How do you provision for such a long trip?
That's not as difficult as it sounds, especially since we have been stocking the boat for increasingly longer trips for years. Boats are cleverly designed with all kinds of storage spaces, so they hold more than they look like they could!
Art has loaded up on spare parts for just about everything, including the hardware to put those parts to use, and has an extensive supply of tools. I have lots of staples on board at all times (beans, rice, pasta, etc.), then pick up fresh meat and produce at the last minute. I simply work from more perishable to less perishable items (chicken before sausages, broccoli before peppers). Art catches plenty of fish by dragging a line from the back of the boat, and I grow sprouts. It's amazing how many different salads can be made from cabbages, carrots and onions, which seem to last forever--and with an array of spices, herbs, oils and vinegars, we never eat the same meal twice on the same long passage!
How do you cook?
Using propane fuel, we have a 3-burner stove with a small oven in the galley--it can swing back & forth so it's always level, even when the boat is not--and a BBQ attached to the stern rail. (There's even a little propane fireplace for chilly nights, though we don't cook on it and we don't expect to use it much on this trip!) There is a relatively small refrigerator, and a tiny freezer--but since I started cruising with just an icebox, those seem sufficient.
What about water?
Second Wind holds 140 gallons of fresh water. We're very frugal when washing dishes, and we just take sponge baths when we're under way. When we're at anchor or becalmed on the ocean, we soap up and jump in the water!
Art will be installing a watermaker when we're in San Diego that will convert salt water to fresh. While we'll still conserve water, we will be able to have showers more often (ah, such luxury!).
What powers the boat?
Primarily wind, some diesel fuel, and a lot of muscles for pulling lines.
Unless they are very large, boats can't carry enough fuel to drive across oceans, so of course we depend on the wind in the sails to do most of the work. Fortunately what got us started sailing in the first place was the pleasure of using wind to move a boat, and that pleasure hasn't diminished! Fast or slow, one way or the other, we get where we want to go.
There is a 50 hp Perkins engine for calmer days; we also turn on the engine to recharge the batteries. Boats are DC powered (we have six house batteries and one starter battery), but we have an inverter that can convert DC to AC power if we need to have "regular" electricity. (So no, there's no microwave, but an electric drill--which works better than a cordless--is an option if need be!) We don't have a generator, but we do have a high-powered alternator to boost the batteries and three solar panels, so we've never lacked energy (at least not that kind!).
Do you get bored?
No.
What do you do all day?
Enjoy the water. Read a novel. Talk to crew mates. Enjoy crew mates' company without needing to talk. Enjoy the water. Cook, eat, nap. Read about something nautical (celestial navigation or 12-volt batteries or upcoming landfalls; we have a library on board). Write a journal. Enjoy the water. Plot the boat's current position, check the weather, make navigation decisions. Play an instrument (we have a ukulele, guitar and violin available). Fix whatever broke recently, or maintain something so it won't break. Observe, immerse, reflect. Enjoy the water.
What do you do at night?
We keep sailing! No anchor chain can go 3 miles deep and we want to arrive at our destination without using up too much fuel/food, so we don't stop. Someone is always awake; at least one person is on duty (called "on watch") at all times. Everyone on board takes turns at this.
What do you mean by "on watch"?
To make sure the boat stays headed in the right direction and avoids unlikely yet possible hazards (like hitting a large floating object, or being overrun by a freighter), someone has to be responsible for the helm (= steering wheel) at all times. With a boat our size, only one person needs to be on watch, and others are just occasionally needed on deck for sail changes (the saying "all hands on deck" can still be appropriate!).
The helmsman is responsible for steering: sometimes hand steering, and more often monitoring the windvane steering system (or autopilot if there is no wind and we're motoring). Additional responsibilities include...well, watching: watch the sails, watch the waves, watch the wind, watch the instruments (compass, AIS, radar, barometer)--anything that could affect the boat and therefore require some action.
The off-watch crew's primary responsibility is to get rested (sleep can be hard to come by, especially when seas are rough; waves hitting the boat sound very loud in the cabin down below). Katelinn's mantra to crew members on her tall ships is to "clean something, fix something, learn something" , and that is also applicable for us. At sea the boat is everyone's home, owners or not, and is therefore everyone's responsibility to keep in good condition.
What is a watch schedule like?
Different boats and crews opt for different schedules. For a typical three-person crew, the most common pattern is 12-4, 4-8, 8-12; each person is on duty for two 4-hour shifts per day. (This is also common on larger vessels as well, though they have more people on duty at a time.)
We had four people on board when we went to Kauai and back, and each person being on duty for 3 hours and off for 9 felt fine (12-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12). With just three people for this trip's passages, however, we were concerned about the 4-hour stretches feeling very long in the middle of the night, so we tried this:
Midnight-0200 Nancie
0200-0400 Art
0400-0600 Nicole
0600-0900 Nancie
0900-1200 Art
1200-1500 Nicole
1500-1800 Nancie
1800-2100 Art
2100-Midnight Nicole
Each person had to be on duty three times per day rather than two, but the 2-hour stretches in the night felt manageable. We're likely to opt for this rotation on other long passages, if it suits future crew as well.
How do you know where to go?
Navigation has been around for centuries, it's just getting easier. We do have a chartplotter that came with the boat (older but works) which has a screen in the cockpit that displays electronic data like charts, position and speed. It's useful, especially for setting coastal courses and catching the effects of current (called set and drift) quickly.
That said, we are old school (classical musicians, right?), so we genuinely enjoy navigating and plotting our progress on paper charts. With at least three separate sources of GPS positioning on board, we do have redundancy (= backups, and backups for the backups), but knowing where you are without need for electronics--even if it's never necessary--is a useful skill. To that end, we are reviewing the celestial navigation principles that Katelinn taught us, and thanks to David Ingalls loaning us his sextants, we plan to be reasonably proficient at that art before we head across the Pacific.
What about weather?
Someone once said "there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes"--so if you're well prepared, you can handle anything. As part of preparation, all sailors monitor the weather very carefully. In addition to an addiction to checking the barometer, we are learning more about reading signals from cloud types and sea states. Primarily, though, we receive forecasts from NOAA.
Near the coast, the NOAA channels are easily accessible on our VHF radio, but offshore is trickier. We have a single sideband radio (SSB) that can send and receive signals from very far away, and we can pick up voice broadcasts of weather reports that way. Sometimes those are hard to hear, however, so the next step is receiving written forecasts and/or pictures of weather maps (portraying symbols for wind speed & direction, wave height & direction, barometric pressure at sea level, and barometric pressure at the jet stream). One of my huge pre-trip frustrations was getting Second Wind's electronic components to work together well enough to receive this information and display it on my computer. I won't bore anyone with the details, but so far neither I nor a marine electrician has been able to get the system up and running. Hopefully I can get this resolved in San Diego (while Art's installing the watermaker!); otherwise, long-distance voice forecasts will have to suffice.
How will you communicate with people back home?
No, we don't have internet, and there are no cell towers in the middle of the ocean.
Some boats have large satellite domes for internet access, but we'd have to sell another house to outfit ourselves that lavishly An increasing number of boaters have satellite phones; though we wouldn't need to sell a house for one of those, the new phones and rate plans are still out of our price range. We did purchase an old used sat phone for emergencies; like the life raft, we hope to never need it!
I got my ham radio license last fall, so once the SSB + modem + my computer start talking to each other, I can send and receive short email messages while on board (plus get those handy weather images). For the most part, though, we will be off the grid, and content ourselves with communication via regular email (nancielinnshaw@gmail.com) while we are in port. There's wifi everywhere these days, so I'm not worried about losing touch!
Why are you doing this?
A. If you have to ask, we can't explain it to you.
B. Look at the second entry on this blog.
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