Three times across the Pacific Ocean

PACIFIC PASSAGES

Early in 2023 I was in the Caribbean when I decided to return to the Pacific Ocean. There are three obvious routes – via Cape Horn, via the Cape of Good Hope or via the Panama Canal. I ruled out going around Cape Horn as, although I had owned Iron Bark III for four years and had worked hard to make her seaworthy, she was not yet ready for that sort of voyage and perhaps neither was I. Going around Africa and across the Indian Ocean had little appeal. That left sailing to New Zealand via the Panama Canal and tropical Pacific Ocean, an undemanding voyage suited to a solo sailor now past the first blush of youth. 

Iron Bark and friends in New Zealand

 

Past the first blush of youth

The first leg was 1,200 miles from Martinique to Panama, a downwind passage with a patch of accelerated trade winds off Colombia for excitement. We (Iron Bark and I) left Martinique on 23 March 2023 and reached Portobelo in eight days, anchoring at sunset to a chorus of howler monkeys. Two days later I moved 20 miles to Shelter Bay Marina to arrange to transit the canal. There was much discussion among the fleet assembled there on how much fuel was needed to motor 1,000 miles through the light winds that prevail in the Gulf of Panama. Suggesting sailing as an option was unlikely to win friends so I said nothing. After waiting about two weeks for a transit date, I had an uneventful passage through the canal and anchored off Cristobal on 22 April with the Pacific Ocean before me. 

Portobelo was the heavily-defended transit point for treasure being shipped to Spain

 On 24 April I lashed down the dinghy, catted the anchor, stopped the spurling pipe pipe and sailed for Îles Gambier in French Polynesia, 3,800 miles away. Getting clear of the Gulf of Panama and its fickle winds was predictably slow. We made 411 miles in the first week and 470 miles in the next. Perhaps the motor-sailors had a point. Fifteen days out and a little south of the Gálapagos Islands we met the southeast trades and shot off, sailing 2,250 miles in the next 15 days at an average of 150 miles/day. About 500 miles from Îles Gambier the wind faltered. I expected the trades would become less reliable as we approached Gambier but was disappointed to lose them so far out. Thereafter progress was erratic. 

On 31 May, day 37, I went to sleep with Iron Bark running before east-northeast force 4 (a fresh wind) with one reef in the mainsail, half the staysail set for balance and the jib furled. At 0200 (the usual time for such silliness) a thundersquall struck. I tumbled out into 40 or 50 knots of wind and clawed down the mainsail. Before I got it secured the inner forestay parted with a crack like a rifle shot, leaving the staysail and its furler streaming out from the mast. The stay had broken inside the lower swaged terminal, reinforcing my prejudice against rolled swages. The staysail was flogging violently, the foil was broken in several places and its jagged ends were shredding the sail. With some difficulty I got the whole mess frapped to the mast, lashed the helm down and lay ahull. 

At dawn I set a reefed mainsail then spend four hours salvaging what was left of the staysail. The previous year I had rerigged Iron Bark, replacing everything except the inner forestay which I left because I could not get the old furler off the stay and wanted to avoid the expense of a new furler. I believed that the inner forestay's function on Iron Bark is to spread a sail rather than to support the mast and that breaking it would be inconvenient but not catastrophic. I was right. The mast barely twitched but the loss of the staysail was a nuisance. 

 The weather remained changeable with headwinds, calms and two short-lived gales. It took six days to make the remaining 180 miles to Gambier at an average of 1.25 knots. At dawn on 5 June Mangareva, the largest island of the Gambier group, was in sight. The wind remained light and foul and I wanted to get in so motored for 8 hours (!) to anchor, 42 days and 4100 miles from Panama. 

Mangareva's main village, Rickatea, is a pleasant, sleepy place. When I cleared in with the gendarme, he told me that I had to pay a small fee to the local council but could not do that until the supply boat arrived with more money. Small islands often run out of things but usually not money. A few days later the boat arrived, the ATM was refilled and business in Rikatea's four small stores resumed, languidly. 

Mangareva is a high island with some interesting walks

 Repairing the staysail took five days of hand sewing and used all my spare sailcloth. I made a new inner forestay of dyneema and gave the rebuilt staysail a set of hanks. That done I could sample the delights of Mangareva. Mangareva is a high island crisscrossed by walking tracks and I scrambled over most of them. There were 18 yachts anchored off Rikatea including Kat, a large Brazilian ketch with an outgoing and accomplished crew whose company I enjoyed very much. Most of the other boats had little to do with anyone outside their immediate circle, which I thought odd. Later, when I joined the main Pacific yacht route I found this was common. Once anyone who rowed up to a yacht would be invited aboard for a yarn and a coffee or rum depending on the time of day. Now when a dinghy motors up (few except me row), its occupants hang on the the rail while talking to the yacht's crew, who perch on deck. 

 After a stay of three weeks I sailed for Tahiti, intending to stop in the Tuamotus if the weather was fair. Two days out from Mangareva the course-adjusting chain on the Monitor self-steering gear broke, not for the first time, but this time beyond repair. I replaced it with a clamped plywood disk, an awkward arrangement. As I approached Tahanea, the Tuamotuan atoll where I thought I might stop, the wind picked up to east-northeast force 6 (a strong wind) which would make the entrance difficult and the anchorage uncomfortable. Reluctantly I bore away and on 6 July, eight days out from Gambier, anchored inside Tahiti's fringe reef. 

I went ashore, bought a SIM card and caught up on emails. One was from Kayo Ozaki who was anchored a few miles away so I moved along to meet up with her. Kayo is Australian/Japanese and has sailed her Vancouver 34 tens of thousands of miles alone and without fuss. We had breakfast on her boat which was, as always, immaculate. 

 A few days later I sailed across to Moorea. Tahiti and Moorea are only 10 miles apart but the contrast is stark – nine boats at anchor in Moorea's Cooks Bay compared to hundreds in the marinas and anchorages of Papeete. I spent two weeks in Cooks Bay, varnishing, painting and doing minor carpentry jobs with a trip to nearby Opunohu Bay for Max Cambell's birthday party. Max is young and footloose with a cheap, low-tech boat. His boat and crew are much like those that I first went voyaging with in the 1970s but are now rare. With the gentrification of cruising, sailors have become older with larger boats that rely heavily on their engines and electronics. 

Tradewind sailing

 I made an overnight passage to from Moorea to Huahine, and after three days there cleared for Suvarov Atoll. Suvarov is a Cook Island national park staffed by two park rangers. Another five days of trade wind sailing had us in Niuatoputapu, an outlier of Tonga, then on to the Vava'u and Ha'apai Groups in the main part of Tonga, a route familiar from previous voyages. These islands have of course changed since I first visited them 35 years ago. Many Polynesian traditions have disappeared, particularly the culture of shared food. Internet access, increased tourism and more cruising yachts have all contributed to the decline of local culture. 

 In the past 35 years the number of yachts making the trade wind crossing of the Pacific has increased at least 50-fold, encouraged by reliable diesel engines (1970s), satellite navigation (1990s) and internet access at sea (2020s). The change wrought by GPS has been profound. With a bit of practice taking a sun sight then reducing and plotting it is not difficult but navigating this way needs a different mindset to the one that goes with GPS positions that are constantly updated and accurate to a few metres. Making a landfall relying on DR carried forward for 12 hours from celestial sights that themselves had an accuracy of +/-5 miles is unimaginable to many sailors. Satellite comms with frequent weather forecasts and emails from a weather router are now regarded as mandatory for safe navigation, as is the ability to contact shoreside support to deal with equipment problems. The days of sailing when the weather looked fair and dealing with problems as they arose are so far past that to raise that possibility evokes nothing but looks of incomprehension. 

 I met many competent, resourceful and interesting sailors while sailing through Polynesia: young sailors (often French), enthusiastic, ambitious on boats costing less than a RIB and some older sailors of courage and enterprise like Kayo Ozaki and Jeanne Socrates, most on relatively small vessels. However these are exceptions. The boats on the 'milk run' are commonly over 40ft and have large engines that they use extensively, satellite comms and a boatload of gadgets . The crews of these boats are often uncomfortable with those do things differently and regard anyone who sails on or off the anchor or rows a dinghy with suspicion. Iron Bark and I, and others like us, are too different to be accepted. 

 I was anchored in Tonga's Ha'apai Group when the first cyclone of the season formed near Vanuatu. It was time to head south. I cleared customs on 20 October, tacked through Ha'apai's fringe reefs and turned south towards New Zealand, 1,000 miles across the variables. The variables lived up to their name. The wind was erratic, as was our progress - we made runs of 7 miles and 101 miles on successive days. 

In the early hours of 29 October, nine days out from Tonga, a wind shift as a front passed over caught us aback. By the time I had the mainsail down and secured it was blowing a strong gale (force 9) and gusting higher. I ran off under bare poles and deployed the Jordan drogue. By dawn the wind had had eased to force 7 (near gale) and there was no need for the drogue but it was blowing too hard for me to retrieve it. Sometime during the night the drogue's bridle fouled the Monitor paddle and torn it off, leaving me without self-steering. For two days I lay to the drogue wasting a fair wind. Twice I tried to get it in but gave up, finding it hard work in the fresh to strong winds. Twenty years ago I might have clawed it in, but not now. On the third day, five hours of hard work got the drogue aboard. I set the jib but on hoisting the mainsail found it torn. I unbent the sail, dragged it below and worked through the night to patch it. By dawn the mainsail was back up and driving us towards New Zealand. 

 Sailing in the variables is often tedious and was now made more so because I had no self-steering gear. I was not going to hand-steer the remaining 420 miles to New Zealand so rigged various sheet to tiller systems, none entirely satisfactory. A week of slow and far from steady progress brought us to the Bay of Islands on 7 November 2023, 18 days from Tonga. We had sailed 9,100 miles and spent 91 days at sea since leaving Martinique. So ended another Pacific crossing. 

 Iron Bark was due for a refit. I hauled her out at Docklands 5 in Whangarei, an excellent place with friendly staff and within walking distance of nearly everything that I needed – wood, metal, chandlers, machine shops, welders, grocery stores. I rebuilt the rudder and built a trim-tab self-steering system to replace the Monitor, replaced all chain plates, fitted new bollards, a new inner forestay and roller furler and ordered new sails. I abolished the cockpit by cutting out the well and and decking it over. This meant making new cockpit seating and shifting the winches, engine instruments and controls. I built a fife rail around the mast, bought a new kedge anchor and built a mount for it, fitted a feathering propeller, refurbished the dinghy, fitted a new alternator, solar panel and charge controller, painted the topsides and antifouled the bottom. 

 After seven months ashore, I launched Iron Bark and spent the winter and spring of 2024 pottering around the north of New Zealand, visiting old friends and favourite anchorages. In December I set out for Nelson on the north end of the South Island. It is only 500 miles but I never made it. After 10 days of thrashing around in the Tasman Sea in alternating strong headwinds and slatting calms, I lost interest and returned to the Bay of Islands in the North Island to modify the trim tab to improve its performance and consider my next voyage. 

Anchored in Whangaroa, New Zealand

 I decided to sail to Alaska using the direct route. This is a voyage of 7,000 miles, much of it to windward. I thought it would take a little under three months. By leaving in April I hoped to cross the southern hemisphere tropics after the last cyclone of the season then get through the northern hemisphere tropics before the first hurricane of the northern summer, arriving in Alaska in mid-summer. An alternative route is a clockwise circuit of the North Pacific via the Marshal Islands, Philippines, Taiwan and Japan to the Aleutians, but this adds a year to the trip. 

The direct route to Alaska crosses the major wind systems rather than sailing down one of them and can be hard, slow work. After leaving New Zealand we would cross the variables, then the southeast trades, the doldrums, the northeast trades, the northern hemisphere variables and finally the North Pacific westerlies. Making easting against the trades was going to be tedious. 

 On 5 April 2025, I sailed from Opua with a forecast of strong northwest winds. This was more wind than I liked at the start of a voyage but let me make some easting. For five days the wind remained fair and I made 600 miles eastwards, until on day 6 the wind backed to east-southeast force 6 (a strong wind). I settled in for a long bash to windward. For the next 10 days we crashed along close-hauled on whichever tack gave the most easting. Going on deck even briefly meant full foul-weather gear or a soaking. A couple of leaks developed and I hove-to and rebedded the heater's flue and stopped some drips from the ports. Then I found weevils in my porridge oats; harmless but an unnecessary unpleasantness so early in a long voyage. 

 Fifteen days out in latitude 26°S the wind increased to northeast force 7 (near gale) with higher gusts. Beating into this was unrewarding so I hove-to to wait it out. We lost 70 miles of easting in three days before the wind eased and veered. I did not know it at the time, but this was the remnants of an unusually late tropical cyclone. Then followed two happy days of fair south to west winds that I used to sail east. The more comfortable motion encouraged me to clean the cabin and do some laundry, both overdue. It is difficult get enthusiastic about domestic chores while bashing to windward. 

 Late on 24 April, (day 20) in latitude 24°S, the wind backed and freshened – we had reached the southeast trades. We crashed on, close hauled and wet. In five days we made 550 miles to the northeast, good progress but uncomfortable. On day 23 we passed within sight of Takutea, a surf-lashed, uninhabited islet in the Southern Cook Islands. This was the only land that I saw between New Zealand and Alaska. 

 On day 25 in latitude 17°S, longitude 156°W, about 360 miles west of Tahiti, the weather became squally and the wind variable in strength and direction. This was doldrums weather, met much sooner than I hoped or expected. It took ten days of constant sail trimming, reefing and unreefing to creep 600 miles north across this zone of squally, flukey weather and into the northeast trades. 

Waiting on wind in the doldrums

 We reached the northeast trades on day 35 in latitude 5°S. They were moderate to strong and (of course) a headwind. For a week as we slogged north, close hauled, bashing into steep, confused seas kicked up by the Equatorial Counter Current. The hatches were dogged and the cabin hot and humid. We made 720 miles north in that week plus with some easting, a good run but I worked hard for it. On 18 May (day 44) in latitude 8°N, we left the Equatorial Counter Current behind, the seas became more regular and, although we were still hard on the wind, life aboard was more comfortable. This came at the cost of losing hard-won easting because we were now in the west-setting North Equatorial Current. 

 We plodded close-hauled through the northeast trades hoping to pass to windward (east) of Hawaii to avoid the confused winds around those high islands. We made it, just, passing 87 miles east of Hawaii on 24 May (day 48). North of Hawaii weather became cooler, the wind variable and our speed and course erratic as we neared the margin of the northeast trades. 

On 27 May (day 53) on the Tropic of Cancer, the breeze shifted to southwest force 2 (a light breeze) and I gybed on to starboard tack for the first time in 44 days. We had reached the variables. Here, on the west side of the North Pacific high, the breeze was fair and strong when the high was well developed, weak and variable when it was not. Generally fair winds took us from the Tropic of Cancer to 40°N, a distance of 1,000 miles, in nine days with daily runs between 22 and 155 miles. 

 Once north of 40°N I hoped to find westerlies to push us to Sitka but they never blew with any force and the final 1,300 miles took 17 days. Although it was mid-summer, the cabin seemed cold and damp after the warmth of the tropics. We inched our way towards the Alaskan coast using every breath of fair wind until, early on 20 June 2025, Mt Edgecombe's snow-streaked cone showed above a fog bank. The weather forecast, which I could now hear on VHF, promised/threatened several days of calms. I swallowed my pride and motored 45 miles to anchor in Silka Harbor, 77 days from New Zealand. It had been an uneventful passage of 7,272 miles, much of it to windward. 

 Clearing customs was friendly and painless but reprovisioning was not. Sitka is at the at the end of a long supply chain and everything is barged in. Fresh produce is wilted and everything is expensive. The salmon-fishing season was in full swing and the fishing boat harbour was buzzing. Bald eagles perched on mastheads waiting for discarded fish and gulls wheeled and cried. 

The locals were friendly and outgoing. I met Mildred when she rowed by on her 20ft dory. I invited her aboard Iron Bark for a coffee and Mildred in turn invited me to her boat for dinner. She lives on a 32ft wooden ex-fishing boat, undecked, with bare sitting headroom under its canvas canopy. The boat is fitted out comfortably but simple with no engine or electricity. Not many people could live as happily as Mildred does on this spartan vessel. Incidentally, Mildred is 80 years old. 

 After a week in Sitka, I pushed off to have a look at the maze of islands and channels that form the coast of southwest Alaska. It is a glaciated landscape with narrow channels and deep anchorages. The wind funnels along the channels and there is much motoring. The tides run hard with whirlpools and standing waves in the numerous narrows. Everyone waits for slack water at these choke points. The scenery is spectacular, when you can see it through the low overcast and drizzle. There is a lot of wildlife – brown bears, deer, humpback whales, seals and many bald eagles. 

Alaskan scenery is grand on a good day

But it is often hidden

 I pottered around for three weeks, traveling about 300 miles along waterways with names like Peril Strait, Icy Strait and Chatham Strait, almost entirely under motor. Motoring is not my preferred mode of travel especially if it means hand- steering in the rain and Iron Bark's cockpit has no shelter. I decided that I would rather be sailing at sea than motoring in coastal waters so returned to Sitka and prepared to sail back to New Zealand. 

 I expected that the return voyage would have more fair winds than the outward one. For the first 1,500 miles we would stay within a few hundred miles of the the American coast to make the most of the northerlies on the east side of the North Pacific high. These northerlies would weaken as we sailed south but should carry us to the northeast trades and, more more importantly, into the hurricane belt. We would be crossing the hurricane belt in the worst months of the year for hurricanes. I intended to sail directly south to get through the hurricane zone as quickly as possible. This would add weeks to the passage as it meant crossing the doldrums at their widest point but I thought this a price worth paying if it reduced, even slightly, the odds of meeting a hurricane. To further mitigate the risk of hurricanes I bought a Starlink. A small vessel is unlikely to survive an encounter with a hurricane but hurricanes are quite compact and, with a bit of warning, can often be avoided. Starlink provided that warning at the cost of destroying the self-sufficient cocoon that is a small vessel on an ocean passage. 

 On 12 August 2025 I cleared from Sitka for New Zealand. A low over the Gulf of Alaska was forecast to bring fresh to strong north to west winds for several days – fair winds for a passage south. I motored out from the lee of the land into a southeast breeze that quickly backed and freshened. By the third day it was north-northwest force 7 (near gale), a fair wind but uncomfortable. We ran before it making five or six knots under only a corner of the staysail. The wind eased slowly until, a week after leaving Sitka the low that had given us such a grand start moved on, leaving us slopping about in light headwinds about 400 miles offshore from the Canada-USA border. 

Fair north winds were forecast to develop close to the coast so I tacked inshore to find them. Two days later we met the stirrings of the northerly which slowly freshened. For six days we ran on, making a useful 720 miles south until the North Pacific high collapsed taking our fair north wind with it. This left us slatting in light airs 500 miles west of Los Angeles. 

 Using Starlink, I was tracking several tropical storm systems south of us. None was a threat until hurricane Kiko formed off the Mexican coast on 31 August. Kiko quickly intensified to a category 4 hurricane (115-150 knots). Its predicted path was west along 13°N. I slowed down to let Kiko pass ahead of us, which it did on 4 September. The wind was generally light as we worked slowly south towards the Tropic of Cancer. There, on 5 September (day 24), we met the fresh, fair winds of the northeast trades. Once in the trades I stood south as planned to get out of the hurricane belt as quickly as possible. Six days on a fast reach took us out of the hurricane belt without another scare. 

 We lost the northeast trades and met southwest winds in latitude 12°40' on 10 September (day 29). There was little chance of a fair wind between here and the equator, 760 miles away, and I settled in for a long beat to windward. We bashed slowly south for 10 days, not helped by the east-setting Equatorial Counter Current. The Coriolis Effect causes the to wind back slowly from southwest at 12°N to south at 5°N and eventually south-southeast near the equator. I followed the wind around close-hauled on starboard tack losing ground to the east until, close to the equator, I could tack and lay Nuku Hiva, the main island of the Marquesas. 

 Five days on a pleasant shy reach took us from the equator to Taiohae, the chief village on Nuku Hiva, where we anchored on 27 September, 46 days and 4983 miles from Sitka. It was Saturday and nothing was open. On Monday I cleared customs and tried to arrange for a diver to scrub the hull to avoid biosecurity problems in New Zealand and to top up my water. The island's diver was away so the bottom went unscrubbed and the local water was condemned as undrinkable. I bought some pamplemouse and beer as consolation and left on 2 October. 

 New Zealand was 3,200 miles away and the cyclone season less than a month off so I needed to keep moving. We were now in the SE trades with 2,500 miles of fast, easy sailing ahead. A comfortable two-week passage took us north of Tahiti to Beveridge Reef (20°S, 167°W). Beveridge Reef is awash at high water and 120 miles from the nearest land – no bureaucratic delays if I stopped there. My chart lacked detail but the pass through the reef was easy and the lagoon largely clear of coral heads. I spent a night at anchor and, with time pressing, pushed on. 

 Another six days of trade wind sailing brought us to North Minerva Reef, which like Beveridge Reef is a coral atoll with no permanent land. We arrived after dark and sailed into the lagoon the next morning when the sun was high enough to see the coral heads. I have been to Minerva Reef before and each time there are more yachts: just me 1989, 4 in 2006 and now 35 yachts in 2025. It has become the place for yachts bound from Fiji or Tonga towards New Zealand to wait for a 'weather window' (a horrible term) before heading south. I rowed around the fleet but saw no one that I knew. Once or twice my hail was returned but, not being part of any social media group, that was the extent of it. 

I sailed from Minerva on 26 October with light airs forecast for several days. Minerva is at the southern limit of the southeast trades and the rest of the passage to New Zealand was in the variables. We idled slowly southward to 30°S in six days and there met a fresh east wind. Three days of this fine breeze carried us to within 50 miles of the Bay of Islands where the wind died. After a night rolling and slatting I gave up and motored 35 miles to Opua, arriving on 5 November 2025, 10 days and 872 miles from Minerva Reef. The 7,800 mile voyage from Alaska to New Zealand had taken 77 days at sea plus 8 days at anchor. 

Back in New Zealand

In the seven months since leaving New Zealand we had sailed about 15,000 miles excluding coastal passages and spent 154 days at sea. We had survived no great storms nor explored uncharted waters but any voyage of that length has its moments and memories.

Notes on the use of a Jordan drogue

NOTES ON THE USE OF A JORDAN DROGUE

 In 2015 I bought a Jordan-type series drogue for my 35ft gaff cutter Iron Bark II. She displaces 11 tonnes fully loaded so the drogue was 97m long with 124 cones. The leader and first section of drogue was 19mm double-braid nylon and the tail section 14mm double braid.

 In the following three years I sailed from Scotland to Labrador and did a circumnavigation via the southern capes with stops in Western Australia, New Zealand, the Antarctic Peninsula, Falkland Islands and Ireland.  I deployed the drogue a total of 11 times on this voyage, all in the Southern Ocean. Here is what I learned along the way.

 

Deployment

The Jordan series drogue is attached to the boat by a bridle that is led to either strong posts well aft or chain plates attached to the stern quarters. These attachment points need to be able to take a strain equal to about half the vessel's displacement. Iron Bark II is steel so providing adequate strong posts on the stern quarters was simple. A GRP vessel will probably use chain plates, which will be of similar dimensions to the shroud chainplates. Any shackles need to be able to take strain equal to about half of the vessel's displacement.

Initially I stowed the drogue in a large sail bag, with its weighted outboard end on top and the eyes of the bridle led to the top of the bag and thus accessible. When the time came to deploy the drogue, I hauled the bag into the cockpit, lashed it down and pulled the eyes at the end of the bridle out of the bag and looped them over the strong posts on the quarters with one leg of the bridle led around the stern, clear of rudder and self-steering gear. At this stage the boat was running at 4-6 knots under bare poles with the Aries servo-pendulum gear steering.

 Having checked there nothing was likely to foul, I threw the weighted outer end of the drogue overboard and leapt clear. The drogue ran out very rapidly. Any snarl at this stage would be a serious matter as there is a lot of strain on it.  Getting a hand or foot caught in a loop as the drogue ran out could be life threatening.

 Ideally the drogue runs through some sort of fair lead to prevent it flicking around the cockpit as it pays out, reducing the chances of it fouling on a winch or something similar. I ran it between two closely-spaced stanchions on Iron Bark II's stern, which worked well as they are strong and well attached. A GRP vessel’s stanchions are seldom strong enough for this and some other method will need to be devised to control the drogue as it runs out.

 A much better arrangement is for the drogue to have a dedicated deck locker that feeds the drogue out cleanly. On arrival in Australia, having at that stage used the drogue three times, I built a such a locker. The new locker let the drogue run out in a manner that was unlikely to foul anything. It also made easier to flake it down out neatly so that there were unlikely to be snarls when it was next used. Another benefit was that it eliminated the need to manhandle a bag filled with about 100 metres of rope further weighed down with over 100 cones. Getting that bag up the companionway when the drogue was dry was hard work; it was near the limits of my strength to do it when the nylon double braid was sodden.

 I have seen specially made holders consisting of a sheet of canvas with loops to hold the drogue. Doubtless they work and ensure the drogue runs out cleanly, but replacing the drogue into its holder in the confines of a small vessel is likely to be difficult. This means the drogue will not be ready for another deployment. This sort of holder is probably unsuitable for longer, rougher voyages, especially those in the Southern Ocean, where multiple deployments are likely.

 

Running with the drogue

The drogue ran out cleanly and immediately pulled the stern into the wind. Iron Bark II ran steadily downwind making about 1-1/4 knots through the water with no hint of broaching. Although she shipped a few wave tops, no heavy water came aboard. The strain on the drogue was considerable, but steady with no abrupt shocks. It was akin to being on a bungy cord. I concluded that I should have had this bit of equipment years ago and nothing in my subsequent experiences using the Jordan drogue has made me revise that opinion.

Before deploying the drogue, I tied a stout rope to the junction of the bridle legs and the drogue leader. This third leg to the bridle is a lazy line that I kept under just enough tension to stop it fouling on anything without taking any strain. The line makes it easier to get in the first few metres of the drogue on retrieval, but its chief function is to allow me to steer across the wind by up to 30°.

Drogue deployed with lazy line to the bridle junction. The lazy line is used for both steering and retrieval

To steer across the wind, I took tension on the lazy line, slightly shortened the bridle on the side that I want to turn towards. With the strain on the lazy line, I took another turn or two around the bollard with the bridle, then eased off the lazy line. The slightly asymmetrical bridle legs now steered the boat across the wind.

 In the southern hemisphere the wind shifts from northwest to southwest on the passage of a cold front. Running before the new southwest wind puts the old northwest sea abeam, which can be dangerous until the northwest swell dies away. Turning 20° or 30° to starboard and taking the old sea on the port quarter and the new sea on the starboard quarter is safer. As the old NW sea decreases, course is altered to run downwind by lengthening the shortened bridle leg, bringing the developing SW swell is more directly astern.

 

Retrieval

Once the weather moderated, I set about hauling the drogue back aboard. Ideally, I would wait until the wind was 15 knots or less, but deep in the Southern Ocean this could mean waiting a long time. More typically it was still blowing 25 to 30 knots and quite rough when I started to get the drogue back aboard. I used a 20-metre-long messenger line of 12mm diameter led forward from the cockpit, through a block attached to a strong point on the foredeck then back to the stern. This line was tied to the drogue on the stern quarter using a rolling hitch. I took a couple of turns around a sheet winch with the tail of this messenger line and hauled away. This immediately brought the drogue abeam, with the boat rolling heavily beam on to the seas. To get the drogue in, I would have to pull the boat sideways against wind and sea, which was clearly impossible. I changed the lead of the messenger so that it led between the stanchions that I had used to keep the drogue under control as it ran out. This kept the drogue over the stern as I hauled it in.

Retrieving the drogue using a stanchion as a fairlead keep the drogue streaming aft.

Once I sorted that out, retrieving the drogue was straightforward. I hauled on the retrieval line using a winch as a snubber (no handle) and each time the stern dipped to a wave I got in half a metre of slack. It was 7 metres from the winch to the turning block on the foredeck. When I had hauled in that much drogue and the rolling hitch reached the block at the bow, I belayed the drogue with a short length of line attached to the stern quarter, again using a rolling hitch. With the weight off the messenger line, I
could then haul the newly-retrieved length of drogue back into the cockpit, undo the retrieval line and reattached it to the drogue close to the belaying line. I then cast off the belaying line and repeated the process, getting 7 metres of drogue in with each cycle. The amount retrieved on each cycle of course depends on boat size and whether it has a centre cockpit.

Retrieving the drogue with a messenger line led through a turning block on the foredeck then aft to a sheet winch

 Unexpectedly, I found the only time that I needed to use the winch handle was to haul in the last 20 metres of so of the drogue. At this stage the drogue was hanging nearly straight down and I was pulling the weighted end directly up with little help from the boat’s motion, which I found to be hard work so I used the winch to wind it up, rather than just using the winch for snubbing.

 I used a messenger line as the drum on my cockpit winch was not large enough to prevent the drogue slipping if I lead it directly to the winch. The relatively large diameter drogue line did not grip well when there was a drogue cone on the winch drum, hence the use of a smaller-diameter messenger line. A vessel with larger winches could probably lead the drogue directly to a suitably-sited winch. I am told by a very experience friend that with two people to do the job, it goes much more quickly when the lighter person tails on the winch and the heavier person sweats on the drogue aft of the winch and no messenger line is necessary if the winch is large enough.

 The time taken to retrieve the drogue varied with wind and sea state. In a rough sea and 25 knot wind, it takes me 2-1/2 to 3 hours to get the drogue back aboard, coiled down and the boat sailing again. Hauling in the drogue requires a steady, sustained effort but no great feats strength. I am neither young nor strong, being over 70 years old and weighing less than 60kg, and can do it so the job should be within the capabilities of any one who is moderately fit.

Different cockpit layouts will require different ways of retrieval. If the method chosen is impossibly heavy (as mine was initially when the drogue streamed abeam with the messenger led directly to the winch), look to modify how things are being done. Retrieval is a matter of technique and persistence rather than brute strength, the emphasis being on persistence.

 

Problems, actual and potential

Fouling the self-steering gear.

In December 2016, I continued on from Western Australia towards Cape Horn, making my easting in the west winds south of 40°S. Predictably I encountered several gales/storms in which I used the drogue. Much has been written about the seas that develop in those latitudes and they really are huge, majestic and terrifying. Some were so large that Iron Bark II was nearly becalmed in the troughs and the drogue went slack, allowing a bight of the bridle to wash around the self steering gear. Twice I managed to free it; the third time I was not quick enough and the drogue tore off the whole lower leg of the self-steering gear when the boat surged forward at the top of the next wave.

 This problem is likely to occur on any yacht that has a self-steering gear over the stern that does not have its bottom end  attached to the hull. A servo pendulum gear or an auxiliary rudder type are the most likely to have this issue. When I rebuilt the self-steering system in New Zealand, I changed it to a trim tab on the main rudder, which eliminated the problem. A vessel with a spade rudder well aft might consider running a deflector wire from the rudder to the back of the keel to prevent the drogue from taking a turn around the rudder with potentially catastrophic results.

 Damage to the cones after multiple deployments

Without a working self-steering gear, I was unlikely to be able to get around Cape Horn before the onset of winter, so I turned north towards New Zealand to refit. I used the drogue several more times before I arrived in New Zealand. By the time I got there many of its cloth cones were damaged and some were nearly demolished. At that stage I had used the drogue six times for a total of 138 hours. About half of that time was in gale or stronger conditions; the other half was waiting for the wind to ease enough for me to retrieve the drogue.

 The damage to the cones was due to the fabric fraying in the same manner that a flag flogs itself to pieces. The tapes, stitching and hemming was not damaged. On arrival in New Zealand, I contacted OceanBrake, the supplier of this drogue and they immediately offered to replace the cones at no charge. I thought this very generous and asked that, once they had sourced a different material for the new cones, that they send me replacement for half of them.

Cone element that disintegrated after multiple deployments

 The cones that failed were made of woven polyester with a rubber-like backing film. This backing film flaked off after extensive use which then allowed the relatively loosely woven polyester to shake itself to pieces. The new cones were beautifully made of heavy-duty woven polyester cloth with no fill or backing material with heavy-duty tape tabling at both ends of the cone. In the spirit of enquiry, I ordered a set of cones from Ace Sailmakers, another major supplier of Jordan-type drogues. These cones were made of heavy sailcloth and only hemmed at the big end.

 When I refurbished my drogue, I alternated cones from OceanBrake and Ace Sailmakers to compare their durability. On the next leg of the voyage from New Zealand back into the Atlantic by way of the Antarctic Peninsula and Cape Horn, I used this combination drogue five times for a total of 5-1/4 days. At the end of it, the sailcloth cones from Ace Sailmakers had minor fraying around the unhemmed small ends while the cones from OceanBrake were in pristine condition. Either looked good for much more hard usage. Both companies have had problems with the longevity of their cones in the past and each has successfully addressed the issue. I believe that the new-style cones supplied by OceanBrake and Ace Sailmakers are both fit for purpose. I have a slight preference for those from OceanBrake, but either will do.

OceanBrake and Ace Sailmakers cones alternated to replace those that failed due to fatigue. The white cones with green tabling at each end are from OceanBrake, the white cones with no tabling are from Ace Sailmakers. The yellow cone is one of the original type that failed.

Cones made of rip stop nylon have been supplied by some companies. It is reported that their life in heavy weather is only a few hours. I have no experience with them but believe they are best avoided.

 Use of Dyneema in place of nylon double braid

This seems to be a potentially valuable improvement, dramatically reducing the bulk and weight of the drogue, especially when it is wet. Dyneema is very slippery, which may complicate its retrieval as it is likely to slip on a winch barrel, but this problem should be solvable. I believe OceanBrake has done some research on this problem and offers a solution to it.

Conclusions

 The Jordan drogue is a valuable, potentially life saving tool for managing small craft in heavy weather. Its worth is greatest in small vessels with weak crews sailing in the high southern latitudes. I would not make another long Southern Ocean voyage without one, particularly in a vessel under 40ft.

ATLANTIC CIRCUIT, PART 3. Ireland to the Caribbean

 

ATLANTIC CIRCUIT, PART 3.

Ireland to the Caribbean

 I arrived in Ireland on 9 August 2022 after turning away from the Greenland coast due to ice, fog and an engine failure (and perhaps lack of moral fibre – the ice was not that thick) and spent a month in Bantry Bay.  I have friends in that district and the time passed pleasantly, sorting out broken gear, drinking Guinness and socialising. By early September, if not 'in all respects ready for sea', a delusionally optimistic concept, I felt that Iron Bark III was ready for an unchallenging passage. She had a new gooseneck and alternator mount, sails were repaired (including resewing the sunstrip to the staysail by hand, several days of work with needle, palm and awl) and she was provisioned and watered.

Anchored in Bantry Bay

I left on 12 September with a forecast of north and east winds for five days, strong to near gale force at times. This is more wind than I liked but too good to pass up, being a fair wind in an area where the prevailing wind is southwest and foul for the passage. The forecast was accurate. Three days running under deep reefed sails (staysail alone at times), got me clear of the Celtic Sea and around Ushant with 300 miles of sea room. There was a great deal of shipping bound to and from the English Channel and I did not get much sleep.

 Southbound from Ireland or Britain unless bound for a port in the Bay of Biscay or northern Spain, I think it is wise to make as much westing as possible early in the passage. Beginning from Ireland instead of the south coast of England makes this a lot easier as it gave me a 200 mile start to the west. On previous voyages coming this way I sailed from Cornwall and had to work hard to make my westing.

 A strong, fair wind took me out to 12°30’W where I turned south. The wind remained fair and strong, increasing to near gale force (F7) in the latitude of Cape Finisterre, the southern point of the Bay of Biscay. East winds are often accelerated around Cape Finisterre and I felt this even though I was 200 miles offshore. I expected the wind would moderate and back to the north as I sailed down the Iberian Peninsula, which it did to the extent that I was becalmed at times, with one day's run down to 48 miles. Shipping became more common as I closed Cape St Vincent, the southwest corner of Portugal, and again I got little sleep.

 Up to then I had kept well offshore, in part to avoid shipping and in part to avoid Orcas. The pod of Orcas off the Portuguese coast is a bloody nuisance. There have been several hundred 'interactions', all with yachts of less than 15 metres. A couple of yachts have been sunk and more than 25 have been towed in after their rudders were torn off by these Orcas. I rounded Cape St Vincent with my rudder unchewed and anchored close behind that cape in Sagres Bay, 11 days from Ireland.

 There is a wind acceleration zone around Cape St Vincent that affects Sagres Bay and it was blowing 25-30kt in the anchorage. There seemed to be little ashore other than large crowds of tourists so I did not bother to launch the dinghy. After a day's rest I pushed on east and made a short overnight passage to anchor in the mouth of the Guadiana River on 25 September. The next morning, I took the flood tide 20 miles up the river to meet up with friends that I knew were anchored near the village of Alcoutim.

Anchored on the Guadiana River near Alcoutim

 The Guadiana River winds between rocky, scrub-covered hills with a small village every 10 miles or so. It is attractive and relatively undeveloped – the sort of place that I like. My friends, Miki Knoll and Karl Bitz on their Nicholson 32 Faï Tira, had been had been on the Guadiana River for over a year and knew the area and its people well. With Karl as a guide (Miki was off visiting family in Germany), I had some fine walks and met an interesting group of expats living along the river. There is a network of narrow-gauge railway lines, now long disused, that serviced small mines that formerly dotted the hinterland. The railbeds and their tunnels winding around and through the steep hillsides make for interesting walks, and Karl knew them all. The tide runs hard in the river, something to plan around when rowing a couple of miles to the village for a loaf of bread or bottle of wine. It pays to keep in mind what the moon is doing.

The banks of  the Guadiana River are relatively undeveloped

Walking along old rail beds and tunnels near the Guadiana River

The north wind that carried Iron Bark so quickly and comfortably to the Guadiana River was succeeded by a protracted period of southwest winds, headwinds for a passage further south and I was content to stay up the river and potter on with small carpentry jobs. I also gave Karl a hand to dry Faȉ Tira between tides against a wall in Alcoutim. What should have been a simple antifouling job turned out to be rather tense. It took two tries on successive tides to get the boat against the rather short wall on the ramp. That far up the river, wind direction has a big effect on the water level and throws tide predictions off. When it came time to dry out Faȉ Tira, the tide was not as big as predicted and Faȉ Tira grounded far enough from the wall for it to be likely that she would fall away from the wall as the tide went out. Karl winched her off using a line led around a spit post, but it was a bit too close for comfort. Getting Faȉ Tira off after scrubbing and antifouling also took two tries due to the tide height being less than predicted.

 Faȉ Tira running down the Guadiana River

 After a pleasant 6 weeks on the Guadiana River, I sailed for the Canaries on 2 November 2022, with a forecast for fresh north winds for several days. Faȉ Tira was obviously looking at the same forecast and sailed for the Canaries the same day. The forecast wind never appeared and the passage was made in light airs and headwinds - nothing difficult, but slow. My first day’s run was a modest 102 miles, and that was the best that I did for the entire passage. A couple of small striped pilot fish tagged along, as they often do. They did not need to work very hard to keep up with Iron Bark.

There was not much wind on the passage from the Guadiana River to the Canaries.

 It took me nine days to make good 580 nautical miles from the Guadiana to the Canaries. I anchored at Playa del Risco on the north coast of Lanzarote near Faȉ Tira, who had arrived a couple of hours earlier despite being several feet shorter on the waterline. However they were not dragging a propeller (Faȉ Tira has an outboard engine) and Karl and Miki are about half my age and rather more spry than me, which probably helped too.

 The Canaries are over-run with tourists, crowded, expensive and tacky – all things that I went to sea to avoid. However, they are such an obvious stop when bound south or west from Europe that it is difficult to go around them, and there is always the chance of meeting interesting vessels there. Thus it was this time. Predictably Faȉ Tira was there, but amongst the usual collection of AWBs (Average White Boats) anchored at Playa del Risco there was a purple junk schooner. I rowed over and found it was Kokachin, Pete Hill and Linda Crew-Gee’s new boat. A happy reunion followed. I first met Pete in the Canaries in 1986 on Badger, another junk schooner. Pete has sailed an eclectic selection of vessels, mostly self-built, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and is a superlative seaman but unassuming to the point of being nearly invisible except to his friends.

 A few days later the authorities evicted us from Playa del Risco for no apparent reason other than that they would prefer that yachts only berthed in marinas (a good reason not to go to the Canaries if you dislike marinas as much as I do). Our little flotilla of Kokachin, Faȉ Tira and Iron Bark moved to the south coast of Lanzarote and anchored off the town of Playa Blanca. Playa Blanca is entirely given over to restaurants, bars and tourist tat with little in the way of provisions available. It also has the inevitable large marina. I bought some onions and wine in town and later rowed into the marina with a few jerry cans to buy some water. I was immediately ejected. Only vessels under power are allowed in the marina – louts on jet skis are welcome, sailors rowing are not. I did manage to fill my 30 litres of cans, for which I was charged €15.

 Having had enough of this style of yachting, I decided to leave the Canaries immediately and henceforth to make whatever diversion necessary to avoid visiting them again. Pete and Linda invited Miki, Karl and I to dinner on Kokachin and we agreed to meet up in Carriacou, in the Eastern Caribbean in the new year. 

The next morning, I sailed for the Gambia in West Africa. The Republic of Gambia is one of Africa’s smallest countries. It is a narrow strip of land on either side of the Gambia River, entirely surrounded by Senegal. The river is navigable for over 200 miles, little developed and its people have a reputation for being friendly and non-violent, which is far from universal in Africa.

 It is about 1000 miles from Lanzarote to the mouth of the Gambia River, which I expected to be an easy trade wind passage. It took me a day to work through the alternating wind shadows and wind acceleration zones around the Canary Islands, dodging ships, yachts and fishing boats, before I found a steady, fair breeze and uncrowded water. Four days of this breeze carried us into the tropics and into the haze of Sahara dust. I kept about 100 miles out from the African shore to avoid the numerous fishing canoes and small boats in shallower water. There was a steady stream of merchant vessels out where I was, but they have AIS to wake a single hander, unlike the fishing boats.

 Nine days out from the Canaries I hauled on to the wind and closed the coast with visibility reduced to two miles by Sahara dust. Despite the poor visibility, there were numerous signs that land was near – butterflies, flies and a whiff of woodsmoke in the wind. The edge of the continental shelf was marked by the first of numerous fishing boats, which appeared and disappeared through the haze. Closer inshore that evening there was a plethora of fishing canoes that signalled their presence by with a variable array of flashing lights. At midnight I hove-to, drifting with the tide, to wait on daylight to enter the river.

 Daylight showed we were in muddy river water shallow enough to have an unpleasant tidal lop. I made sail and beat in against a fresh trade wind reinforced by the overnight land breeze with a strong ebb tide setting us backwards. Low land and slightly higher buildings appeared, the land breeze died and the incipient sea breeze killed the remnants of the trade wind. This left me drifting between some derelict-looking anchored merchant ships, so I gave up, started the engine and motored the final 5 miles to anchor off the port of Half Die, so named following a cholera epidemic in the nineteenth century. It had been an easy, untroubled passage of 10 days whose details would soon be forgotten without reference to the log.

The low coast of Gambia through Sahara dust

 I launched the dinghy and rowed ashore to clear in and had not walked far down the dusty street towards the port offices when a small, active man approached, introduced himself as Bailo and offered to act as my guide. Looking a little lost and the having the only white face in the street made me an obvious mark. I accepted and was soon grateful for his assistance. I knew that I would need some local currency for port charges but the ATMs at the first two banks were out of order and the banks would not change money over the counter, but Bailo found an ATM that worked. Then he led me to buy a SIM for my phone to get photocopies of mt passport and ship’s papers, which he said (correctly) would be needed to clear in. As about half the town is without electricity at any time, finding a working photocopier requires local knowledge. Then the actual business of clearing in required attending customs, immigration, quarantine and the port captain in the right order, each lurking in an unmarked office scattered around the port area. Without someone to show me the way I would have taken most of the day to sort things out. As it was, we were done by 1300hrs. For his efforts, Bailo asked the price of a sack of rice (€25), which I thought fair.

 The anchorage off Half Die is convenient to town with a pontoon landing for a dinghy, but unless one has business in Half Die or the capital, Banjul, has little other attraction. It is on a mud flat littered with several dozen wrecks and rather choppy with wind against tide. The next day I moved 7 miles Lamin Lodge, Gambia’s yachting centre, tucked away up a mangrove creek. There were about 20 yachts anchored off the lodge, about half inhabited and about half more or less derelict, with a considerable overlap between the two categories. The lodge itself is a ramshackle affair, built stakes driven into the mud, floored and walled with half-round flitches with some very large gaps between them. Vervet monkey scurrying around remind you that this is Africa. The staff and owners of Lamin Lodge are Muslim, as are most of the population of the Gambia, but they do not mind selling cold beer to itinerant yachtsmen. The owners and staff will graciously accept a drink if you offer to buy them one, but of fruit juice only. Muslims, Christians and animist seem to rub along well in the Gambia. As Friday is a Muslim holiday and Sunday a Christian one, many people  regard it as a waste of time coming to work on Saturday so much of the place has a permanent long weekend.

Lamin Lodge, the Gambia. The closer you get, the more ramshackle it looks.

 I stayed at Lamin Lodge for two days then headed off upriver. The river is tidal for several hundred miles and pays to work the tides. Going upriver one can carry a fair tide for 7 or 7-1/2 hours, depending boat speed. The shorter ebb coming downstream is compensated for by its greater strength as the ebb stream is added to the river’s flow. The tide turns as much as 1-1/2 hours after high or low water. Motoring at 4 knots through the water, a yacht will make about 40 miles per day in either direction without bucking a foul tide. Under sail, I usually covered 35 to 40 miles to make good about 25 miles.

The river is muddy and the bottom is invisible in water deeper than half a metre, making eye-ball navigation impossible. The mouth of the river is charted to modern standards but once 10 miles upriver from Banjul/Half Die the chart depends on a 19^th century lead-line survey, which of course is not on a modern datum. The digital Navionics chart that I used seems to have the picked up the coordinates of the river banks from a modern source that corresponds closely to WGS84. The soundings from the old survey were then superimposed to give a best fit with the river banks. The result is that soundings do not align exactly with either the river banks or to WGS84. The combination of muddy water and offset soundings make the occasional grounding likely but as the bottom is soft mud, this is seldom serious. Grounding while going upstream, the flood tide will soon lift you off. A grounding coming downstream with the ebb means waiting to the tide to turn unless you are quick to go astern and can get off before the tide sews you. However, the general lie of the banks is as charted with one notable exception (more on that later) and the mud gives a surprisingly good depth sounder reflection so navigation is not difficult.

 I took the flood tide upstream, sailing if there was any wind at all and motoring if it was calm, and anchored when the tide turned. There was usually a light north or north east breeze until about midday, then a calm. The tide turned later each day as I headed upstream and on the third day, by the time the flood stream began, the morning breeze had died, which meant motoring for 7 or 8 hours. This made the cabin very hot.

 The Gambia River is crossed by a bridge about 70 miles from its mouth, and it was here that I first touched bottom. It was late in the day and I was nosing along under motor nearly midstream about a mile or so downstream from the bridge, preparing to anchor for the night when Iron Bark stopped responding to the rudder. The mud was so soft that I did not feel her touch. We were doing less than two knots and, although the tide was falling, we came off readily by going hard astern. The chart showed 15m there and even allowing for a datum offset, there should have been plenty of water there. The bridge pontoons have apparently altered the river flow so that an extensive mud bank has built out from the north shore and the deep channel is now close to the south side of the river.

 The bridge has a charted clearance of 16.5m (55ft) so I decided to wait until near low water to go under it, although Iron Bark’s mast is only 16.2m. In fact there appeared to be plenty of clearance and I have since been told that there is no problem getting 18m (60ft) through at low water. Five miles above the bridge is an uncharted overhead power cable with a considerable amount of sag in its middle. It is hard to estimate vertical clearance from deck level so I went under it where it is highest, close to the shore near a pylon, but looking back the middle appeared to be at least as high as the bridge. Any vessel that can get under the bridge can probably ignore the cable.

 The river had been getting fresher with each mile upstream and was barely brackish even on the flood tide at the bridge. With the change in salinity, we left behind the dolphins and flamingos that made pink patches against the shore and tropical rainforest replaced the mangroves of the lower river. Above the bridge there were fishing canoe everywhere and numerous nets to dodge.

Fishing canoe

 When two days above the Senegambia Bridge I anchored as usual when the tide turned against me. That stretch of river appeared uninhabited but the night was disturbed by loud explosions at irregular intervals and of unfathomable (to me) origin. Later I learned they be air gun blasts to deter hippopotamus from destroying rice fields some distance back from the river.

 On 11 December 2022, I anchored at the large village/small town of Kuntaur, having taken 5 days to make 140 miles from Lamin Lodge. I had seen two yachts below the bridge and one above it. Just above Kuntaur is the Baboon Islands National Park, which has chimpanzees (re-introduced in the 1970s after being hunter to extinction) and allegedly hippopotamus. I thought there was little chance of seeing either from the deck of Iron Bark so took a tour in a canoe with an outboard engine and saw both.

Hippopotamus and chimpanzees

The engine's raw water pump was playing up - it did not like the silty river water. The pump was leaking a little and had broken a drive belt just below the bridge. I had enough spares to rebuild the pump but was worried that the drive shaft was scored. There was a fair chance that I would do more harm than good by attempting to fix it so decided to leave it and do as little motoring as possible. That meant turning back at Kuntaur, although the river is navigable for another 50 or 60 miles. 

As expected, the trip downriver was faster due to the stronger ebb current, but as one was rushing down to meet the incoming tide, the ebb only lasted 5 hours or so. The second day after leaving Kunaur and 20 miles upstream from the bridge, the engine surged and died. There was little wind and progress was entirely dependent on tide and engine so I angled in to the shore and anchored. It sounded like a fuel problem, and it was. The electric transfer pump that fills the day tank from the keel tank had stopped pumping although it still made the same noise and drew the usual current. I filled the day tank by pumping diesel from the keel tank into a jerry can with a portable hand pump then siphoned it from the jerry can to the day tank. It was messyķ but not difficult and I was soon on my way again.

 That night I anchored just above the bridge. Next morning, I motored under it at low water and, as there was a light breeze, made sail and shut down the engine. I was at the mast tidying up halyards when we went aground midriver, two miles below the bridge. Despite my experience coming up river, I had not allowed enough for the extension of the mud bank below the bridge. By the time I had scrambled aft and started the engine the tide had fallen too far for us to get off. The keel sank into mud so soft that at low water when there was only 0.7m of water around the boat, we remained upright with the waterline only 20cm higher than usual. The incoming tide floated us off in the evening and I motored a mile to the south (deep) side of the river and anchored for the night.

More worrying was the fact that the raw water pump was leaking more with every hour of use. If necessary and  with enough patience I could make my way down the river and into open water under sail, though given the light airs that prevail upriver, that might take a long time. As I  had no desire to spend weeks on the downriver voyage, I  used the engine nearly continuously for the four days it took to reach Half Die. By the time I was anchored off Half Die, the water pump was leaking badly enough that I decided not to use the engine again until I could do a proper job on it.

 I reached Half Die on the evening of 17 December and went ashore the following day to do some shopping. Not knowing the place, it took me two days to buy and stow food and water for an Atlantic crossing. The piped water in Half Die is untreated and there is a fair chance of getting something nasty from it – cholera for instance. Given the etymology of the name Half Die, I cautiously (cravenly?) filled the tank with 54 litres of bottled water. It was cheaper than piped water from in the Canaries.

 Rebuilding the raw water pump was likely to take two days, with no guarantee of success. It was now 19 December, so that would take me into the Christmas holidays and complicate getting outward clearance. There is plenty of room in Half Die to work out to sea under sail and I was bound for Carriacou, which is easy to approach under sail.  As Iron Bark has a solar panel to run the AIS receiver while I slept and there is nothing else on Iron Bark that depends on electricity other than the GPS, which only needs to be turned on occasionally and briefly, I had no need of an engine for the Atlantic crossing. There was no reason to delay so I got my outward clearance and sailed early the next morning on the last of the land breeze.

 The north east trades, reinforce by the land breeze carried us quickly down the buoyed approach channel and out into deeper water. By dusk we had left the last fishing canoes astern but there were still many larger fishing boats to dodge. These were astern at dawn and I got a few hours’ sleep. The trade wind was generally fresh to strong, the sky overhead was completely cloudless but the horizon was hazy with Sahara dust. Three days out and 400 miles offshore the first wispy clouds appeared and the dust started to decrease. We continued to run almost directly downwind, generally with a reef or two in the mainsail and just a corner of the jib unrolled and backed for balance. More mainsail and/or booming out a headsail would probably have given us an extra 10 or 12 miles per day, but scarcely seemed worth the wear on the gear and the loss of sleep entailed by having to tumble out of bed on every slight increase in wind. I long ago concluded the last 10 or 15% of speed entails a disproportionate amount of wear on both gear and crew and is seldom worth pursuing. 

 I had a desultory go at working on the engine but decided it was a job better done in harbour. I acquired several crickets in the Gambia that lived somewhere in the mast or boom, chirping away at night. I never saw them and the last one went silent a week out from land. At about the same time one of my molars, which was loose and infected, became painful so I did a bit of home dentistry and pulled it out fairly painlessly, but with a good deal of spilt blood.

Running in a fresh trade wind

A night's haul of flying fish, mid Atlantic

 The passage was a classic example of an easy trade wind crossing with the wind dead aft, never less than force 3 or more than force 6, averaging about 140 miles a day. Most days a tropic bird or two came by and inspected us, but little else until we were close to the West Indies. The days ran into one another, as they do on an easy passage, and Christmas passed with little notice. There were a few light rain showers as we approached the West Indies but none were heavy enough to wash the salt from the deck and sails so I could not top up the water tank.

 At dawn on 8 January 2023 the conical peak of Petite Martinique showed above the horizon. We ran on, gybed around the south end of Carriacou and beat in to anchor in Tyrell Bay at midday, after a fast and easy passage of 2650 miles in 19 days.

 This ended another North Atlantic circuit, a voyage of no particular note but with enough incident to prevent it being forgotten. The outward leg ran into some heavy weather off Bermuda and the return voyage got far enough north to need to dodge ice and far enough east to see a hippopotamus. The complete circuit from Carriacou to Carriacou with a winter on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland took 16 months during which time I sailed 12,100 miles.