Hey everyone. I have had many requests to put online my passage notes so here they are. I have put up the relevant notes from my log and expanded on the last bit. Hope they are interesting, it was definitely an interesting passage.

Passage Notes: St. Helena to Brazil

Date: 30/6 Time: 0800 Heading:260T Speed:6kt Sky:altocumulus
Wind:190T Speed:3kt Baro:1018 Engine:Y/1500rpm
Comment: Leaving is always sad, even when you desperately want to go.

What a strange and interesting island in the middle of nowhere. As the other cruisers joke, “what a beautiful place, what a shitty anchorage”. We have been here for almost a week anchored in 20 meters of water with the wide open Atlantic at our backs with a steep drop off on the bottom. It wouldn’t take too much anchor drag for the boat to find herself cast off and free to drift to Brazil on her own. The bottom drops to 200 meters deep only 100 meters further from the island and drops to 4000 meters deep only 500 meters away. Needles to say I didn’t get a full nights sleep without at least once in the evening popping up convinced we had dragged only to look out the ports and see the lights of the stairs on Jacobs ladder still shinning on the shore. While here one of our mates dragged his anchor while he was asleep and woke up in the middle of the atlantic with both his anchors hanging down 200’ with full chain and unable to lift them up. He had to motor back to the island until he could feel the anchors bouncing on the bottom and then slowly wind them back up, motor closer, wind up more, motor closer, and keep doing until he could get them up and then re set them. Waking up in the middle of the night to nothing but ocean and stars while drifting in the middle of the ocean when you are expecting to see an island would be scary. Ughh, no thanks.

We are all ready to leave, nice breakfast and a leisurely departure raising a good sweat winding up 200’ of chain on our manual windlass. The island effects are keeping the trades at bay so we motor off west towards Brazil knowing once we get some miles between ourselves and St. Helena we should get a nice breeze.

Date: 1/7 Time: 1230 Heading:258T Speed:1.5kt Sky:altocumulus
Wind:variable Speed:1-4kt Baro:1019 Engine:n
Comment: Winds light and variable - aghh frustrating. How many times change sails from upwind and downwind sailing.

Difficult day. Definitely hoping it is not a sign of things to come. I am feeling fresh and willing to change gears every hour as I hoist the poles for downwind sailing only to have to stow them again to make some upwind time as the wind shifts. Singlehanding a boat this size is difficult. I have rigged the poles so that I can hoist and set them from the cockpit and only have to go forward to attach or release the jib sheet for upwind or downwind sailing. It is still so tiring to do this so frequently especially as I have to hoist/douse the stay sail and furl/unfurl the genny each time. Alot of work. It is so light I am fighting for every mile. I don’t want to turn the engine on so early in the passage just because the winds are light so resign myself to do my sail work.

Date: 2/7 Time: 0230 Heading:258T Speed:7kt Sky:clear
Wind:190T Speed:17kt Baro:1019 Engine:n
Comment: Beautiful reaching under full sail. Water still flat with half moon setting in front. Bright evening. Stars aft of us crisp points. As good as it gets.

Wind came up around midnight very suddenly and is holding steady now. Boat is moving effortlessly with no wasted motion. Full genny, stay and main and boat sits very flat and stable, comfortable. She is a real goer and a pleasure to sail. I make a cup of coffee and go downstairs to check on the precious cargo. All are asleep, redlight casting shadows on their faces. I feel very satisfied and content as I return to the cockpit to enjoy the evening and my coffee. The evenings are still chilly with the wind and I put on my fleece as I settle into my singlehanded night watch schedule again. The water is still nice and flat as we zip along. Jackie is getting on her feet and will be sharing watches tomorrow night.

Date: 3/7 Time: 2300 Heading:260T Speed:7kt Sky:AltoCum
Wind:190T Speed:20kt Baro:1022 Engine:n
Comment: Still flying. Barometer shot up. Shit.

Chop and open swell have come up now that the wind has been blowing but we are taking it on the aft quarter so is not uncomfortable. Wondering when the wind is going to die, looks like the High has steamrolled towards us with the Baro jumping up so quickly. The rate of change makes me nervous but likely we will just lose all our wind versus getting hammered. Tired.

Date: 4/7 Time: 0500 Heading:260T Speed:5 Sky:cirrus
Wind:100T Speed:10kt Baro:1020 Engine:n
Comment: Winds changing direction and quickly dropping with large swell still rolling, uncomfortable without pressure on sails. Baro drop???

It is going to be an uncomfortable day with a large swell still running and the wind changing direction. It is also getting lighter, the barometer is dropping, and the sky has gone from clear to showing those little bastard high cirrus with the flick on the end “mares tails”. Weather is coming.

Date: 5/7 Time: 1424 Heading:260T Speed:8kt Sky:Nimbo and scud
Wind:50T Speed:25kt Baro:1018 Engine:n
Comment: Warm front is on us with squally conditions. Not stoked as night comes. Thank god for the full moon.

Date: 6/7 Time: 1800 Heading:260T Speed:9kt Sky:Nimbo and scud
Wind:50T Speed:30kt Baro:1017 Engine:n
Comment: Waves have picked up all through day and are now 3 meters and with tops just starting to foam. Please don’t start breaking tonight. Small cross sea striking stern and knocking down wave face. Sailing under #2 staysail

The beginning of what would get easier and harder for the next two weeks. I was quite scared at this point to be honest. I wasn’t sure how far the wind speed was going to climb as this was my first depression encountered at this latitude in the atlantic. I wasn’t so worried about the wind as I was worried how long it was going to blow and over what fetch. It takes a good 36 hours for wave heights at 30knots to reach their full height but that can be over 10 meters given enough fetch. Was this what we were going to encounter? At this point I didn’t know, and I didn’t know the how the boat would react to everything. I can remember rigging the series drogue to be ready for release. Jackie and Saoirse weren’t allowed on deck at this point. The boats motion was not chaotic, but there were times when the back end would be pushed down the face of a wave by a cross sea. I go inside to see how everyone is and from the inside of the boat it seems so much calmer and safer and everyone seems quite calm. Reassuring.

Date: 7/7 Time: 0130 Heading:235T Speed:9kt Sky:Nimbo and scud
Wind:50T Speed:40kt Baro:1020 Engine:n
Comment: Wave height continuing to increase. Significant wave height at first spreaders. Turned boat to take both swell angles better. Autopilot still able to handle. Not breaking but whitewater from cross seas coming into cockpit. J&S are fine tucked in to lee bunk together. Thank god for full moon. Deploy drogue??

Yea I was pretty much shitting myself at this point. What else is there to say?

Date: 8/7 Time: 0100 Heading:235T Speed:7kt Sky:clear
Wind:80T Speed:25kt Baro:1022 Engine:n
Comment: punched through. That sucked. Glad its over and boat does well. #2 staysail worked very well but would not want to carry over 40kt. Clearing, hope wind dies slowly so swells have time to settle

Thinking this was all the bad weather we would encounter on the passage you can imagine the huge sense of relief I felt. I was happy with the way the boat handled the weather and with the choices I made in dealing with the weather. I acted very conservatively and never felt out of control or in a life threatening situation. I had no idea at this point that it was just the beginning. Albeit this was the worst of them all I was fresh when this one hit us.

Date: 8/7 Time: 2000 Heading:260T Speed:7kt Sky:clear
Wind:50T Speed:15kt Baro:1022 Engine:n
Comment: lovely day of sailing, seas rough but dropped quickly from last night

Date: 9/7 Time: 1200 Heading:235T Speed:7kt Sky:nimbo and scud
Wind:80T Speed:30kt Baro:1025 Engine:n
Comment: another front? Baro bump and came quickly so must be cold front. Thought passed them both last 48 hours. Shit

This went on and on for days. Warm Front and Cold Front then clear for 12-24 hours; repeat. At this point I am no longer fearful since I know the pattern and intensity I can expect from the depressions. It never got up to 40knots again and most of the depressions average wind speeds of 25-30 with gusting conditions under the squalls only getting up to 35.

What got to me was the consistency of the weather and the mixed wave trains with large long period swells pushing from the south and short local mixed swells coming from the fronts passing. I didn’t understand how that many systems could come out to us. I really started second guessing what I was looking at and for a couple of days was convinced that these were not individual depression but some sort of compression zone between the atlantic high and another high and we were in the trough. I did some reading on brazillian weather however and found something interesting that I wasn’t aware of. You can get a low pressure system that comes up from Patagonia and wedges itself into the southern section of brazil and just spits out low after low into the atlantic. The system can be stable for weeks doing this. Sounded familiar.

We were all well fed up at this point. The motion of the boat was so extreme with the rail to rail rolling that Saoirse was not allowed into the cockpit and Jackie stayed down below mostly as well. It was very hard on Jackie as she had to lay down most of the time to prevent sea sickness. Both of us have lost a substantial amount of weight at this point. Jackie because she was having trouble holding food down and me from exhaustion. I am as thin as I was in my 20s. Jackie looks like a size zero supermodel. Saoirse was completely unfazed by any of this and played like she normally did regardless of the weather.

There was only one night where we had to change routine. We seemed to be entering each low pressure system higher and higher so eventually we started getting very intense headwinds instead of winds across the beam. On one of these evenings it is blowing about 30 on the nose for 10 hours and we are dropping off the backs of the swells. Nothing scary but still a large motion. Saoirse has slept in the v-birth every night we have been at sea and was even up there now sound asleep but when we looked at her she was coming completely off the mattress with each wave- still totally sound asleep. We decided it was a bit crazy to leave her there so put her in the pilot birth with jacke.

Probably the most worrisome moment for me besides the first warm front was when we were nearing brazil. We had to go around a point called Cabo Frio and as you approach about 30-60 miles off the sea bed rises very suddenly from 5000 meters to 100 meters. There is no way around this no matter how you approach you have to make this transition.

As usual we were in frontal conditions with 25 knots coming from just aft the beam. I cant tell you how my stomach churned, I was so worried. I found a section where there is a ridge that drops back to deep water again quickly so we could “test the waters” to see if it had any serious effect on the sea state. Luckily it only had minor changes, the largest effect was the turbulence of the water not the actual waves themselves. It felt like we were in boiling water for several miles after we crossed into shallow water from all the upwellings from the deep water, a very strange sensation.

Day broke as we were passing south east of Cabo Frio on final approach and it broke clear and sunny. I thought we were in for a beautiful sail. But the atlantic was not done yet, by mid day the old Mare’s Tails were back and we could see the front coming even as the wind was dying in the wind hole found between Rio and Cabo Frio.

I was just too tired at this point to play games anymore. I had been on less than 2 hours sleep a day for weeks now and wanted to stop. We were originally going to go all the way to Ilha Grande which was an additional 70 miles from Rio but decided we didn’t want to be sailing along a lee shore that long with another front coming. SO we decided to crank the engine on and steam into Rio.

We were less than 30 miles from Rio when the wind really piped up enough directly into our face that I had to hoist the staysail, crack off the wind and motor sail into much shallower water to catch a break.

We short tacked up the coast and after another long and exhausting day we arrived at Marina Gloria in Rio at two in the morning.

I have mixed feelings about this passage. While it was nice to get a rougher shakedown on the boat than expected and have it come out well, it was really emotionally exhausting. I am not a single lad anymore throwing myself against the elements like I once did. I am sailing with my family now, and they are not experienced sailors who chose to be battered by the weather as an adventure. I felt intense anxiety regarding the weather that I never felt when I was cruising by myself or with others when i was younger. I can only explain this or understand this as a protective feeling, a feeling that we were in a situation that I couldn’t control and if things got bad there was nothing i could do to protect them.

I did alot of research about the conditions we could expect and as sailors know the charts and guides are based on decades and sometimes hundreds of years of weather information and tend to be generally accurate. The conditions we encountered were exceptionally unusual. The incidence of Gale force winds in the areas we were in were supposed to be from 0%-1%. The wind direction, strength, wave height everything was significantly different than expected. What this brought home really is the fact that it is not predictable and as much as you may say it out loud and practice it in harbour do you really in your mind make the allowance that when you cross an ocean you can be hit by very serious weather. Do you really accept that this can happen before it actually does?

I have been in substantially worse weather than this, but never for as long as on this passage. You can power through Force 9 And 10 conditions that last 72 hours but you cant maintain that level of energy in Force 6-8 conditions for weeks.

There was only one time when I seriously considered using the series drogue and would have deployed it except we had a full moon and the night was clear enough that I could see what was going on around me and still felt I had the boat under control. If the intensity of the first depression had come over us at the end instead of the beginning I probably would have deployed the drogue due to exhaustion.

I definitely see how exhaustion could be a much bigger killer than any other cause.
I have to say again that we were never in life threatening conditions. The conditions we were in could cause damage to the boat if not handled correctly but with proper boat handling and conservative sail management that was not something that would have happened. At no point did the waves start to break, which is when things change gears to survival mode.

Because the weather was frontal based, and small fronts at that, the wind was blowing across a relatively small fetch for a short period of time preventing the waves from getting as large as they should have at the wind speeds we were experiencing. It was like “depressions for dummies” and could have been much worse than it was.

One thing that helped take the edge off was Jackie’s increasing capability to stand night watches even during the rougher conditions. I still had to get up to deal with the variability of wind and sea and sail trim but my increasing trust in her allowed me to get the sleep I did even in heavy conditions.

The most interesting thing about all of this is that I am not the most able seaman on Taniwha, our little monkey Saoirse is. She sleeps through the worst weather, can walk from the front of the boat to the back without grabbing a hold if she feels like it, and is totally unbothered by wind or wave.

-jc