Leg 1, Deauville to Las Palmas

So, finally my brother Albert and I set out to do a circumnavigation.
Why would I attempt this coming from a landlocked country? Especially since I only started sailing at the age of 40, so only two years ago? One option would be you are bored out of your mind. In my personal experience it does suffice if you fear to reach that point very soon. A midlife crisis comes in really handy too for such a decision, by the way. Also, I guess our complete lack of sailing experience in challenging sailing areas is a must have to actually consider this attempt. Not many seasoned sailors in their right ming would consider going round in the roaring fourties. As one put it: what do you do there? Storms and high seas all the time and nothing to see. But maybe I am making that trip so I don´t see much for a while. Time will tell.
The first adventure turned out to be selecting a boat that suits the purpose. Just recently I heared that boats sailing the Med are sailed 10 days per annum on average.
So the building quality of most production boats would not fit our needs. I consider myself lucky because I was on a budget that eliminated new boats straight away and got me focussed on boats built between 1970 and 1990 and in these days constructions were more rigid. Apparently light and fast was not so much the fashion of your average boat owner at the time.
Then of course comes reading literature, and when you think you have reached the point where you have a basic understanding you make your choice.
Just that actually this is the point where the learning starts and it won´t be long before you realise you kew nothing when you bought the boat. Of course, this is not the kind of detail that would have stopped me. So this is how I ended up with Maverick. And at the time of writing those lines we were sailing in the English channel, so the choice certainly was not all wrong. My level of curiosity about her qualities in the long run however was quite considerable.
The administrative efforts that followed the purchase turned out to be the next adventurous element of the undertaking. Being an optimist I thought I would manage within two weeks. Well, four weeks later I realsised I could consider myself extremely lucky to have managed it in that timespan. All along there was not one unfriendly or unhelpful public servant. Who would have guessed?
When registering a seagoing vesses for worldwide sailing in landlocked Austria they give you this long list of mandatory equipment.
I realised how comprehensive the list was when the french Lady behind the chandlery counter asked whether I am going to race the Fastenet – a race with particularly tough regulations about safety equipment. To her credit, she had not seen my boat at the point of asking.

So now to route planning. On one hand we really wanted to go for a full circumnavigation, on the other hand we did not want to plan for more then one year. That pretty much limits your choice to the route they also call “The Racetrack”, basically taking you round Antarctica in the Southern Ocean.
So we started from France, Deauville heading directly for the Canary Islands where we planned to do maintenance work.
From there the next ports of call would be Fernando de Noronha and then Tristan de Cunha. We were nurturing the idea of skipping South Africa and head for New Zealand directly and then directly round Cape Hoorn to the Falklands and back to Europe from there.
Arguably a very ambitious route for us complete novices, but there is always plan B. That is to cross the Atlantic to the Carribean. With such a fallback position there actually isn´t much risk involved.

So there we were. Moured in Honfleur with a registered boat ready to sail and a rough idea about the route. Not to mentione the comprehensive set of flares and even a signal gun. We were prepared. The last thing we had to do was sail to Deauville since it was the only fuel station around, from there our trip would finally begin.

Sailing the English Channel with absolutely no experience in tidal waters turned out rather interesting. To start with we entered Deauville Marina with a minimum of 50cm water under the keel. Luckily at the time I was still convinced the depth log showed water below keel and felt much more relaxed with the indicated 2m water depth than I normally would have.
Our first sailing day in the channel thoroughly demonstrated to us that the tidal currents are just much faster than the sailing speed you get from a force 1 wind. So after a day of spinning around I switched on the engine through half the night. At least this got us out of sight of Deauville within our first 24hrs of sailing.
Day two was much more encouraging. With the current of the English Cahannel pushing from behind we actually made very good progress towards the Bay of Biscay. What happened then was something I would never have taken into account. We had absolutely no wind for a total of two days, one in the channel and one in the Bay of Biscay, and ended up as mere drifters. The sea surface in the Bay of Biscay was smooth like a mirror. But then, we were rewarded in one of those days by a school of wales taking an interest in Maverick. They very obviously enjoyed themselfes diving under the boat, both the fully grown elder animals as the youngsters. To really top it off they started talking to each other. It sounded like a very nice tune they just played for us, clearly audible both in the boat and above the water.
It is moments like this that change ones view on the sea. It is a great and astonishing world of its own, inhabited by some of the greatest creatures on earth.
The whole waiting had a very positive side too. Since we left we nicknamed Maverick “MS Repair”. For starters we had the manual bilge pump leaking sea water rather ambitiously. We only noticed by pure coincidence when Albert lifted one of the floorboards in the pantry and we had the water level right underneath the floorboards. A hard job to find the leak, a messy one to fix it. Just to keep the excitement up soon after one of the drive belts started screaming and smoking when we had to recharge the main battery. At least this was easier to fix.
But we really got going when the check valve in the exhaust started leaking too – it was burnt through and the smoke from the exhaust gently started filling the cockpit, and seawater filling the bilge. Time to get moving. Considering that I am actually a machine engineer by education who always had been very careful to avoid touching an engine his entire life – what a change in direction.
You might find it easy to imagine how much fun I had hanging down a narrow, messy engine and bilge compartment. Luckily Albert was there to pull me back out.
Then there was one day with smooth seas and no repairs coming up! What a desaster. Luckily Alber had the presence of mind to stumble on deck during the night and smash one of the wheelhouse windows in. Thank god he was unhurt and were busy again.
So, regardless what they say about the Bay of Biscay, at this point I thought it was a perfect place for repairs afloat – go there with a broken vessel. The biggest challenge appeared to be the hopeless flapping of slack sails. Needless to say this impression did not last very long.
Soon later were were much happier chaps – bodering on chirpy. We were still in the middle of the Bay, but just had made 100 miles in 24hrs – and on one and the same port tack. We were in dire need for more such runs. Well, a day after that we were making a meager 3 knots before a a weak aft wind. At that point first doubts emerged. We had planned our entire trip based on an average of 100nm per day, and we were a good 30% short of that. We needed some more time to tell what our real performance was and what it would do to our trip. Anyway, at the time we had simply reduced our calory intake. We had planned for a maximum of three weeks for the trip. And this started appearing real optimistic.

Then, finally, the end of recreational sailing arrived wih a blow – luckily a blow from behind.
In the very early morning of the 12th of August the halyard of our light foresail gave in with a snap, leaving the sail dragging in the water. This was double bad news. For one it greatly reduced my trust in the material, increasing the prospective bill for upgrades. But more importantly, it reduced our speed potential on an before light wind course by a knot or so.
Now we were down to a apx. 70kn average in 24hrs, and planning a route on that is not an option. I added a sail wardrobe upgrade to my list. That should mean making a lot of friends amongst sales people in Las Plamas.
On the same fateful day the weather changed to something much more like the infamous Bay of Biscay. The aft wind increased to a steady force 5 to 6, reaching 7 during the night, with waves of what we thought was 4-5m. But I have to admit that it is extremely likely that we overestimated them, we would not be the first ones, so let´s say they were 3-4m. Nothing threatening at all, actually. Our original idea was that this wind from astern would blow us down south both fast and comfortably didn´t really work. The genoa strictly refused to stand up in the wind and we had no boom to support her. This left us sailing under main only in a seriously unbalanced boat. Given this situtation the tiller pilot was fast to quit his job, so it was hand steering. Of course, by that time we had managed to break the rod transmission from our tiller to the wheelhouse, so we had to sit out in the open, with no instruments visible from that position. A bit of a let down in a dark, cloudy night. Great job I brought all the Goretex gear I had. Our only navigational aid in the following 38 hrs was the Irish and the Scottish flag tied to the back stay to indicate wind direction, while we sat facing backwards, reduced to human wind pilots.
After only a short while we stopped counting the involuntary gybes. Of course we had the boom tied in position, but the strain on sails and rigging still was a little disheartening.
On the upside we set our 24hr record in that time, doing 120nm with the main in second reef only. We needed to catch up anyway. The downside was our level of exhaustion at the end. We had swapped position every hour during the night and every two hours during the day. My respect for single handed sailors has grown indefinitely. Repeatedly I started to halluzinate while steering, imagining Albert around me and trying to grab things that were not there. I was a wreck at the end of it. I really can´t imagine to do that alone.
Right after the wind reduced to a whisper for half a day and after that kept moving us effortlessly with a comfortable 3kn average towards Las Palmas, so we got a good bit or recreational sailing.
Time to recover with the feet dangling from the bathing platform for a refreshing foot bath. And I really needed it too.
When you spend a few hours on night watch under a clear, star lit sky, a gentle breeze around your head in the complete solitude you only find at sea this lets you quickly forget about any chores you had to go through. For background music the mast whistled a gentle tune. It must be its Scottish heritage. This was not just the whistling of the wind in the rigging and any hollows. This mast played a unbelievably tranquilising tune. A great feeling!
The solitude turned out to be incredibly persistant. We were 180nm away from the coast, allready below Lisboa, and the wind kep blowing in the same strength and direction with no end to it.
And that was great luck too. Since the wind carried us straight towards target at a stable 70nm per day we knew that we wouldn´t have to starve but reach but our provisions were sufficient.
Have I allready mentioned my deep desire for a spinnaker or at least a suitable boom to speed matters up? I think I did. But the real consequence of our actual speed goes much further. Would we attempt to sail our planned route considering our actual speed this would mean to leave Gran Canaria directly for New Zealand, otherwise we would get to the critical passages at the wrong time of the year.
And this again is a trip of four to five months sea time with no break at all, actually with not even any sight of land. Not likely I would want to do that. However, I was still confident we could get her back to the required 100nm 24hr average.
Fot the time being I really enjoyed the easy ride the constant Northerly was giving us with out third crew member, Auto Pilot, grunting away at the tiller.
That day we had another learning. We had taken down the genoa using its halyard to fly our light foresail. When Albert checked it for chafe after some 20hrs it was only hanging on five remaining strings, the rope practically gone. We were lucky we had not lost it completely, but it was the ultimate end of using another sail flown loose. Something in the mast top obviously was not fit to fly a loose sail. Another thing on my list for upgrades. And it also meant it would be reefed main only until Las Palmas. A real test for any speed junky. Unknown to me at the time the trip held a few more tests for us in store.
For one, even with the wind constant and the sailing easy, the erratic swaying of the boat with waves pushing from aft. When they were not pushing they hit the boat like a huge fist from the side. The resulting noises down below would have given a great sound track for a horror movie. The worst bit was the difficulty of moving around. For a stretch of 3m I needed 6 hand grips, still bruising every possible part of my body. I was expecting blue to be the dominant skin colour on arrival. The whole thing was slightly taxing in he long run. Reassuringly we had the honour to see matters turn to the worse.
One fine day we noticed that repeated chinese gybing does take its toll. The starboard main spreader was dislocated, banged out of position by the sail. To take out strain we had to take the main down to its third reef, basically leaving us with a strorm wardrobe in a light wind. Slower again!
We did the whole maneouver under engine to make life easier. This kind of back fired, since at the end of it white smoke was everywhere. The engine had overheated and we were left to sails only.
To complete the picture the wind picked up to a degree where the wind pilot gave up again. We allready had to use duckt tape all over it and to keep it in position on the tiller, but all of this was not enough to keep it going now. We were back to hand steeing for the next 24hrs to come. And I was left dreading the moment when I would have to call the marina asking for towing assistance to enter.
Hard to say why it took two days, but then it dawned on me that we had two cooling systems, one with salt water and the other one cirulating the sweet water that actually cools the engine. Up to that point I only worried about the salt water flow which seemed allright. That was when I finally realised that it has little effect if there is no sweetwater in the other system. So after refilling it with our last bottled drinking water provisions the engine ticked along nicely again. Just in time to recharge our batteries. We would have had to sail the night to come without the mandatory lights to preserve energy for the instruments. Not something you look forward too. Listening to the comforting sound of a running engine we celebrated. We opened a whole can of fruits ant ate it just like that.
In the remaining 36hrs we had to refill the cooling system once more, meaning that we had a more serious engine problem – and my repair list had one more heavy weigt item on it.
However, we safely arrived in the Las Palmas Marina, under our own engine, and had a very friendly wellcome by Mike, the Trans Ocean representative in Las Plamas, and his girlfriend Alex.
Life was bliss again and we got some proper food other than rice and noodles, and a couple of nice pints with it.
This was the happy end of our reasonably eventful first leg of 1600nm which we sailed in a total of 23 days.
Life was good, and a proper shower nearby.

Andreas