Aint no wind, gulp!

We were roughly 6 days out of the Canaries. Very much in the middle of nowhere. And the wind wasn't playing...

Deep Sea Dolphins

These guys swam with us for about 20mins. I have a bunch of videos but haven't the time to add them. There was a big guy with scars all over him, all of a sudden he dove straight down into the darkness and everyone followed pretty sharpish.. Wonder what he saw???

Mid atlantic bath time (Non-adult version)

Washing at sea, do not fall off!!!

I'm here dudes!!!!

So,
a serious amount of news/ stories and gossip to tell. Seriously there is some very funny stuff coming up.

I'm in Nanny Cay Tortola, British Virgin Islands. We managed to get across the Atlantic, but there were some hiccups.

You wont be surprised to know that its pretty damn hotttt out here. Milk was a bad choice......

Will get the info up here soon.

Peace.

Where is he now?

Satellite text messages home

19.9.08. Hello mum. This is Jo aboard Tulsi III. Guys tell Caribbean to put kettle on will text position when poss. Maybe you can put on my blog.

23.9.08. Could you look up a weather forecast for us? 23deg33N, 24deg25W heading 225 SW all night. Pressure and co-ord would be capital! High spirits just no wind 4 4 days – slow going. Tom I caught 1^st open ocean fish. Big bastard durado for tea. We’ll be within 200 miles of those co-ords 4 24 hours heading SW. Any forecast useful. Lots of stories to tell. PS we bang right but this aint Grafham!

28.9.09. Ahoy from 18deg49N, 34deg37W. Bit more wind. Pod 15 huge dolphins played in bow wave yday. Could’ve touched them, mesmerising!

30.9.08. 17deg30N,40deg1W

3.10.08. Ahoy 18deg20N, 48deg11W. Nice sailing.Terrifying thunderstorms.
Posted by Sue

adiós a los canarios

So....

It is with a glad heart that we bid a fond farewell to the Canary Islands. Our next leg is to the Caribbean, hopefully we´ll find Tortola in amongst all those islands.

Do you remember the list of things that´d broken? Well I have a few new items to add, we left Lanzarote and got here on Monday morning, we phoned the Raymarine specialist--"Nester" to come and help us fix our autopilot.

Just a point of interest, here in Gran Canaria they use the ´mediterreanan style´of tying up to the dock. There´s a little rope on the pontoon. You come in head/tail first and pick up this rope, as you pull it out of the water it leads to another thicker rope about 50 yards off and attached to a parallel chain to the pontoon. this way you can tie your boat perpendicular to the pontoon, thus creating more space (and a lot more cosy it is too) we´ve had loads of people on board for drinks, namely due to my fantastico selection of music on my ipod....

the marina in Las Palmas

In the meantime we set about getting the boat shipshape, washing the decks and cleaning up etc. There was a lovely catamaran next to us in the marina, and I saw this tall rather hungover looking fella on board getting ready to go to the showers. As he walked past Mat shouted to him, this guy turns around and goes [adopt South African accent] "oh my good god men", turns out they´re old buddies! SO Mat goes off with this big fella to the bar all day.

When he´d got back we were eating dinner at about 8ish, Mat was a bit merry, and Don Nester turns up. We open the hatches at the back for him to have a look at the autopilot mechanism, when he notices something a little odd down there...

for the uninitiated that is a smashed rudder housing, basically for an unknown amount of time we´d been steering without our Port (left) rudder. I had to jump down there and wrestle with that broken round thing to get the smashed bolt out of it. But my wrestling is really coming along so I got it off before you could say "Uno Cervesa Tropical pour favor"

This is the yacht club and yes, that is a giant picture of the front of the yacht club around the back..

During the day Mike and I went for a wander around town, we found the beach and had a coffee. The gentlemen on the beach out here really do prefer the tighter swimming garment. I´m not sure why because some of these guys look like its a real struggle getting into them.

We found a supermarket with a Grande selection of hams which were well worth a photo:

Mucho Jamon

So we had a little night on the town on monday night, we found a great little bar on the way from the main drag to the beach front. Its a cuban bar and the staff loved us, something to do with all the Euros we were handing over. Mike and Mat got themselves some cuban cigars (I have little confidence in the authenticity of this). We got back at about 3am an had a nightcap out on deck, we hit the hay at about 5am.

When we woke the next day we´d been boarded in the night and someone had nicked my ipod (major disaster....all my music [of course its not backed up], my only copy of fotos of my ex and hols in bermuda all my favourite podcasts, my audiobooks, music people I dont even know gave me....just a major disaster), but they also took our stereo fasica (so no music for 3 weeks), Mats mobile, PSP, Mikes mobile, our satellite phone charger (we need this to stay ahead on hurricane data), Mikes first watch in 10years, oh and Mikes new chapstick! Why they stole the sat phone charger and not the sat phone itself or our passports or wallets I do not have the answers for.

So we´ve been waiting for a replacement Sat phone charger for days. And we´ve discovered that our autopilot is not going to be fixed. Yesterday we figured out that out batteries aren´t charging properly (Me and Mike now have degrees in Lagoon Electronics--we had all the batteries out and tested them with the voltmeter) so we aren´t getting enough volts to get all our nav. systems working at once. But we shall soldier on...

We have changed the oil in the port and starboard engines (I did it all myself [satisfied grin]), we cleaned the oil filters.

What can I tell you about Gran Canaria? Well outside of the marina there are no other Ingles which is nice, its pretty scruffy in that nice dusty spanish way. The town centre is very nice and the Chiquita are very pretty. They like to smoke, alot. And they siesta from 12 till 3 because it gets very hot. I wonder if the dialect here is funny to the mainland spanish people. I like to imagine it is, and that when these guys call the mainland, people put them on speakerphone so everyone in the office can snigger at them.

Here´s a funny story. But first I need to tell you my method of getting by without speaking the native tongue. I have a vast selection of Jo Giles approved "International Hand Gestures", which have been rather successful in getting me onto flights, trains, fed and watered. For example if you make your hand as though you were holding a cows utter, and do a pulling motion whist Moooing, people soon realise you want some Milk.

Yesterday while we were trying to fix our steering I went to the marina gas station to get some Transmission fluid, this old guy comes over to help me, I tried to tell him I was ´Ingles, so he goes "Non espanol", "Si, si". I showed him my piece of paper and he took me to the ATF fluids. I said I needed 2.5litres. Somehow, during my international hand gesture description of 2 and a half litres I think he took the idea that I wanted a Spanish lesson. So he took me through all the engine Fluids section descibing each item in spanish, then giving me the name and looking up at my face with this big smile waiting for me to pronounce it correctly. Brake fluid is "líquido de frenos" if you were wondering. When we moved over to the drinks aisle i let him get through the Aguas section and cut him short. But this didn´t dissuade him too long.

I went over to the checkout manned by a lady who I can only assume was his wife. It came to 22Euros, I had a 50bucks note and 2 20´s. I tried to give her the 50, she shook her head, I gave her the 2 20´s she said "yes, very good Ingles", then she explained in spanish why the 50 was no good. By this time the old man had made his way over and he was prodding me and smiling, he wanted me to copy each sentance his missus was saying. Anyway it all got a bit complex and after she had counted out all my change and got me to pronounce each coin value I made a run for it.

So I think thats all the interesting stuff I have time to add for now. We just need to fill up with water and diesel and then point ourselves West and press go. We´re hoping it´ll take 19days. We´ll be sailing through Hurricane Alley, the part of the ocean where tropical hurricanes are born. I got told off last night because I admitted I´d quite like to get into a hurricane, which is very bad Ju-Ju, but it´d make very good reading at the other end.

We have no meat apart from salami and eggs since our freezer needs to be off due to the dodgy batteries. We do however have some serious fishing equipment so were hoping to have a piscine diet.

So adios for now, fingers crossed and lets hope for some nice weather....

a funny carrot

mike in the cuban way

back by popular demand: The dancing sailor, look for my rock eyes expression.

Ola from the Canaries

So...

What was i saying about the nasty weather?

We had a quiet night after leaving Portugal, I had the late watch again, Mike and I call it ´the gravyard shift´, I´m not sure as the science behind it but the bay of biscay is really good for Phosphorescence, and there are a lot of dolphins. You´ll be sailing along and its quiet, I mean you can hear ship engines that are beyond the horizon, then you hear a ´ffffumpt´and there is a dolphin swimming alongside. Which can be a bit daunting at first, they look like torpedos heading straight for you. You see you can´t see the dolphin itself but the glittering Phosopour particles it displaces so you´re really seeing its outline.On a good night you can see its tail wagging up and down and they shoot underneath you. I think they like our nav lights on the front. The sardines keep pretty still but when we come along they move away in shoals, as soon as they move of course the make the sea glitter and the dolphinbs are straight in there feeding.

I made some weights our of bottled seawater and if you kick them at night it sparkles.

That night i had a school of 4 or 5, I named one Stomper as he was jumping up and splashing our boat to scare the sardines even more. Mike has had a 50+ school!!!! with babies too.

We get really beautiful sunsets. So I devised a marking scheme so Me and Mike could score all of our sunsets and decide which was the best one.

Colour of Sunset-some are a rich orange, some pink etc

Range of Colours-So we could have a high scoring orange, but few other colours, this gives the weaker coloured sunset the chance to claw back vital marks

Cloud Choreography-The sun on its own can melt your heart, but get some clouds in on the show and were talking caberet!!! But poor cloud action can throw a lovely sunset out of contention

Sea state-we want either: peaceful, (ah that is very relaxing dont you think Mike? I do high points there) or, End of the world rough.

Glitteriness-Sun action on the sea, plenty of glitter is good for any goodbye parade, this counts for a good sunset too.

Poetry-Are all the above items working as a tight unit. If there is good vibes a poor sunset can really come back here. Does this look like a sunset from a moving opera? If so top marks here

X-Factor--This category was added to mop up any external items not already covered, for example, if an Orca whale jumps just at the point of sun disappearance, I think we´re both going to be giving it extra points. Good for a last minute turn around but highly unpredicatable.

So we had a nice few relaxing sunbathing days. But the Barometer was dropping; 1021 soon became 1020, then 1019. We tried to put on a brave face but we all could see it in one anothers faces, we were in for it again.

It started kicking off on Wednesday, it was from the north so we were sailing downhill but it was building big. It was RELENTLESS, I would come up for my next shift and Matt would be sat in the galley saying "its GOT to stop soon", this guy has done 9 similar trips and never had more than 1 days of nasty stuff. here we had 2, 4+day periods of it.

me eating eggs in 40 knots

i made mike take a pic too

The peak was on Thursday night when I got a 40+knot gust, then waves had been building for 2 days, across the atlantic so they we huge. I have some videos but when it was really bad it was all we could do to hold on nevermind video footage.

Needless to say it was lots of fun, very scary and very tiring (wrestling with the wheel is now going on my CV) but seriously exciting. I got 3 massive waves linked together and came out at 19knots on the other side, we weigh about 10tons!!!

like driving a frieght train straight into hell

On friday we decided to head for Lanzarote, it would mean holding our course which was favourable as we were taking a pounding on the other gybe. On the plus side we make very good time. We got to Marina Rubicon on Saturday lunchtime. We had a night out...it was needed.

welcome to lanzarote

Yesterday we left for Gran Canaria, there is a Raymarine specialist who can fix our Autopilot for the long haul west to the caribbean. We´re here in Las Palmas now I´m waiting for the Spanish to finish their Siesta so we can wash our clothes.

P.S. I forgot to say, last week, when I was sailing into Port Lexicon, I was standing on the back of the cabin trying to push the water off the sail reef, we hit a big wave and I backflipped off the cabin. Somehow i caught the back rail and swung underneath the ceiling and landed on my feet but my little finger is demolished, I have to tape it up before helming. But it was worth it for the gymnastic prowess.

Take it easy.