Well the picnic’s over. June is a great month to be sailing the Atlantic and for the first 10 days I was warm, dry and barefoot. How quickly things change. Now I’m surrounded by fog, its around 55˚F, and as I write this I can hear some strong thunder. My westerlies never appeared and for the last week I’ve had mostly head winds – first northerlies then easterlies. I did catch my first fish a few days ago (a yellow fin tuna). For some strange reason it made me sick so I had to throw it over. I don’t understand this, I’ve cought and eaten many tuna during my various sailing trips and I’ve never had a problem before. I’m mostly eating freeze dried food made by Shelf Reliance, which is amazing. I can make some creamy chicken noodle soup that tastes like its fresh out of the kichen. Now I think about it, when I get done writing this im going to make some for lunch. The last two days I’ve been beating into 30kt easterlies. I’ve found many new leaks, last night I slept on a wet cushion, wrapped in a wet sleeping bag using a wet pillow. After reading the book North by East, I figured it would be like this. Things could be a lot worse, it was in same spot back in 2008 were tropical storm Cristobal clobbered me with 60kts winds. At that time I was doing my first single-handed transatlantic from Kittery Maine to Falmouth England non-stop. I wish I could go back to the Chain Locker and have a pint of proper Ale. It will be some time before I have a beer again. Its only going to get harder as I head north, yet I’m look forward to the challenge.
A bit of clarification about this website… I can’t actually see the site as I don’t have a real Internet connection. I just write an email to my friend Mike McLinn (the web masta) over the satellite phone and he posts it for me, then he periodically sends me the comments all you write in. I’ll try to answer questions but I apologize if I don’t get around to them all. This is a non-stop trip and if all goes right I will not touch land again until the Chesapeake Bay. In order to do this I have 800lbs of diesel and 750lbs of freeze dried food from Shelf Reliance. Along with my other gear it adds up to a heavy boat. I have a manual water maker which will make 1 gallon of water an hour. So every day I sit in my cockpit and pump, pump, pump. Since I have all the food and water I need and I hope I have enough fuel for the northwest passage, I only will stop if there is catastrophic damage to myself or my vessel.
