ARC 2022 Atlantic Ocean Crossing (Part 2 of 3) – Daily Life at Sea, Flying Fish, and Weather Routing

(This is part two of a three-part series on our Atlantic Ocean Crossing. If you missed the first post, see: ARC 2022 Atlantic Ocean Crossing Part 1 – Preparations and Planning.)

It is an interesting experience to be woken up from a deep sleep by what feels like a bucket of salt water splashing on your face, but that is exactly what happened the first night of our ocean crossing!

Our departure day started calmer – and early. I think we were all awake well before sunrise. After so much thought and work, it felt a little bit surreal as we prepared to leave the dock. It was extreme excitement, anticipation, and nervousness all rolled into one. They coordinate the start of the rally like a sailboat race; you have to cross the start line, at a very specific location, under sail, not engines. There were three starts, but it is still a lot of boats leaving together under sail all at once. As a result, there was a bit of chaos that continued most of the afternoon and the first night, with boats calling to coordinate with each other and try to stay on their own bit of ocean. We also had very high winds and high waves.

Autopilot Fails

Back to that bucket of salt water… It was our first night of the crossing, and the autopilot went out with no warning. We were wing-on-wing, and we had a preventer on the main (thank goodness), but in 35 knots of wind, the boat really gets your attention fast when it goes off course suddenly. Cynthia was at the helm, and John was still awake and immediately felt the change in the sails and rushed to take over, calling for us all to get on deck. He hand-steered and stabilized Coronado while I shut down our electronics and rebooted them. Our bed is just below the helm, so I left a small hatch/window open in case the autopilot went out again, and John needed to call me quickly for help. That was a mistake because about two hours later, we took a huge wave to the beam, all the way into the cockpit… and I woke up to what felt like a bucket of seawater being dumped directly on my head! It is an alarming way to wake up, that is for sure! I kept that window closed for the rest of the journey.

The autopilot continued to be sporadic for the next day or so, and we decided to turn the entire system off once a day, usually right before sunset. John would hand steer for a bit, and we would power everything down and restart the electrical systems, charts, and autopilot. After the crossing we talked to several other boats with the same system, and many had similar issues with their autopilots. We were happy we found a relatively easy fix that solved the issue, and the daily reset is something we will do from now on during multi-day passages.

The winds were over 25 knots most of the first night, with gusts between 35 and 40 knots. Waves were the highest we had seen, too. Coronado and the crew were all champs. We doubled up for a few watches, and everyone really chipped in to help make sure people were able to rest. We hit a wind shadow from the islands around 0400, slowing us down. By the afternoon the next day, the wind had picked back up to a beautiful 20 knots with following seas. The fleet started to spread out, too, so there was less stress in avoiding traffic.

Settling In to Daily Life

We all slowly settled into life at sea. During the first two weeks, we had beautiful trade winds and downwind sailing. The wind was steady at around 20 knots. When the waves and wind are behind you, it is a pretty comfortable ride. We had a day or two where the swell was hitting us on the beam, which made it more challenging to move around and cook, but we all managed well.

Once we got our sea legs, everyone had their own personal schedules that they seemed to fall into each day. Since I was on from 0200 to 0500 each morning, I would go back to bed as soon as my shift ended. Some days I could sleep in until 0900 or so, and other days, I would get woken up earlier to help with sail changes that needed to be made right after sunrise. We all made our own breakfast each morning. I made homemade yogurt during the trip, which everyone loved.

Each morning we would talk about the weather for the day and visit as a crew as everyone else started waking up. I would try to take a nap at noon and wake up in time for lunch or make lunch if it was my day to cook. During free time we would all take turns relaxing or reading. I would occasionally do art projects or a word search. Then I would be back on watch from 1400 to 1700, and I would sit at the helm and listen to podcasts or music. My afternoon watches were usually quiet because this was the time when the rest of the crew was typically napping.

We would all have dinner together every night and mark our location on our paper charts – talking about the weather for the upcoming night watch and then putting Coronado “to bed,” which meant putting a reef in the sail if it looked like we would have squalls. I would go to sleep between 1930 and 2000, so I could get a good block of sleep before getting up at 0200.

Night watches can be challenging. If there are squalls or a lot of activity with other boats nearby, it can be easy for the time to fly by. But on nights when things are very calm, it can be really hard to stay awake and alert. Everyone had their own strategies for this. I got into a good schedule for my night watches where I would listen to music for 30 min, then make a cup of tea and listen to an audiobook for an hour, then a podcast for an hour, then music again for the last 30 min. This helped break it up and gave me a rhythm to follow. Some nights I just listened to music the entire time and just stared at the stars; they were so beautiful. There was no moon for 90% of my watches, but the plus side was how truly gorgeous the stars were against the dark night sky. I’ve never seen anything like it. We saw Mars and Orion the whole trip (John would watch them rise every night at the beginning of his shift). Sometimes we would see Jupiter and other planets, too. It was phenomenal.

Thanksgiving and Flying Fish

We celebrated Thanksgiving during the crossing. I had a small Christmas tree, some lights, and some ornaments. Cynthia made a delicious turkey breast and mashed potatoes (no small feat in a tiny galley and propane oven), and Shelley made some traditional green bread casserole. We put on Christmas music that we had downloaded to our phones and decorated the tree. It felt good to continue these small traditions at sea.

Sometime at the end of the first week, we had our first flying fish. They are a common occurrence on passages, and the poor things fly right up onto the deck of the boat, where they die and wait to be found at daylight. They make quite a mess, too. The crew strategically placed one on the bow, and he stayed there for a day or two!

In honor of the flying fish, I painted one with watercolors during my watch one afternoon and silently put him as our Christmas tree topper, which got lots of laughs as the rest of the crew noticed him. We named him Squallard, or Squally, to his friends.

Weather

A critical piece of safety equipment we have on Coronado is our Iridium Go. It is a satellite phone with a data plan that allows you to subscribe to weather services (we use PredictWind) and download weather at sea, even in the middle of the Atlantic. It is slow, think dial-up modem speeds, but it does allow us to send text messages or even make a short phone call using the satellite phone feature, which is good peace of mind for emergencies.

The Iridium Go also allowed John to consult several sources of weather information to figure out the path we want to take for the crossing. John would look at weather data in the morning he first woke up and then in the evening again before sunset. 

The following is a high-level overview that John wrote of his weather routing process. There’s a lot more to it than this, but it will give you a sense of how we chose our course.

• NOAA Synaptic Charts: In the morning, I download several synaptic charts from NOAA in the US. These charts look like the weather information you see on the evening news. They show areas of low and high pressure, major wind directions, storms, and fronts. This gives me a big picture of what is going on in the atmosphere. These charts are put together by a meteorologist at NOAA and represent how they interpret the weather.
  
• ARC Weather/Chris Tibbs: The second piece of weather information I use is the forecast provided by meteorologist Chris Tibbs who works with the sailors in the ARC. Chris provides a written forecast broken down into the different regions of the Atlantic Ocean – he divides the ocean into a grid system. I typically read Chris’ forecast while looking at the synaptic charts from NOAA so I have a visual to go with the detailed text forecast.
  
• PredictWind: The final source of weather data is the one I use the most, it’s the plethora of data I can download from PredictWind. I download the wind forecasts provided by six different weather models (the output is in GRIB format). The models are built and maintained by various weather agencies around the world, including some private companies. These models run on massive computers and compute what they think the weather will be like in the future. Their accuracy wanes as you go further out in time, but they’re fairly accurate for up to 72 hours. When looking at the model output, I compare the models to each other and look for consensus. If five of the six models show more wind in one area, then it’s more likely to be windy in that area. I also compare the model’s prediction to what I’m actually seeing. If one model is predicting rain and the others are predicting sunny skies, and it’s actually raining, then that’s the model I will put more weight on when making my decisions. This is ever changing since the model’s accuracy can be high one week and low the next, so every day I look to see which model is king.
  
  With all this information, I make a decision on our course to sail for the next 12 hours or so. I also keep in mind the long-term forecast, so we don’t sail into a storm while chasing good wind, but I have to keep in mind the low accuracy of long-term forecasts.

Time Zones

One other small thing we did that worked very well was adjusting our clocks during the crossing. As we headed west from Las Palmas, we crossed four time zones. Rather than change our clocks when we arrived in St. Lucia, we decided to change them as we made the journey. This meant that every 15 degrees of longitude, we would gain an hour and reset our clocks at 1800 that evening. It worked well and made the four-hour time change more manageable once we arrived in the Caribbean.

Up Next: Part 3 – Squalls, Swimming, and Making Landfall in St. Lucia