering in the endless sea of blue. We are starting with three strikes against us-broken preventer, badly frayed lower port stay, and no water maker. But we are using an alternate preventer suggested by our friend Alan Kanegsberg, we have reinforced the lower stay with Spectra line, and we are heavily laden with water from St. Helena and an email from the VP of Operations at Katidyn with a couple of suggestions for fixing the water maker. So we’ll try those tomorrow. But despite the strikes, our spirits are high. We are headed home. We are prepared for lighter winds than usual due to the very strong La Nina that is affecting weather ’round the globe. We are not planning on stopping at Ascension unless we have to motor more at the beginning then expected and need to refuel. Our plan is just keep on going, making our next stop Prickly Bay on the south side of Grenada.

Our start has been slow, as expected. We figured we would have to motor to get out of the wind shadow of St. Helena and we did. We motored for the first five hours. We then got a short burst of 8 to 10 knots of wind and were sailing on a broad reach for about an hour. But just now I heard Mark say, “We now have 4 knots of wind and are moving forward at less than 2 knots. That may be a little too slow.” So once again we are motoring with only the main. The winds are slowing backing from the SW to the SE and once they are solidly SE we’ll figure we are back in the SE Trades (trade winds) and we’ll just have to the work the little bit of wind we get to the best advantage. We should be in the SE Trades for approximately 1,700 miles before we hit the ITCZ. The ITCZ or Intertropical Convergence Zone is that area around the equator that has traditionally been called “the doldrums.” We are hoping that we can get through the ITCZ in about 300 miles, and then we should come out on the other side into stronger NE Trades for the last 1,700 of the trip. Because of La Nina, the ITCZ could be much wider than normal, so we’ll just have to wait and see. We have enough fuel to motor for 1,600 miles and we’ll probably use most of that getting to Grenada.

We did have a decent Skype connection last night so that after we talked to Justin, Jo, and Ziggy, we also got to see and talk to Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah. Jonah remembered his water battle with Granddad during our last connection and continued spraying us through the Ethernet last night. Sam was proudly sporting his bright orange polar fleece that he has decided to wear with his red plaid flannel pants. He’s convinced that orange and red look great together! We were very happy grandparents to be able to see and talk with both families. As I said in emails to them, we will have happy visions of grandbabies dancing in our heads all the way across the Atlantic. We will meet them in Puerto Rico in 75 days. So the countdown has begun.

This morning we went to town to buy a couple of bottles of the local run called White Lion. It comes in a glass bottle with steps up the side of it in honor of Jacob’s Ladder. We’ll wait until we reach the Caribbean to do a taste test. We spent our last St. Helena pounds on chocolate, an absolute necessity for a long passage, and then we headed back to Windbird. There were signs all over town announcing that stores will be open tomorrow (Sunday) as the RMS St. Helena is arriving in the morning. We probably should have stayed to see the arrival, but we were just too anxious to get started. Swante on Chaconne will follow in the morning and Traversay III and Kire will come along on Monday. Kire will stop in Ascension, but like us, Traversay is headed directly to the Caribbean. We hope to keep in radio contact once they are out here.

We are 32 miles out and St. Helena is still well within sight. For most of the day it was shrouded in fog and rain, but as we get closer to sunset the sky along the horizon is clearing a bit. By tomorrow morning, we will be well out of sight of land. So the Atlantic Ocean will be our only companion for the next month or so. I sure hope we enjoy each other’s company!