The Canary Islands to the mid-Atlantic
Arriving in the enormous marina in Las Palmas, we find hundreds of yachts already gathered from twenty different countries, preparing their boats for the Atlantic crossing. Safety is a high priority for the ARC organisers, and all participating boats must pass stringent safety tests.
I will forever remember Las Palmas for its white skies. In the shadowless light of morning, the dock hums with activity. Above the buzz of human conversation a dog barks somewhere, and there’s the sound of confused flapping of hundreds of flags – most boats are ‘dressed’ in a glorious cacophony of colourful fabric. Below, a body writhes in the water cleaning his hull. Above, a long-limbed man dangles from his mast, calling out instructions. Tantalising smells of curry waft across the dock, hinting of pre-cooked meals for the journey, and cartons of beer are being handed into an aft cockpit. Here on Blackwattle, I doggedly finish varnishing our gunwale.
It’s a familiar cruising scene in some ways, but lacks the easy feeling of a normal marina – people walk with purpose, attend to their duties. We have just hours to go before all of us – all 232 boats and 1100 people – set off for one of the most famous cruising passages of all, the Atlantic crossing. For the last couple of weeks the crews have toiled all day and partied most of the night, at multiple parties held by the ARC organisers.
On Blackwattle we’ve repaired, installed, hosed, cleaned, varnished and put on enough food to reach Galapagos. We’ve route-planned fifteen different scenarios, but we reckon the trip will take about nineteen days. We’ve studied the weather until I’m dreaming about isobars, and attended so many cocktail events that I can’t wait to get to sea. Nothing for it now but to depart. I wonder what the ocean will have in store for us this time . . .
The marina is quiet as we sneak out earlier than the other boats to take pictures of the start. The morning is surprisingly sunny, a tiny breeze rustling in the flocks of flags above, but there’s little activity on the wharves. Soon enough we are surrounded by the other 231 boats, and spinnakers glow brightly all the way to the horizon, like multicoloured petals fallen on the water. Ted has agreed to be a controller of a ‘sched’, those regular radio roll-calls that are critical to knowing the whereabouts and welfare of the yachts.
I’ve never been among 232 sailing boats in an event before. It is worth being in the ARC just for this experience. We speed along, enjoying the spectacle for most of the afternoon. By night the boats fade into twinkles in every direction and, as if by design, a crescent moon rides high with our course directly in her path.
By morning, the yachts have scattered and we can see only three on the horizon. But the wind is up, and we must pay attention. Blackwattle rocks drunkenly in a sideways sea – we move around like tree-climbing monkeys (I wish I had a tail sometimes), holding on against the wild rocking. We have wind up to twenty-eight knots, but mostly twenty to twenty-five, from the north-east, just what we want. About nineteen days and 2900 miles to go . . .
As the days pass and we head deeper into the Atlantic, my now-familiar euphoria grows until it becomes a constant flooding of sweet air into my chest. At night, rushing into a moonless black, the faint white glow of breaking water tells me Blackwattle’s sliding down a wave. It’s a soft landing. I think of the roller coaster at Luna Park, or the rides at the Ekka in Brisbane, where I grew up. It’s cold. I’m wearing my beanie and three layers of warm gear. In the soft humid warmth below decks, Ted sleeps. All I can see is red and green glowing squares with electronic numbers – the speed, the direction, the water depth, our position on earth; small helpful friends to get us to the other side of the ocean. Serenaded by the swish of water and waves, I can also hear reminders that there are other friends – the whine and click of the autopilot, the occasional growl of the trailing generator, its white rope spinning wildly out into the dark waters behind us, making electricity. Further out is the faintest furry horizon line dividing the dark sea from a sky full of stars.
During the day it’s a desert out there, blue-grey with tufts of white spume. Like the Simpson Desert in Australia, there are mountains, chasms, cliffs and the occasional flat plain. Sudden outcrops topped with white give way to ravines plunging down, down, down from where I sit watching. But unlike the Simpson it is all moving and writhing, dancing a deadly dance which tosses the boat around like a bath toy. We must not make mistakes. The sun flashes blindingly across half the scene, obliterating any container ship that might be headed our way. If, as is often the case, there is no sun, the water is like shining slabs of polished steel.
And like the desert, where the attentive observer can find a whole array of wildlife, here, if you watch carefully, the sea offers its own multitudes. Of whales and dolphins there are plenty, but you must keep a lookout. The petrel is a tiny flitting bird, black with a white underbelly, deftly hunting alone. Any time of day you can see her down among the ravines and valleys of the tumult of waves. Great flocks of flying fish are there from time to time – not in the great quantities of the Indian Ocean, but there nevertheless, and it’s a bad hair day for those that end up on our deck overnight. Then there are the huge turtles that you can only see by watching the water close to the boat, and being lucky.
The wind has remained high, but manageable. Sometimes, however, no matter how carefully you plan, you can be caught out.
There’s a soft touch on my arm waking me.
‘Nance.’ Barely above a whisper.
‘Oh, is it my watch already?’
‘I’ve woken you a bit early – I’m going to take the main down.’
We’ve been travelling for days now with a double-reefed main and a mere scrap of headsail.
‘What?’ Now I’m awake instantly. At night? We never take the main down at night. We reef sufficiently at sunset. Now, now, at midnight, take the main down?
‘Why?’
‘It’s blowing forty knots and there are squalls around.’ Which means it could go higher if we sail into a squall . . . I can sense, rather than see, his grin in the half-dark. ‘Don’t want to be taking the main down in fifty knots in the dark, y’know.’
I remember a hundred sundowners, cocktail parties, dock conversations over the years: ‘We always reef when the wind goes over fifteen, and also every night – don’t want to be taking the main down in forty knots in the dark, y’know.’
It echoes now: Don’t want to be taking the main down in forty knots in the dark . . . Don’t want to be taking the main down in forty knots in the dark.
‘Oh God, really?’ I spring out of my bunk.
‘It’s okay,’ he says, ‘piece of piss . . . er, cake!’
So here we are, finally, taking down the main in the dark in forty knots.
As he’s attaching a new line to his harness, I vocalise my real dread. ‘Be careful,’ I say. What I mean is: ‘Keep attached at all times.’ Ted Nobbs learned to do the Sydney to Hobart race before anyone used deck rails or harnesses. He was the foredeck hand, running around the deck barefoot in the dark in any wind speed, while the older crew stayed in the cockpit giving instructions. To me, it just meant that you didn’t need many brains to be an architect.
I remember so many arguments about the subject:
‘You – weren’t – clipped – on – then,’ is my terse comment as he comes back into the cockpit.
No answer.
‘If you ever do that again I’m getting off and going home.’
‘Right.’
‘And I’m taking half the boat with me.’
‘Okay.’ Then an afterthought, showing a little interest at least, ‘Which half?’
‘The port half – it has the galley and the loos.’
‘Galley and the heads.’
‘Right, galley and the heads.’ Pause, while I think. ‘Anyway, I’ve changed my mind – I want the bottom half. You can have everything from the cockpit cover up.’
So now, he’s going out there in forty knots, and I hope that old habits don’t make him forget to stay clipped on continuously.
In the event, it works like a song. The seas are towering as we turn into the waves, but working fast, adrenaline flowing, we do the best main furling ever – it’s even neatly in the bag along the boom. We’re on our way, with two headsails goose-winged, and a very happy, softly moving, slower Blackwattle. Piece of cake, maybe, but I don’t want to do it again anytime soon . . .
I am on a daylight watch, admiring the way the rogue waves rise out of the water, like cat’s paws, with bared white claws, before crashing into the empty sea. When I first see her – a swiftly moving shape, black on top, grey or grey-green through the water, lightening underneath as she rolls a little, she is, at most, four metres from the boat, sleekly shooting past us, parallel.
I can hardly get the words out.
‘Whale! Whale!’ I shout, hysterical with excitement. ‘Quick, Ted, here – whale!’
But he’s too late and it’s gone, like a dream – was it real?
I relax back to watching the water. However, it’s only a minute later, and I’m shouting again. ‘Wow, another one in the same spot – she must be following the first one.’ This time Ted is in the cockpit already and sees her too. We watch enthralled as she passes by.
But it’s when I see the third whale passing by on exactly the same path that I have a ‘duh!’ moment. There aren’t three whales following each other, there is only one whale, and, though it’s hard to believe at first, she is swimming circles around our boat!
All else is forgotten as we watch her continually passing on the shady side of the boat, through the high mounds of water. On the sunny side of the boat we cannot catch sight of her, though we dart in every direction, looking, searching.
Then, after a while, she slants off at an angle, diving at the same time, and we know we won’t see her again.
I wonder what she thinks of our black anti-fouled hull. Does she try to communicate with it? Did she let out that high whale song of hers? Blackwattle must appear like a sullen black creature, swimming on the surface, with a huge strange crustacean on top. No fun there; no response . . .
The day comes when we are halfway across the Atlantic. Why, this is so easy – another nine days and we’ll be in St Lucia.
But it is not to be . . .