The night feels like I’m inside a space capsule hurtling back to earth through the atmosphere.  Or maybe in a fiberglass capsule being dragged across the ocean waves by a giant kite. The inside of the cabin is a wreck –  it’s covered in puffy jackets that we no longer need as the temperature and latitude no longer reflect Newport, Rhode Island.  The floor is covered with life jackets, and things that have slid off tables and out of nooks and crannies when the winds catches our sails and we heel over hard.  It’s hard to put anything away because moving around the cabin represents the potential to get thrown violently into the other side. You always have to one hand holding on to something, preferably two.

It’s dark again outside.  The beautiful sunset is long gone and it’s my second night.  Every fifteen minutes my timer goes off and I scramble to shut it it off, worried it will wake Richard who is sleeping nearby, stretched out in the main cabin, held in place by a net (lee cloth) that stretches to the ceiling so that he won’t roll out when the boat tacks.  I’m on watch for the next three hours.  Up the stairs, I look 360 around for ship lights – I also look a little at the sail if it is out and ropes and stars and such. For the first couple days, it’s a bit too cold to stay out there. Plus, I generally don’t want to be in the cockpit without being tethered in and that is a bit of a hassle, so I just stick my head out from the top of the stairs.  Yep, all looks good. Only a couple stars. Wish I knew what they were.

When I get back down I look at tablet that is mounted above the chart desk, it shows boat gamely following a route heading toward Bermuda and the swirls and eddies of the Gulf Stream current that will soon toss us around even more. Another screen is the built-in chart plotter and I can toggle to other screens that show the oil temperature and battery levels and radar and more.

 

Flying through the night, I wonder about the odds of hitting a floating shipping container or a whale.  That seems a bit like getting hit by lightening, so I am not going to worry.  Our weather routing gets downloaded via a satellite receiver.   It includes graphs with predictions of rolling, vertical acceleration, and ‘slamming’ – in other words, the likelihood of  sea sickness and getting thrown around.  I don’t need to look at the screen to know we are above the recommended thresholds.  Once in a while I adjust our heading on the autopilot.  We’ve barely touched the helm upstairs during this trip, the autopilot does a much better job steering than we can do with the constant motion of the ocean swells.

The nights and days get progressively easier, the change in weather helps. During the day time, if I’m not catching up on sleep I’m sitting outside on the cushions in the cockpit reading or just looking. Once in a while we see a cargo container or a cruise ship. The ocean turns a brilliant electric blue color.

We make it to Bermuda after five days at sea.Five crazy days. At least in my world, they count as crazy days. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to spot land after being away for so long. It feels good.  Bermuda itself has been very idyllic  it feels like the Mediterranean crossed with the Caribbean. The roofs covered with some kind of white cement to keep the sun off and the hurricane winds at bay.

 

Tomorrow we head south to the Caribbean. We aren’t there yet, just on a strange island out in the mid-Atlantic. A longer passage than the first, but with warmer temperatures and hopefully less rocking and rolling.

Our progress (updated every 15 minutes) including speed, wind, and short ~daily updates while en-route can be found at this link: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV-Sisserou/

 

Fair winds,

-Seth