Sailing Across An Ocean ON A 45YR OLD SAILBOAT | Crossing The Atlantic Pt. 2 [98]

Winter Noodles! Welcome back! In the last episode, we started our Atlantic crossing on Skua, our 45-year-old sailboat. We're sailing 3,000 nautical miles from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. We're going past the most western, north-western Canary Island, which I think is called La Palma. And yeah, it's pretty stunning. Still no fish caught. The wind should fill in this afternoon, and then we'll turn and head south-west to a waypoint at 20 north, 30 west. For the run down there, we should have more like 17 knots. At the moment, the wind is about 4 knots. What are you up to there? Oh, um, washing our underpants. The glamorous boat life. Yeah, it's quite calm and it's a sunny day, so hopefully we can put them up to dry quite fast. Just our showers. Yeah, as you can see, wet hair. That feels amazing. What are you having? Veggies with fajita spices and a Spanish omelette. It's pretty good. Trying to use up some of our fresh stuff. It's a really nice day now. The sun's out on the solar panels, so I've turned the watermaker on. We're not using very much water, probably no more than like 15 litres a day or something, so we're just keeping it topped up with the watermaker really. Now that we have cleared the Canary Islands, we can finally turn south-west and set the sails wing on wing, which is our preferred sail plan for this ocean crossing. To do this, we hoist the spinner couples on the opposite side of the main. We're good. Yeah. We then have to jibe the Yankee, so that its sheet runs through the spinner couple. So is this us now? Yeah, I hope so. I hope the wind settles down to be from broadly this direction. I think we'll probably inevitably get some more lighter and stronger spells, but hopefully this is like the rig set up, the hydrovane steering, just, yeah, keep ticking down the miles. So we'll see. I hope so. So we're all set up with our trade wind rig. It feels really good. It took me a little while to balance the rudder with the wind vane and the sails, but now it seems to be pretty balanced. And it's really, really delicious sailing this afternoon on my own watch. We have probably 18 knots of true wind, so 13 apparent doing five knots, and we're rolling ever so slightly, but not too much. And that is glorious. It's really, really great. With the boat well balanced, all I have left to do is keep watch by scanning the horizon every 10 minutes, read and occasionally adjust the wind vane as the wind changes. The wind picked up and we started rolling quite a bit. So I tried this trick that I read about in a sailing magazine, which is to use the staysail sheeted in quite tight to push the wind into the genoa as we roll. And I think it really works. Spring rolls? Yeah, ready-made spring rolls. Instant noodles. Just want to ease ourselves into long life food a bit. So mixing it up with the fresher stuff. Nice. Asian fusion on the score this afternoon. We're keeping track of our position and progress on our logbook. We update it at each change of watch, which happens every three or six hours. From day four onwards, the days start blending together. The routine of the watches takes over our lives. So each day is a succession of meals, jibes or sail changes, sunrises and sunsets. Throughout the next few days, we change the sail plan a couple of times to keep Squawk comfortable as the wind starts building. The wind increases as we leave the Canary Islands behind. So we put in the washboards in case any water comes into the cockpit. Here's cloudy, like you can see. So there were no stars out this morning. So we've got full main and Yankee. And then just a bit of staysail out, sheeting in tight to stop the rolling, which works really well. One of Ryan's morning rituals is to put the fishing line out. We troll a skirted lure to try to catch tuna or a mahi-mahi, but we take the lines in at night so the person who is off watch can get an undisturbed sleep. The past few days have been pretty tough, if I have to be honest. We've often had 30 knots of true wind and the boat has been moving and rolling so much. It has been really hard to do anything. Couldn't really cook a meal, couldn't wash, couldn't sleep. I'm a really light sleeper, so with everything on the boat smashing from one side to the other all the time, it was really hard. When I was lucky, I got two hours and 24 minutes of sleep. That kind of got me a bit on the edge. But finally, today we have about 18 to 23 knots of wind, true wind. So around 13 to 18 apparent, which is absolutely lovely. We are rolling a lot less and I feel like I can eat normal food, I feel like I can cook, wash and all of that. I feel human again, it's great. Hopefully, this weather stays for a while because it's really optimum wind speed for us because we're doing 5 knots and the boat is very comfy. Around 20 knots of true wind are really perfect, but we'll see how it goes. We're in touch with other boats that are on our same route. One left the Canary Islands at the same time as us, but they were about 200 to 300 miles ahead of us because they were in Tenerife. Another boat left the Cape Verde on the same date. We are keeping in touch via satellite messages, so we get a bit of a preview because I think our friends are a couple of days ahead of us and that's really nice to know what to expect. We are over a third of the way, so that also feels really good. Did you find your first flying fish? Yeah, he was just sat on the side deck. Does it stink? No, it doesn't really smell of anything. Ah, I thought they stank. Yeah, that's the rumor, isn't it? Maybe the bigger ones do. It's so cute. Yeah, he's a cool little guy. Aww, do you want to eat him? Yeah. We're about 10 minutes from the sun setting. At last, the cloud has cleared and we've got a nice clear evening, so I'm going to do some celestial sights. I think I'll do Venus and Sirius because they're super, super bright, and then Pollux of the Castor and Pollux twins, and I hope I can find them. Venus is super obvious because it is really bright and just above the sun as it sets, and Sirius is about 90 degrees to the left of Venus, so that's reasonably easy to find. It's by far the brightest star in the sky. The really tricky one is Pollux, but if the horizon is still decent, by the time I can see Procyon and therefore find Pollux, then it should be fine, but yeah, see how it goes. I think the morning sights are much easier just because the stars are all there. You can pick them out and then wait for it to get light enough that you can use the horizon and find the evening a bit more difficult, but I'm trying to get used to it. It's about 10 minutes to sunset, so soon enough I should see Venus, but I'll probably shoot that last because then it's still in the brightest part of the sky and you can leave it to the last, basically. So, yeah, try and locate the twins. So there's the setting sun there. I don't know if you can actually see the orb of it, and then Venus. Have a look. Again, I'm not sure if the camera will actually pick it up. It's fairly faint at the moment, but it is there. Look, moving around. So I could already probably shoot that, but there's not much point because by the time then that the other sights have been done, it'll be like in half an hour's time and we'll have moved two miles down the road, three miles down the road at this speed, so I might as well wait and then shoot that last. Ryan shoots each star as many times as he can before it gets too dark to see the horizon. Taking multiple sights helps reduce errors. When shooting the brightest stars, Ryan manages to get an accuracy within 10 miles, which is acceptable for ocean sailing. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, subscribe and give this video a like. You can support our video production via Patreon or a casual PayPal donation. Join us next week to watch a day in the life of our Atlantic crossing.