Velvet

Land Ahoy. 

In the pitch black with the wind gusting 45 knots, we spotted Bishops Rock Lighthouse in the distance, exactly where we expected it, fine on the port bow.
What a welcoming sight, after sailing 1300 miles in 9 days  we only had 120 miles to go to Plymouth!

For 2 days we had been waiting for the promised wind shift to the north, and expecting it to blow hard.  Barry our barometer had fallen 19 millibars in the last 24 hours and 14 millibars in the  24 hours previous to that, dawn this morning we had been greeted by the most fantastic deep red skies that I have seen in ages – Red Sky in the morning– Sailors Warning!
The wind finally shifted 4 hours before sighting Bishops Rock and we were reaching along at 9 knots.

With everyone settled into the watch system, we took this ‘new wind’ in our stride.  Reefed down to very small sails, togged up in warm clothes and oilskins, clipped on in the cockpit, we were prepared for whatever was to come.  This was not Velvet Lady’s first storm, and as usual she behaved impeccably – taking the wind and waves in her stride.  Only once did we fill the cockpit up with water, and set all the bilge alarms off.

The wind continued to howl right up to our arrival in Plymouth, only 5 miles from the breakwater did it finally give up, turning off like a switch and causing us to motor.  We were safely alongside in Mayflower Marina 16 hours after passing Bishop Rock.  What a trip.

So what is it like being at sea for such a long time.  The first 2 days are unsettling as people try to get used to the motion of the boat and an unfamiliar sleep pattern.  Day 3 the body is used to the unsettled sleep and starting to acclimatise, Day 5 onwards you are so used to the strange routine that you find it normal.  Life seems to be one long round of sleep, eat, wash up, go on watch…. 

We work a staggered watch system which means there is always something going on and new faces up and about.  It sounds very complicated to explain, but after 3 days the pattern becomes obvious.  Each person does 6 hours on and 6 hours off during daylight hours, followed by 4 hours off and 4 hours on during night hours.  One night you do two watches and the following night 1 watch.  This system of dividing the day into 5 slots ensures that each day you do alternate times.  The staggered watch is a bit harder to explain.  Cabin 1 changes watch at 5 am for a 6 hour shift at the beginning of the 24 hour cycle, Cabin 2 changes watch at 7 am, and Cabin 3 changes watch at 9 am.  It took me a whole day with an excel spreadsheet to work this one out, but the end result is that you spend time on watch with everyone on board apart from your ‘cabin mate’.  This is good for the social aspect on board the boat – and as both Simon and Dave (cabin mates on this last trip)commented, this makes you feel like you have a cabin to yourself.  It is great to have your own space for a while.
Kelly the kettle seems to be almost constantly on the boil, as each new watch member is greeted with a hot drink. Meal times are staggered, with a help yourself breakfast, lunch in the middle of the day, and dinner in the evenings.  Drinks and snacks are also consumed constantly during the day and night.

Only when you have been sailing for such a long period do you start to notice how much the weather changes in short periods of time.  No two watches are the same in wind strength, cloud cover, sunshine, moonshine, stars or rain. 

We had bright sunny flat calm days during which we had to motor, bright sunny windy days, really dim dismal windy days and also very wet dismal calm days!!  One night there was so much moonshine it was impossible to make out all the stars, the next night there was so much cloud there were no stars.  In Dave’s words ‘When it is good it is very very good, and when it is bad it is horrid” Anything else would be rather more boring.

We had plenty of time and opportunity to talk, tell stories, read, listen to music, watch the radar, interpret weather maps, bake flapjacks and learn the sextant.  We were totally separated from the ‘real world’.  No mobile phones, news bulletins, pressures of business meetings to disturb us from our peaceful world of sleep, watch, sleep, watch etc.  Countless times we were joined by dolphins playing in the bow wave, and escorted right into Plymouth bay by a very large pod of very lively dolphins.  We found a squid and 2 Portuguese men of war on the deck, all were returned to the sea, and finally as we approached land we saw birds.  Gulls were the most common, but these were joined by kittwakes, gannets and even a lone puffin.

We are now back in Plymouth having completed our winter season, sailing in the sunshine.  After 6500 nm, Velvet Lady is in remarkably good shape, and our jobs list is relatively small so we, Lin and Richard are looking forward to a few days off and spending some time with their family.

Our annual code inspection is due next week, and everything is in hand to be ready.  We will then scrub and clean, shop and stow, visit our lock up and swap all the charts and books with those for Iceland and get ready for our next adventure.   We leave Plymouth on 17 May again bound for Isafjord in Iceland where the scenery is beautiful, the wildlife stunning and there is endless daylight to explore.
 

Despite it being April the Azores was ‘hit’ last week by a ‘typical winter storm!!’

Louise, our hard working shorebased administrator, joined us this week for our Azores Island hopping.  When she rang from Lisbon to say her flight had been delayed and then cancelled, we were disappointed but not surprised, as it was fairly windy in the marina in Horta. 

SATA the Azores airline looked after Louise and all its passengers very well, booking them into a 4 star hotel in Lisbon and paying for all meals and transport.  Meanwhile we were in the harbour watching the wind speed increase, we had a steady 40 knots with gusts over 60 for 48 hours.  Louise’s flight was delayed a further 24 hours. 

She had no need to worry about us sailing without her, we were firmly attached to the harbour wall with as much mooring line as we had on the boat.  The local chandler was doing a very brisk trade in fishermans mooring line.  Just as suddenly as the wind arrived it stopped, and when Louise arrived there was a blue sky and sunshine. 

We have been in operation just over a year and this is the first time we have experienced such a delay at the start of one of our trips.  Wherever we go, we always build into the itinerary time for unexpected occurrences just as this and still have enough time to reach our destination.

We spent our first day sailing motoring in light winds to Sao Jorge, and spent the afternoon on deck in the sunshine.  The volcano on Pico managed to peek out from behind the clouds, it is so high here that there is still some snow on the top.

The wind continued blowing for the rest of the week and with very few sheltered anchorages we returned to Horta for a second time.  We ended up leaving Horta at 4 in the morning for a great 150 mile downwind sail to Ponta Delgada.  Despite missing 2 days of sailing early on we still managed 230 miles in the week,

We are now ready for our long sail 1200 miles from the Azores back to UK, the weather is looking favourable for the next 5 days at last and we are looking forward to coming back to UK.  There is nothing like making a landfall on your homeland after a long time away.

Thank you for allowing us to be the Azores guinea pigs, it added to the sense of adventure as we all came across anchorages and marina’s for the first time.
Thanks to Lin and Richard for meeting all of our sailing objectives, full marks for booking the weather appropriately.  Seriously thanks for all the excellent hospitality and care given especially in dealing with our allergy issues.  We had such a great time that we have already booked for next year!

Jim and Char joined us for Azores Island Hopping 1 as we sailed from Ponta Delgada to Horta.  As they are planning more long distance cruising in the future their objective was to gain miles and experience overnight sailing in varying weather conditions, that we did!!
 
We left Ponta Delgada in the sunshine, and with light westerly winds forecast to shift to south westerly we decided to sail the long way around the island.  We gybed downwind all afternoon to the eastern end of the island, motored north past the steep cliffs which stole the breeze and cleared the north coast of the island just in time for a glorious sunset.  The wind filled in from the south west and continued to shift, allowing us to close reach all the way to Terceira.  We fell into a four hour watch system for the night, and filled the time telling stories under the stars. 150 nm later we motored into the scenic bay at Angra de Heroismo and into the marina.

We spent the next day exploring Angra and walking to the top of Mount Brazil for some spectacular views.  Due to strong southerly winds the next day we continued to explore the island by taking a bus to Praia de Vitoria.

The wind shifted to the north and we left heading for the island of Sao Jorge. The wind continued to increase during the afternoon and reached 35 knots as we reached in the flat water in the ‘lee’ of the island.  We arrived in the shelter of Vila das Velas early evening and anchored for the evening at sunset.

Squally rain stopped us from leaving too early on the last morning, but once the squall had blown through we had a great downwind sail to Horta on Faial.  Mount Pico eventually peeked out of the clouds to show us it’s snow covered summit, and we arrived in Horta in sunshine.

250 nautical miles sailed in the week, in a mixture of wind conditions, upwind, reaches and downwind in strengths from 10 to 40 knots.  We were joined by various types of dolphins for much of the time, right up to arriving in Horta bay.   Although we always kept our eyes open this week the whales did not come out to play.

Just been flicking through the pages of our guestbook for the last year, and thought it would be good to publish some of the comments!

Here is a sample of what our guests have to say about us

…thank you for a fantastic weeks sailing and your great hospitality aboard Velvet Lady I’m sure I’ll be back…….

…we enjoyed Lin and Richard’s professional and welcoming approach to sailing and never stopped learning…………….

……….lots of varied sailing, good food and interesting company………

………You have been warm and welcoming and we have felt at home and had great fun….

……A well found boat with a knowledgeable and hard working crew lots of good food…….

Why not join us on Velvet Lady and find out for yourself.

One of the joys at the end of an ocean crossing is making landfall in new places.  When that island is a mere 8 miles long by 4 miles wide nestled mid Atlantic almost half way between Europe and America the sense of achievement when land is first sighted on the horizon is terrific. 

Santa Maria, in the Azores was first discovered by the Portuguese somewhere between 1427 and 1432.  As we set off from Madeira north westwards into the Atlantic, armed with our sextants, tables, books, GPS and chart plotter we had all the equipment to make sure we wouldn’t miss this tiny island.  After 4 days at sea when we first spotted the land from 30 miles away (a distance confirmed by the GPS and radar) we couldn’t help but wonder how the sailors of years ago felt when they first sighted ‘new land’!!

We got our taste of what it might feel like to arrive somewhere totally new as we approached the anchorage at Vila do Porto and discovered that a new marina has been built at the north end of the old harbour.  This was a pleasant surprise, and although not yet open for business we were allowed to spend a quite night alongside the pontoons.

We had arrived on Easter Sunday or Festival of Pascoa as it is called in Portuguese and so everywhere was quiet.  The whole population of 6000 people seemed to be indoors as we walked along deserted streets to the centre of town. After spending a day in Santa Maria, the most southern of the Azores islands, we headed north to San Miguel and Ponta Delgada our destination for this trip.  We could see both the island of San Miguel and Santa Maria for the duration of this trip so not too tricky on the navigation side.

The Azores are recognised as being a good spot for ‘whale watching’ and we were not to be disappointed.  About half way between Santa Maria and San Miguel we spotted the tall thin spouts of whales ‘breathing’ and headed towards them.  We found a group of 7 or 8 false killer whales (falsa orca) and spent an hour with them, one surfacing very near the boat!   The tourist whale watching boats are lined along the quay in Ponta Delgada and during the past week they have seen the same group of falsa orca and also some sperm whales, blue whales, and humpback whales together with lots of dolphins. We seemed to have an escort of Atlantic white sided dolphins almost all the way across from Madeira who surfaced regularly and played in the bow waveThere is still chance to see the Azores as we now spend 3 weeks exploring the central islands of the Archipelago.  The weather is forecast to be sunny and 19 degrees for next week with moderate winds, what could be better than sailing in the sunshine watching whales and making landfall at new islands!!  Still a few spaces for you to be able to join us on Azores island hopping 2

The weather is warm and sunny.  The wind is moderate from the north, everywhere is looking very green as spring has begun here in Madeira.  However despite these perfect conditions for cruising, the place is still deserted and we very seldom come across another yacht.  We had the whole of the marina in Porto Santo to ourselves!

We were joined by Colin and Glenys, and spent an enjoyable week cruising around Madeira.  The best sail of the week was our longest, 72nm from Ribiera Brava, around the west coast of Madeira and then a 40 mile close reach averaging 8 knots across to Porto Santo.  We arrived shortly after dark and spent the following day being tourists and sightseeing.

Dolphins came to play with us on 3 occasions, and Richard caught a swift glimpse of a sperm whale, which has been spotted a few times this month by the whale watching boats.

We continue our journey northwards next week to the Azores, but will return to Madeira in November.

Photo: David pulling hard on the main reefing line in Iceland last year!

Feel the wind on your face
Adjust the helm
Trim the sails
Watch Velvet Lady accelerate
Later try your hand at navigation and learn all about our electronic gizmos.

These are just some of the things you have a go at whilst sailing on Velvet Lady.

We recently arrived in Porto Santo, 35 nm NE of Madeira after a passage from Lanzarote which seemed to be filled with sail changes and I was reminded of my time sailing on challenge boats and how different things are on Velvet Lady.  We might have had a lot of sail changes to do, but there was no crawling along to the foredeck in the pitch dark and returning to the cockpit freezing cold and dripping wet.  Velvet Lady is much easier to manage with roller reefing headsails and mainsail and all the ropes are controlled from the cockpit – but there is still plenty of hands on work left to do, and when sailing with the staysail up as well we often have all 6 winches in the cockpit in use.  I used to be a real ‘roughy toughy sailor’ but I have soon got used to these modern conveniences and now wouldn’t be without them!

The cockpit is deep and safe and provides a perfect opportunity to have a go, if you are a beginner we will teach and encourage you, for the more experienced sailors we are happy for you to have a go on your own!

If you have come along as a ‘reluctant’ companion there is no pressure to take part, we certainly don’t want you to be afraid of being wrong, but will encourage you if you wish to have a go in the comfort of our safe deep cockpit.

Apart from the varying amount of wind the weather was great on the trip and we spent a good deal of time sailing in shorts and t shirts.  On arrival in Porto Santo, the sun was shining and the temperature was 19 degrees.

After a day looking around Porto Santo we sailed downwind to Madeira and anchored for the night in the Baia de Abra. 

The wind built in the night, and the chain started to grumble, but we were perfectly safe and secure and not moving an inch.  No wonder – when we came to try and lift the chain the following day it wouldn’t budge – We tried every different trick we could think of and then some before giving in and asking for some help from a local diver.  When the diver arrived, he was under water for about 15 mins and came back to report that there was ‘a wreck of an old bus’ right underneath us and our chain was caught underneath it.  While we were trying to lift the chain, we were also trying to lift the bus – no wonder the windlass was complaining.  The diver did manage to pull the chain free and thankfully we were off.  Sadly, now knowing there is a bus in the middle of the anchorage we don’t think we will be going there again.

We had an uneventful sail to Funchal, and are now moored in the heart of this very vibrant city preparing for our next trip.

This winter as well as being our home, Lanzarote has been home to the Ericsson racing team as they prepare for their race around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race.  We have had quite a few opportunities to see and admire the boats out sailing, and also watch the guys working on the boats in the marina.  Occasionally when I look at them I feel rather envious and think of my time racing with the BT Global Challenge, and then I look at them a bit closer and realise I would be scared stiff sailing around the world in these ultimate racing machines.  This week we were treated to an additional view of the keel of one of the boats as we watched her being lifted out of the water at Puerto Calero for routine work. 

The crane arrived whilst we were having breakfast and the whole crew watched from the deck as boom, mast and then hull were smoothly lifted out of the water.  We had a birds eye view as we were next boat along on the same pontoon.  With the boat dangling in mid air behind us it was amazing to see how smooth the underwater profile is.  The whole lift was being filmed and we did our best to get included in the photos!

Eventually we managed to sail away, and continue with our adventure cruise.  This week we were joined by Gail, Kev, Dave and Jimbo – all who had sailed before and were looking for some sailing in the sunshine.  The winds unusually were mainly light but we still managed to sail 250nm, and visit two new places on Fuerteventura.  We spent one glorious night at sea ghosting along under the stars and watching the dolphins that were keeping us company. 
 
We say farewell to Lanzarote this week as we head northwards towards Iceland via Madeira, the Azores and the UK.  We have really enjoyed our time here and will be returning next winter.

Lee, Dorothy, Peter and Stuart joined us last week on the last of our Relaxed Canary Islands Cruises.  We spent the first two days gently sailing to Arrecife and Graciosa.  Lee and Dorothy were totally new to sailing and Stuart had only done a small amount so the weather was perfect to introduce them all to helming, winching and tacking.  We spent a lazy day in La Graciosa, with everyone going for a walk ashore to the village and we ended the day with a BBQ on board at sunset washed down with plenty of Sangria.

We might have been on a relaxed week but the weather had other ideas, and so during our second night at anchor in La Graciosa it started to gust strongly.  We left the anchorage after breakfast and sailed along in the lee of the west coast of Lanzarote.  Even still the wind gusted to 40 knots and we had plenty of white water as we reached along at speeds up to 9 knots with very small sails.  Glad this wasn’t on the first day, but now with everyone capable of having a go on the helm it was exhilarating.  Lee spent hours taking photos to show us riding along on the crest of a wave because he thought his friends at home wouldn’t believe him!  As we rocketed along the shore, Richard fed us home made Lentil soup which was lovely and we were anchored in Papagayo before sunset.  With some sighs of relief and very salty faces we watched the sun go down with a beer.

We spent the last two days sailing shorter distances from Papagayo via Isla Lobos to Calero and then returning to Marina Rubicon.  All in all we managed to clock up 130nm this week.

We have one more Adventure Cruise before we head north to Madeira and the Azores.  We have decided that we will return to Lanzarote for winter 2008/9 and again do relaxed cruises over Xmas and New Year.  Dates and Itineraries will be on the website shortly

The highlight of our trip this week was powering along at 8 knots in the moonlight with a cloudless sky full of stars.  Geoff was determined to take a photo of the dials, because not only were we doing 8 knots, but it was to windward in 23 knots of breeze.  The sea was remarkably flat and we were flying. We were on our way back from Gran Canaria and thoroughly enjoying the sailing. 

The week started with a day sail to La Graciosa, followed by our first overnight passage to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.  We left La Graciosa early afternoon and enjoyed dinner on deck whilst sailing into the sunset.  Downwind the 120 miles took us 22 hours and we arrived at lunch time.  After an afternoon siesta it was time to go ashore and explore.

After a night in Las Palmas we left the following morning and sailed along the northern coast of Gran Canaria to anchor under the cliffs in Puerto Sardinia for lunch.  We left here late evening giving us two nights at sea for the return upwind passage.  Both nights were beautiful and peaceful giving us plenty of time for silent contemplation.  On two occasions we were also joined by dolphins.

If you are new to night sailing it is fascinating.  We had plenty to look at – ships in the channel between Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura, lights and lighthouses as we passed through the channel between Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, headlands outlined in the moonlight but otherwise unlit, and finally locating a harbour entrance in the dark.  We tied alongside in Puerto Calero marina at 0100.

Sailing for 3 nights out of the 7 is quite tiring, so our last day was spent with a leisurely breakfast, exploring Puerto Calero for a couple of hours and then a gentle 2 hour sail back to Marina Rubicon.

The experience on our adventure cruises is very different to our relaxed cruises.  We only have one left this season before we leave for Madeira – a couple of spaces still available from 16th to 23rd February.  Why not try it.