We Won!

It's official! The Minnow won in the Multihulls Division of the 2005 ARC. We weren't first across the finish line, but the other boats had enough motoring penalties to put The Minnow in first place.

http://www.worldcruising.com/arc/results/ARC05_results_cruising_overall.pdf

Photos!

Photos of the trip acreoss the Atlantic!

St. Lucia!

The Minnow made it to St. Lucia! Some others in the multihull division got there first, but they all have motoring penalties coming. We may end up in 1st or 2nd place because we didn't motor (except for maybe an hour of motoring in the wrong direction when they kicked me off the boat).

Here are the details of my evacuation, with pictures:

http://xpda.com/mutiny



Bob

day 18

“The Minnow” ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike’s Exciting Day 18 Update!

The wind picked up slightly, as predicted. Wow. I believe that this is the
first time the weather condition has even remotely resembled the forecast.
So we decided that we would reef the mainsail in the afternoon, while it was
still light outside.

The potential problems with reefing the mainsail were (1) the outside cover
has been bunching up in numerous places so it could get jammed at an
undesirable location and (2) it could easily break. Every time we move the
mainsail we incur a significant risk of one or the other.

With this in mind, we chose to reef the mainsail to the second reef (about ½
way down). This ended up costing us .5 to 1 knot for a few hours in the
afternoon. But by nightfall, we were glad we made that choice as we saw
steady winds in the mid 30s from time to time throughout the night.

Update on the “Bob-gone/boat-not-breaking phenomenon: Bob still gone, still
nothing broken. Hmm…

Things are pretty well back to normal now. We have adjusted to being
Bob-less, and other than the boat not breaking, things are pretty much the
way they were. This morning as normal, Serge was outside listening to
static-filled French news on the portable SSB (he sure misses his native
language). As normal, Jim was asleep on the couch (Melinda, he is competing
for the “maximum hours of sleep per day” record that you currently hold). As
normal, David was reading a book. And, as normal, I was cheerful,
conversational, and dadblasted chipper all morning.

Unless something significant happens, this should be our next to last day of
the ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing. I think we’re all ready to get there.

Fishing report:

A dolphin a day keeps the tuna away. We got another dolphin today. Cleaned
it, cooked it, ate it.

Today’s Nautical Term:

Mutiny. A mutiny is when you have a really crappy captain and you get rid of
him. Bob catches on quicker than I thought.

He emailed: “After the mutiny, I was cast adrift. After an interminable
period of drifting aimlessly about the Atlantic, I was hoisted aboard the
M/T Patris. This occurred on St. Nicholas day, the holiday for the patron
saint of seagoers, and insured a year of luck for the Patris and its crew.”

So he hasn’t died yet.

Arts and Entertainment:

Serge and I played an energetic game of chess while enjoying highlights from
Verdi’s Aida.

The movie-watching craze continued tonight. “Master and Commander” was the
top bill. The others watched it in two shifts. I opted to read a book since
I had already seen it.

day 17

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 17 Update!

The wind has slightly and steadily increased over the last couple of days.
And it's supposed to keep doing that for the next few days. We are sailing
with a full mainsail and a solent (small jib). We have been alternating
between a lot downwind, and wing-in-wing downwind. That's where we have one
sail pointed to the left and the other sail pointed to the right.

We would be going faster if our gennaker hadn't deserted us. But hopefully
tomorrow we will have plenty of wind for our remaining sails. Tomorrow will
probably be a reef-the-mainsail-day. That's not normally a big deal.
However, when limping along with a chafed main halyard (the rope that holds
the main sail up) that could break at any time, it could be an adventure.

We were all dragging a bit this morning. So I cooked a mess-o-pancakes and
we ate all of 'em. There were a lot of naps that ensued.

We got some updates on Bob through indirect email. Nothing very informative,
but it seemed to indicate he hadn't died or anything yet. I still think he's
a pansy. But I have to hand it to him - he got to get on an enormous VLCC
oil tanker, AND he gets to take a helicopter ride.

OK, I might be a little jealous about the VLCC part .

One thing is very interesting about Bob abandoning ship. Since he left, we
have not broken anything. I will try to keep tabs on this phenomenon.

Fishing report:

We seem to be able to catch one nice dolphin per day. We did that again
today. Cleaned it, too.

Arts and Entertainment:

"The Ref" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ran multiple times from 6:00am
until . well sometime tomorrow.

day 16

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 16 Update!

Today's Nautical Term:

Chafe n : a state of vexation : rage

Bob was sure chafed when the doctors said he needed to get his chafed finger
looked at sooner than when the Minnow will get there.

Late tonight (around 5:00am of day 17) we dropped Bob off on a VLCC since
they go faster than us. This way he will get to a proper doctor sometime
Wednesday.

A VLCC is a "very large crude carrier." This thing was enormous. It came
almost to a stop for us. Then we maneuvered to the downwind side of it. It
took a long time to go around it. As we backed toward the ship, it lowered a
big basket down near the water on a crane. Bob was waiting on the back
steps. When the basket got close to the steps, he got in and they raised him
up, up, up, up, up. It was a long ways up to the deck of the tanker. Really
high.

It sounds really simple, and it was. It was simple because (1) the oil
tanker captain knew what he was doing and instructed us on what to do (we
had prepared for a couple of hours on what to do and how to do it (2) the
captain and crew of the tanker were very competent (3) David did a great job
backing the Minnow into place for the transfer (this was not an easy task).

We were all very impressed with the French Coast Guard, who arranged the
transfer and has further arranged for Bob to be flown from the giant ship to
a finger specialist when they get in helicopter range. All this for a single
index finger. On the left hand even.

Bob left the Minnow with threats of vengeance. He has vowed to cut every
rope on the Minnow just to get even. Personally, I think he will mellow once
he learns how to pick his nose right-handed.

After the transfer it took the rest of us quite awhile to wind down. It was
definitely a high energy experience. (25 knots of wind, big waves, and the
realization that a mistake was potentially really dangerous) So after we
were clear of the behemoth, we took our time setting sails, carefully,
deliberately, and sailed off into the morning. We were relieved because
Bob's chafed finger was really ugly.

Arts and Entertainment:

Five minutes before we dumped Bob he was playing "In the Mood" to us on the
baritone. I think he has most of it memorized!

day 15

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 15 Update!

They woke me up again about 7:15 this morning. It was pitch black again.
This time they told me they wanted help raising Whomper, again. There was a
big difference. This time we were raising Whomper out of the water and onto
the deck. It was somewhat worse for the wear with some rips and tears. So we
officially lost our third sail today.

But we still have three sails left. And two of the tore-up ones are
repairable on the boat, if needed. We put up our third spinnaker and kept
going. Now we are treating our sails very, very tenderly. Just a few more
days to St. Lucia and we still haven't motored!

Fishing Report:

One dolphin, which is now in the fridge.

Today's Nautical Term:

Chafe. This is a repeat lesson. Today we had a new kind of nautical
rope-chafing. A rope chafed Bobs' finger. He sure was gripy for awhile.

Arts and Entertainment:

Bob wouldn't play sousaphone with a chafed finger, but he did serenade us
with some rip-roaring baritone solos.

day 14

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 14 Update!

Serge woke me up about 7:15 this morning. It was pitch black. I never know
for sure when Serge is waking me if it's a joke or I'm really supposed to
get up. This time he told me they wanted help raising Whomper. This didn't
help his believability since they rarely let me help with a sail.

But I got up anyway. Slowly. If they did want me to help hoist the giant
sail I wanted to be careful not to strain something. I stretched a bit as I
was coming up the stairs. Then I ambled over to the fridge and grabbed a
cold Coke. Then I stretched some more. That was enough. I went outside ready
to tangle with Whomper. All I got to do was watch and press a button for a
couple of seconds.

At least we are sailing today. I think the current moved us more than the
wind yesterday. With plenty of water now, and light winds with no ocean
spray, we have all been washing some clothes. A lot of the clothes we hang
on the lifelines. At night they get wetter instead of dryer out there. A few
evenings ago I hung a rope under the porch cover for drying clothes when
it's raining and at night.

Clothes are drying reasonably quickly now . I'd say 4-8 hours on average.
For light things like nylon shorts maybe 2-4 hours. Which brings up and
interesting situation. Bob has had a pair of nylon shorts hanging wet from
the same spot in the center of the cockpit for two days now.

Clothes on the line beside the shorts come and go, but the shorts remain
wet. Even fully soaked towels are drying with no problem. Bob checks them
often. He keeps looking for a cause. Water leaks? Condensation dripping on
them? Water dripping from the sail? He even tastes them for salt. But they
remain wet while all the clothes around them dry, time after time.

Now that's unusual. Probably it has something to do with Serge and I wetting
them with a damp towel throughout the day. And dripping water on them
occasionally. And fully soaking them when he's asleep. It takes a lot of
continual effort to keep those shorts wet. But it's worth it to watch Bob
scratch his head each time he checks them.

Fishing Report:

We caught another 10-pound or so dolphin. We also caught a tarpon or
barracuda, we're not sure which. We let the unknown fish go. We ate the
dolphin.

Today's Nautical Term:

Chafe vb : to rub so as to wear away.

If the ropes are not rigged and set right, the constant motion of the boat
with cause them to "chafe" and wear through. We have to keep a constant look
out for anything chafing on a boat.

Arts and Entertainment:

Today was "break out the sousaphones" day. Bob and I played "In the Mood"
about 100 times trying to memorize it. I should have my part memorized in
about 400 more times.

Daily Log for the Minnow

Saturday, December 03, 2005
late night, 16°34N 044°02W

We finally have some wind! We managed to drop to 53rd place from about 23rd or 30th because we turned right too soon. The wind
prediction had changed in our favor, but they were just tricking us. We spent about 36 hours in really weak wind. It was due to
tropical storm Epsilon, which apparently was a hurricane for a little while. It made wind going to the east, north of us, and the
trade winds were trying to go west, south of us, We were caught in the messy air in between. But now we're moving!

Now we shoud have a tailwind into St. Lucia for the next few days -- long enough to get there. The wind is now 13-14 knots from the
ENE. We're going 7.8 knots towards St. Lucia. Less than 1000 miles to go. I think one boat has already arrived, a 97-foot one.

A few minutes ago I went out side to look at the world. The world looked back. The milky way was out in force, and a long, shooting
star went slowly across the sky. It was like a movie. Actually, the shooting start must have been going pretty fast, but it looked
slow. There's probably a pot of gold where it landed.

We caught a couple of fish today, a dolphin (the fish, not the porpoise) and something else like a tarpon or barracuda. We cleaned
and ate the dolphin.

Mike replaced our salt water pump with a new pressure pump and reservoir. The other pump was dead. The new pump worked fine. But I
just now noticed a red light on the breaker panel next to the lable "Sea Water Pump." Maybe something isn't quite right.

We've been running the air conditioner the past couple of days. Mike and I have been playing "In the Mood" in beautiful 2-part
sousaphonian harmony. Beauty is in the ear of the bee holder. David, Serge, and Jim are about ready to jump ship.

In less than 12 hours, we'll have been on this voyage for 2 weeks. It's still fun!

day 13

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 13 Update!

Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to
myth, and even myth is long forgotten when enough ages pass.

Trade winds. Are they memory, legend, or myth?

They aren't forgotten, that's for sure, because everyone says we should be
in them. Even the ARC literature talks about these alleged trade winds.

Today we floated southish in a very, very light breeze. Heck with trade
winds, we'd settle for any kind of wind today. Bob went swimming again. It
wasn't pure swimming this time since he had flippers and a snorkel on. This
time he removed the fishing line from the right prop. He also removed other
fishing line from other locations under the boat. Funny how that stuff gets
everywhere. Reminds me of flour when I make bread.

Back to the ARC literature, I remember that this race is also called a
rally. It's easy to see why. When we are floating around helplessly like
this it sure helps morale to call this thing a rally rather than a race. So
today we are officially rallying, not racing. But we still haven't motored!

Even with no wind today, this boat is in good spirits. Our generator is
still working. We topped the water tanks again. It was warm outside so we
ran the air conditioning for most of the day. Sitting outside in the shade
was nice, too. Reading on the trampoline under the shade of the solent was
especially pleasant.

One thing nice about floating versus sailing is that we didn't tear up a
sail. This is our second day in a row to not ruin a sail. This was also our
second day in a row to fix more than we broke. We didn't break anything, and
we fixed one thing.

Fishing Report:

We caught another fish that we couldn't identify. This one was had a big
mouth shaped like a barracuda's. It was long and skinny like a snake or an
eel, but stiff-spined, scaly, and with a standard fish tail. It was 3-4 feet
long and scary looking.

Jim brought in a 13-pounder (dolphin) and cleaned it, too. Serge cooked it
for supper. The rest of us ate fish for supper.

Today's Nautical Term:

Today's nautical term is "trade wind." According to Webster's:
- trade wind n : a wind blowing constantly in one direction

While looking in Webster's, I also found:
- memory n : an image or impression that is remembered
- legend n : a story regarded as historical although not verifiable
- myth n : an unfounded or false notion

(personally, I think trade winds are a myth)

Arts and Entertainment:

Baritone and piano duets were the highlight of today's entertainment.
Baritone and organ duets ran a close second (the piano has an organ mode
which I particularly like). There was a lot of book-reading that took place,
too.

Daily Log for the Minnow

Friday, December 02, 2005
noon
18°15'N, 42°06'W

We're a just little over 1100 miles from St. Lucia, about 47 days by my calculation. On Wednesday, the generator died. That's not
too big a deal, because we can charge batteries using engines and solar panels, except that our watermaker takes too much 110v
current to run off the inverter which runs off the batteries. In other words, we cannot convert salt water to fresh water.

Salt water is lousy to drink, and only marginally better to wash in. We have enough water, coke, and diet coke on the boat to get us
to shore and beyond, but it's a lot more comfortable with plenty of fresh water to wash dishes, clothes, and people.

The generator would run for a bit and then quit, shorter periods each time. Like fuel starvation. Then it stopping running
altogether and the gages stopped working too.

After changing filters, bleeding air, and lots of etc. and discussion, the time finally rolled around when the generator company in
Seattle opened yesterday. They gave us some things to check. The problem was a bad breaker. It apparently would flip off from
vibration at first, then opened permanently. Jim repaired that, and now we're clean!

We normally bring the fishing lines in at night, becuase it's not easy to clean a fish down on the steps in the dark, and we usually
only have one or two people awake at night. Last night someone forgot. This morning before sunup (yes, I was up before sunup!), I
heard the line running out on one of the poles. I reeled an extremely mean looking fish.

It's 43 inches long, 2.5 inches tall, and 2 inches wide. It has a giant mouth with large, mean looking teeth. It must get thicker
when it eats, because its opened mouth is a lot wider than its body.

Tropical Storm Epsilon has messed us up here. We were planning a more or less straight shot to St. Lucia, but the storm came up and
put east wind where we were planning on west wind. So we had to go south. Some boats got ahead of us in the process. We're
considering torpedoes.

There's a band of mixed up air between the west wind above and the east wind to the south. We've been trying to cheat our way west,
sometimes getting too close or inside the bad air. The good news is that within 24 hours, we should have some persistent,
consistent, resistant east wind pushing us west. But if I recall, that's what I said before Tropical Storm Epsilon

Water temperature is 87°. Laundry is hanging on the boat. I think we caught two edible fish yesterday. The baritone serenades I've
been offering in the middle of the night have received mixed reviews. I like them, and Serge, David, Jim, and Mike don't. I think
20% is certainly a high enough approval rating to continue.

day 12

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 12 Update!

I woke up late this morning. I guess people are getting tired of me so they
just left me in bed. Anyway, wherever we are in the Atlantic, the sun came
in my window about 9:00am UTC and was bright. We were still spinnakering. As
it turned out, we had changed from one spinnaker to the solent, back to a
different spinnaker since I went to bed last night.

Spinnakers usually the most colorful sails on a boat. I have no idea why
that is. They are also usually the largest sails on a boat. They have a
single point on the top of the sail. It's tied to a rope that's on a pulley
at the top of the mast. The two bottom corners are tied to the front of the
boat, and the side of the boat (toward the back).

A spinnaker is normally used when the wind is blowing from behind the boat.
If it's from in front of the boat the spinnaker just gets tangled up in the
mast and the guy wires holding the mast. It's a mess.

Putting up and taking down a spinnaker is best done with a crowd of people.
That is if the spinnaker doesn't have a sock. A sock is a cloth tube about
80 feet long that allows you to raise the top of the sail to the top of the
mast without the sail blowing everywhere. Then when everything is tied on
and the boat's going where it should go, the sock is raised and the
spinnaker puffs out beautifully.

Without a sock it takes one person holding the front of the sail, one person
holding the back of the sail, one person raising the top of the sail to the
top of the mast, one person lengthening and shortening the ropes on the
front and back of the sail, and a lot of nautical communication. It can be a
very loud affair.

The point is . they didn't even wake me up to help on spinnaker ups and
downs. They must be getting a lot tired of me. Teehee.

After a hearty breakfast of Coca-cola and Coco-crispies I decided to fry
some eggs for all takers. Serge and Bob know me pretty well, so David, Jim,
and I enjoyed fried eggs. Then came "the generator chronicles."

We all stunk and griped about no showers. It was rather hot today, also. It
was really hot in the engine room (where the generator resides). We worked a
long time getting the generator going, but in the end, human intellect and
resiliency (luck and . well, luck) made the difference. Truth is, Jim worked
a long time on it and figured it out and fixed it. Yay, Jim and thank you,
Jim. We made water! We took showers! We washed dishes! Some of us even
washed clothes!

As a result of this near lifestyle-changing tragedy, we spent some time with
our backup watermaker and have decided to make it handier to use. It only
makes 1.5 gallons an hour. But it runs on 12 volts (5 amps) and we can take
showers on 36 gallons a day.

Today was a unique sailing day for the Minnow. We fixed more things than we
broke. Serge fixed the broken nav light. Jim fixed the broken generator. The
only thing we broke was the water gauge lamp. Most importantly, we didn't
tear up any more sails. We were getting low on sails.

[Okay, okay Mom. Before you worry yourself to death about the big water
crisis onboard, we have enough water on board for weeks of drinking. And we
have a backup watermaker to the backup watermaker. It was never an issue of
safety, just one of cleanliness. And you taught us cleanliness was next to
goatliness.]

[Ps. Bob was worst since he washed off with a dirty, mildewy, used wash
cloth under the impression it was clean.]

Fishing Report:

Speaking of cleanliness, Bob brought in a nice dolphin and I cleaned it. And
I didn't care that I got dirty from it since I was already dirty from no
shower.

We caught a fish that we couldn't identify. It looked like a crappie but it
was dark brown. We decided not to eat it. That was our decision since it
fell off the steps into the water before Bob got a good hold on it.

We want to catch tuna fish but don't know how. Any tips would be welcome.

Today's Nautical Term:

Yesterday's nautical term, "potato drawer," has a single specific meaning
onboard a boat. (in case you forgot, it's where the potatoes were a few days
ago)

Today's term, "sheet," is much more versatile. "Sheet" has many nautical
uses. On a boat, the word "sheet" means: (1) a piece of music for
sousaphone, (2) a rope that is tied onto the back end of a sail, (3) a handy
nautical exclamation to use when something, often surprising, goes wrong,
(4) a portion of saran wrap or similar plastic (5) a single piece of paper
put into the printer to print nautical information (6) the act of pulling on
a sheet (rope), (7) the act of securing a sheet (rope), (8) the type of
music we look at to play the piano, (9) a pan for cooking cookies or
biscuits, (10) how rain comes down on a boat sometimes, (11) a type of flat
metal, (12) how waves splash over a boat sometimes, (13) a portion of a roll
aluminum foil, or (14) fabric that goes on the mattress of a nautical bed.

Arts and Entertainment:

The most entertaining thing today was when I brought out a bunch of our
favorite cookies from under a bed that everyone but me thought we were out
of. They let me help raise a spinnaker after that.

The second most entertaining thing was almost funny enough to be classified
as art. It was when Bob figured out this evening that last evening the
washcloth he used was used.

day 11

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 11 Update!

This morning we continued on under the solent and mainsail. This afternoon
we continued on under the solent and mainsail. This evening we continued on
under the solent and mainsail. We have good wind today, but it's coming from
the wrong direction.
The right direction would let us put up a bigger sail and go faster.

The solent is an interesting sail. It's easy to put up, easy to pull in.
It's almost as tall as the mast - probably 60 feet tall. But it's not very
wide at the bottom and has a point on the top. It's good for strong winds
but doesn't catch enough air for us to go fast in most medium or fast winds.

There's not much sailing to be done when the winds and course don't change
and you are using the mainsail and a small jib (solent). So we cleaned, and
napped, and cooked, and read books, and fixed a few things. That was a
welcome change from the past few days of disaster-management.

Nothing important broke today. But tonight the generator quit working. We're
not sure if it's broken bad, or just playing with us. However, it's a
potential lifestyle-changer for us. On the Minnow we use a lot of
electricity. We can run an engine in neutral to generate electricity. Water
is the concern. Fresh water.

And we use a lot of fresh water. The water maker makes about 27 gallons of
freshwater per hour from saltwater (uses some sort of alchemy I guess). But
it takes a lot of electricity so the generator has to be running in order
for us to be making water.

We will attack the misbehaving generator tomorrow. And we will do without
our evening showers tonight. This sailing business is hard.

Today's Nautical Term:

Onboard the Minnow we speak a number of different languages. Serge speaks an
odd version of Franco-klahoman. David speaks standard Ausie-American. Jim
speaks the Californian version of "biz-speak." Bob speaks . well Bob is in
his own world. Of course, I speak normal daggum English. But we are all
drawn together by the common language of sailors.

Nautical terms are pretty cool actually. For instance, the left side of the
boat can be called (1) left (2) leeward (3) windward (4) weather (5)
aweather (6) port (7) upwind (8) downwind (9) larboard (10) the other side
dammit (11) right (if looking at the back of the boat) (12) this side (13)
that side (14) or the sunny side. Not many things in life offer that kind of
choice.

They get even cooler in use. Picture Bob with a rope in his hand, and a
deer-in-the-headlights look while David instructs him on where to tie it.
While there are 14 choices listed above, David will normally use only 6-8 of
them on any one instruction. David will normally increase volume as he picks
different options from the list to see what Bob might or might not respond
to.

Now that's really cool to watch.

Back to practical matters. You might think that David's (the yeller's) use
of number 10 would be effective and highly used in this situation. That's
making the incorrect assumption that Bob (the yellee) would make any sort of
move towards one or side of the boat as he attempted to process the
instruction. In fact, it's actually the yeller's random and loud use of the
complete list of nautical terms that results in the best communicative
performance among the crew (the team).

Communication requires at least two parties. Not only does the yeller have
an important role on boats, the yellee must also cooperate for efficient
teamwork. Most important for the yellee is to keep doing whatever it is he's
doing when the yelling stops.

When nautical communication involves the use of three or more team members,
it gets even more fun and exciting. For example, when using four people to
accomplish a nautical task, for every yeller, there are up to three yellees
(possibly less if some of the team are not listening). If two crew are
yelling, then there are actually up to six yellees (of course making the
assumption that sailors can yell and listen at the same time). It's just
plain fun.

Oops, I got all excited and strayed. Today's nautical term is "potato
drawer." David is a son-of-a-sailor and has sailed a lot. We learn a lot of
new nautical terms from him (sometimes he even spices them up
Australian-style for us). Today he taught us the nautical term "potato
drawer." The "potato drawer" is a drawer where boat parts are kept. On this
boat we keep boat flags in the potato drawer. It's also the drawer that had
potatoes in it until we ate them a few days ago. Hmm...

Fishing Report:

We brought in a nice dolphin today. And we broke the line on another nice
dolphin. We need to put super big line on the other pole, but we've been to
busy (lazy).

Arts and Entertainment:

Today we broke out the piano once again. Serge put it on "player piano" mode
for awhile and we had a nice concert. Then Bob and I donned headphones and
entertained ourselves. Baritone solos and practice also continued (to keep
people inside).

day 11

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 11 Update!

This morning we continued on under the solent and mainsail. This afternoon
we continued on under the solent and mainsail. This evening we continued on
under the solent and mainsail. We have good wind today, but it's coming from
the wrong direction.
The right direction would let us put up a bigger sail and go faster.

The solent is an interesting sail. It's easy to put up, easy to pull in.
It's almost as tall as the mast - probably 60 feet tall. But it's not very
wide at the bottom and has a point on the top. It's good for strong winds
but doesn't catch enough air for us to go fast in most medium or fast winds.

There's not much sailing to be done when the winds and course don't change
and you are using the mainsail and a small jib (solent). So we cleaned, and
napped, and cooked, and read books, and fixed a few things. That was a
welcome change from the past few days of disaster-management.

Nothing important broke today. But tonight the generator quit working. We're
not sure if it's broken bad, or just playing with us. However, it's a
potential lifestyle-changer for us. On the Minnow we use a lot of
electricity. We can run an engine in neutral to generate electricity. Water
is the concern. Fresh water.

And we use a lot of fresh water. The water maker makes about 27 gallons of
freshwater per hour from saltwater (uses some sort of alchemy I guess). But
it takes a lot of electricity so the generator has to be running in order
for us to be making water.

We will attack the misbehaving generator tomorrow. And we will do without
our evening showers tonight. This sailing business is hard.

Today's Nautical Term:

Onboard the Minnow we speak a number of different languages. Serge speaks an
odd version of Franco-klahoman. David speaks standard Ausie-American. Jim
speaks the Californian version of "biz-speak." Bob speaks . well Bob is in
his own world. Of course, I speak normal daggum English. But we are all
drawn together by the common language of sailors.

Nautical terms are pretty cool actually. For instance, the left side of the
boat can be called (1) left (2) leeward (3) windward (4) weather (5)
aweather (6) port (7) upwind (8) downwind (9) larboard (10) the other side
dammit (11) right (if looking at the back of the boat) (12) this side (13)
that side (14) or the sunny side. Not many things in life offer that kind of
choice.

They get even cooler in use. Picture Bob with a rope in his hand, and a
deer-in-the-headlights look while David instructs him on where to tie it.
While there are 14 choices listed above, David will normally use only 6-8 of
them on any one instruction. David will normally increase volume as he picks
different options from the list to see what Bob might or might not respond
to.

Now that's really cool to watch.

Back to practical matters. You might think that David's (the yeller's) use
of number 10 would be effective and highly used in this situation. That's
making the incorrect assumption that Bob (the yellee) would make any sort of
move towards one or side of the boat as he attempted to process the
instruction. In fact, it's actually the yeller's random and loud use of the
complete list of nautical terms that results in the best communicative
performance among the crew (the team).

Communication requires at least two parties. Not only does the yeller have
an important role on boats, the yellee must also cooperate for efficient
teamwork. Most important for the yellee is to keep doing whatever it is he's
doing when the yelling stops.

When nautical communication involves the use of three or more team members,
it gets even more fun and exciting. For example, when using four people to
accomplish a nautical task, for every yeller, there are up to three yellees
(possibly less if some of the team are not listening). If two crew are
yelling, then there are actually up to six yellees (of course making the
assumption that sailors can yell and listen at the same time). It's just
plain fun.

Oops, I got all excited and strayed. Today's nautical term is "potato
drawer." David is a son-of-a-sailor and has sailed a lot. We learn a lot of
new nautical terms from him (sometimes he even spices them up
Australian-style for us). Today he taught us the nautical term "potato
drawer." The "potato drawer" is a drawer where boat parts are kept. On this
boat we keep boat flags in the potato drawer. It's also the drawer that had
potatoes in it until we ate them a few days ago. Hmm...

Fishing Report:

We brought in a nice dolphin today. And we broke the line on another nice
dolphin. We need to put super big line on the other pole, but we've been to
busy (lazy).

Arts and Entertainment:

Today we broke out the piano once again. Serge put it on "player piano" mode
for awhile and we had a nice concert. Then Bob and I donned headphones and
entertained ourselves. Baritone solos and practice also continued (to keep
people inside).

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 10 Update!

Today we endured two disasters.

The day began nicely enough. Midmorning spinnakerable winds came our way. So
up went Thumper (our huge spinnaker that's not as big as Whomper). Light to
medium winds were perfect for Thumper. The boat was moving along well and,
even better, along our desired course.

The boat was a beehive of happy activity. Maintenance, cleaning, we were
almost whistling while we worked. We even had fresh-cooked burritos for
lunch. Early in the afternoon Thumper said "enough" as it split from bottom
to top. That sure fouled up the mood on the Minnow.

So we gathered up the torn spinnaker, bagged it, and put out the solent.
This is not the best sail for these conditions. But it was the best we had
for the conditions, so we carried on. We think Thumper might actually be
repairable on board. We plan to try at least.

The rest of the afternoon went without incident. In fact, spirits were
remarkably high considering our run of bad luck (which was soon to get
worse). David headed up some repair work on Whomper, which had suffered from
being omnipresent in the hundreds of gallons of seawater as we bucketed. The
bucket had ripped some small holes.

A little sail tape here, a little sewing there. OK, a lot of sewing. David,
Jim, and Bob spent about 4 hours sewing some reinforcement at some stress
points. Then we flew Whomper. It's really, really big. And very nice. We
took Whomper down, just before a squall. Considering all, things were going
well again.

And then . Serge began peeling potatoes. I started thawing chicken. We were
going to have fried food for supper. Yay! The preparation process continued
up until we needed to salt the potatoes. After losing a pepper shaker to a
fire on the stove a few days before, we were nervous. We searched and
searched. Then we looked around some more.

Yes indeed, we lost our salt shaker less than a week after losing our pepper
shaker. You know how hard it is to get salt out of the big Morton salt
container without it coming out in lumps. Bloody ashes! Two disasters in one
day. This sailing business is hard.

Fishing report:

This was not a banner day for fishing. Most noteworthy was Bob cutting the
line off of the prop and putting a new lure on that pole. It took the better
part of an hour. Not bad for us.

Arts and Entertainment:

Bob and I spent some time working on the hard parts to "In the Mood" on
baritone. Actually, it wasn't art and it sure wasn't entertainment, so
nevermind.

We did spend another evening relaxing to Bob's Party Mix. Some of tonight's
favs were "Les Miserables" songs, some theme song from "Man with a Golden
Arm," "Whisky in a Jar" (always a favorite), and "Stairway to Heaven."

Unfortunately, we don't have the movie "Paint Your Wagon" onboard.
Fortunately, Bob and I were able to remember some of the lines and even sang
and played a few renditions of some choruses for the others (we both wanted
to do Lee Marvin's lines over Clint Eastwood's).
Favorite line from that movie ... "Whatever the bid is . I double it .
[splat]."

Daily Log for the Minnow

Wednesday, November 30, 2005
7:17 AM UTC

We're moving again! Yesterday we were sailing along in fairly light wind with the middle-sized spinnaker up, and it ripped in two.
Two sails in two days! We'll use towels for sails if this keeps up. I think we must have damaged it earlier, because the wind was
light when it tore. We're going to try to sew, tape, or weld it back together.

We sewed some reinforcement onto the big spinnaker today. I helped! We have photos to prove it.

Now we're headed 234 at 8.2 knots. Wind is from 125 at 17 knots. We're going south to get by a band of slow air. Today we should
pass the halfway point. I thought earlier that we'd have smooth sailing from here on, but this morning I noticed tropical storm
Epsilon (gusts to 65 knots) on the weather fax. It's far enough north not to bother us, but it may mess up our nice, pretty wind
pattern.

A few flying fish have decided to fly onto the boat lately. Last night one flew throught the window into the living room! I was
sleeping, but Jim and Mike got a surprise.

It's staying dark later. Either the days are getting shorter, we're moving west, the sun is burning out, or some combination of the
above.

Bob

day 9

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 9 Update!

Our bucketing line, among other things, tuckered me out last night. So I
went to bed early and slept very well. I awoke this morning before sunup
feeling pretty good. Ready to take up where we left off the night before.
David and Jim were already up and at 'em.

A hose was pumping some of the remaining water from the front right locker.
We proceeded to hang up and lay out stuff to dry, empty the remaining items
from the hold, and finally bucket out the remaining water in the hold. Pumps
are really slow on hundreds of gallons.

The wind was medium and the seas fairly calm. We were moving along fairly
nicely with the gennaker and mainsail. So we also attacked the main halyard
problem. We further assessed the rope chafing and made some "bandaid" type
repairs to it. We are fairly certain it will not chafe unless we need to
move it, like for reefing. In the next couple of days, when we hit calm
seas, we plan to put a new halyard up.

We put our pumps back together in their original configuration and fixed a
lot of minor things on the boat. It was a productive morning and continued
into early afternoon. Then we heard this loud "rrrrrip." The gennaker had
torn from the bottom to the top. It's finished for this trip. And it was a
really good sail. Now we go slower. Blah.

That is until we get spinnakerable winds. If we get spinnakerable winds.

We proceeded into the night with a full main and solent.

Fishing report:

We caught a nice dolphin. Even at 7-8 knots it skidded it's way toward the
boat. It's in the fridge now. Our other pole caught our prop (we think that
might have happened during our gennaker salvage maneuvers). We just left it.

Arts and Entertainment:

There were lots of moans and groans and gripes. Old men doing manual work
that they are not used to (1) get a lot of funny marks on their bodies (2)
walk around a lot more gingerly than normal (3) moan and groan and gripe
when they get up from a sitting position.

We ended the evening with a nice music-filled movie featuring George Clooney
singing called "Oh Brother Where Art There." "You are My Sunshine" was the
boat favorite. (we enjoyed a baritone version of it around 3:00am, but
that's officially day 10 info)

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 5 Thanksgiving Update!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to you,
Happy Thanksgiving to you,
Happy Thanksgiving to everybody,
Happy Thanksgiving to you.

On to sailing.

We had very good wind most of the day . We sailed fast and most of the time
not too bumpy.

Weatherwise, there's this big low that's some kind of a tropical something
west of us. We were going to go north of it so it could slingshot us into
the lead. It got bigger and is supposed to move north (in our way). We
chickened out and turned south now.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was Mexican fajitas prepared by an Australian. Very
tasty.

Everyday we are supposed to report our noon position (latitude and
longitude) to the ARC people. Bob has been emailing this each day. Today we
were looking at the current standings and we were doing pitiful. Then we
figured out that Bob had sent in yesterday's noon position. The current
standings improved, but our standing still didn't look very good.

We got periodic updates on the Dallas Cowboys v. Denver Broncos game. Patty
sent messages to our sat-phone periodically. However, they ended with the
score 21-21 and we still don't know who won!

Fishing report:

We caught three small ones (two dolphins and a tuna). We cleaned one
dolphin.

Arts and Entertainment:

We broke out the baritone today and Serge, Bob, and I serenaded. The rest
suffered. It was kind of wet outside from rain and splashing so the piano
got put back in it's case.

Baritone solos included "Anchors Aweigh," "She'll be Comin' Round the
Mountain When She Comes," and "Rock of Ages."

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 6 Update!

Sailing was good today. We had up Whomper (our biggest spinnaker) most of
the day. We're still heading south of the big low (tropical storm?) to
avoid the really big waves and stuff.

Before this trip we bought an Iridium satellite phone. We also bought a
block of minutes so it would be cheaper to use. The cost is about $1.50 per
minute when we call out using our block of minutes. It's somewhat higher to
get minutes "by the minute." We expected we would get more blocks of minutes
when these minutes run out and in any interim we would just pay the higher
rate.

On Tuesday Bob and I started talking about getting another block of a few
hundred minutes. Getting weather is eating up a lot of these minutes. We
talked about it again on Wednesday. And we talked about it again on
Thanksgiving, although we didn't expect them to be open on the holiday.

After going to bed last night wondering about the Dallas v. Denver outcome,
I got up this morning and connected on the sat-phone to retrieve email. I
got a couple of emails, but they didn't tell me the score (!). Then I
decided to pull up a sports web page and see the results. I tried several
times, but it would not stay connected.

After digging into the problem, I discovered that we were out of minutes.
And I further discovered that our phone was not set up to be used unless a
block of minutes has been prepaid. Hmm . that's not what we wanted.

So we were down to weatherfax's and SSB talking broadcasts for weather. This
is plenty of good information for making a crossing. And we could still
receive sat-phone calls and sat-phone text messages. However, we had no way
to call out to family or friends, and we had no way to send and receive
email. (this update, and others, will be sent after the fact).

So there we were waiting for the phone to ring so we could ask someone to
buy us more minutes. Bop spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to
contact someone via email on the SSB radio. We didn't want to break down
call another boat. That would be embarrassing.

Eventually, Bob's wife Cathy called about something. Bob asked her to email
our wives and let them know the predicament. He also asked her to buy us
some more minutes. She called back later and informed us that it would be
Monday. Our phone supplier was still closed for Thanksgiving.

Fishing report:

Caught two fish (both dolphins). Cleaned one fish.

Arts and Entertainment:

Today's musical entertainment was a small amount of baritone playing, and
some opera. Verdi's Aida.
We also played chess. So far Serge beat Bob, then Serge tied me, then I beat
Serge, then Bob beat Serge.

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 8 Update!

Sunday is a relaxing day. A day of rest for many. In the Fall, Sunday is a
day that I look forward to relaxing and watching some NFL games in the
afternoon.

The sailing continued nicely today. The seas were getting rough and the wind
was staying strong. But the Minnow handles waves very nicely. We were
staying tight on the wind (sailing as much into the wind as possible). We
reefed the main sail about 5:00am and were using the solent up front.

In the reefing process we discovered that the main halyard (the rope that
raises the main sail) had chafed to the point that the rope cover was worn
all the way through. This was not a good thing. The sailing ropes we use
have a cover made out of normal nylon-like material. The center core is
where the strength is and it is made out of something like Kevlar. The
center part was unmarred (but wouldn't stay that way without fixing the
chafing problem.

We also found that the hydraulic winches quit working. This meant a lot of
hand winching. This is not desirable for five middle-aged men. So we
hand-winched. And we got the main halyard in a position we considered safe
from chafing and continued on.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon the waves got bigger. Generally
our consensus was that they were 10-12 feet most of the day, but for a few
hours they were up to 15 feet. The Minnow behaved remarkably well in the
rough water. But it was still rough. Waves were crashing into the boat and
the entire boat was constantly covered in spray. It was fun!

We noticed the autopilot was keeping the rudders turned real hard one
direction. We adjusted sails and other things. Nothing helped. The left
rudder was even coming out of the water quite a bit. Early in the afternoon
the autopilot quit. This required someone (David volunteered) to go out into
the rough seas and drive by hand (he got wet and stayed wet). Our first
thought was that the autopilot was overworked and broke.

By rerouting some communication wires we temporarily fixed the autopilot. It
was just a bad connection somewhere we think. David went below to take a
shower (his fourth of the day) in the front right part of the boat. When in
the shower he looked out the window and noticed the water was way too high
on the boat.

He came out and went forward to check the forward locker (beneath the hatch
where we put Whomper the day before). He came back and, using colorful
language, informed us that the boat was sinking and instructed everyone to
put on a harness, grab some buckets, and go forward.

This was about two hours before sunset, and luckily the waves were a lot
smaller (6-8 feet?) What generally ensued, and in no particular order, was
(1) ) we turned downwind and pulled in the solent (2) we hooked up two
garden hoses to two water pumps and began pumping the water out (3) we
bucketed water out. (4) we yelled a lot (5) we began trying to pin the blame
on Bob (6) we laid down in front of the hatch to reduce the amount of water
from coming over the bow into the hatch. (7) we turned on the generator and
hot water heaters so we could have hot showers later (8) we tried to siphon
the water out of the hold (yes it was a couple of feet over the sea level)
(9) we yelled more (10) we took items out of the hold and put them into the
cockpit.

For about the first 30 minutes we made little progress. We would get some
water out, and some would wash back in. This locker is huge. There was a LOT
of stuff in the locker. About 8 suitcases, a spare watermaker, a spare
electric wind generator, lots of toilet paper, lots of paper towels, Whomper
(Whomper is really, really big), our dinghy, lots of sail bags, large Catana
flags, blankets and comforters, and lots of other miscellaneous things.

We estimated that we captured about 660-800 gallons of seawater. That's
about 3 tons. With two pumps pumping, we gave up on siphoning and finally
got most of the bigger items out of the locker. Then we concentrated on
bucketing. We bucketed in shifts (two people at a time) until it was too
dark to continue safely. We had removed probably 80% of the water and
probably 80% of the stuff.

We closed the hatch, set the sails and turned back on course into the wind.
We proceeded to lash down all the mess in the cockpit. The rudder issue
disappeared after we removed most of the 3 tons of water from the right
front corner of the boat. Imagine that, haha.

After things were under temporary control we licked our wounds and
considered the damage. We had gone 11.9 miles backwards in about 2 hours. IT
would take almost 2 hours to get back to where we were. Four hours lost .
not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Cathy called that night and told us that we had gone from 212th place to
34th place. Wow. That seemed impossible.

Oh well, we were too tired to celebrate much. Sunday is a relaxing day?

Fishing report:

Blast it! No bites.

Arts and Entertainment:

There was nothing artistic about the day, save the interesting red bruise
pattern on Bob's back. For entertainment, see above.

"The Minnow" ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

Mike's Exciting Day 7 Update!

Another good day of sailing. And another day without email and outgoing
phones.

We started out the day in medium to light wind following from 120-140
degrees off of the boat direction. And we were flying Whomper.

Whomper is really, really big. In 10-15 knots of true wind we were doing
8-10 knots. Perfect. The wind gradually increased and we found ourselves
doing 10-12 knots. Even better. With the true wind varying from 15-20 knots
we had apparent wind just over 10 knots.

But with the true wind increasing, and already on the top edge of wind for
Whomper, we were keeping a close eye out. We would need to pull Whomper in
quickly if we got more wind. We did, and we did. True wind hit 25, apparent
was still below 15, and . boat speed surged to 17+ knots. Very nice. But
time for a new sail.

David, Bob, Serge, and I quickly pulled down Whomper, stuffed it into the
forward hatch on the right, and let out the gennaker. (this part is
interesting as it narrows the blame for leaving the hatch open to four of
us) The wind increased more, as we passed near a squall (rain shower). Out
went the solent and in came the gennaker.

The wind let up a bit and we let the gennaker back out. The solent was still
out with the gennaker and we went fast. By pulling the solent in and out
while we left the gennaker out we found that we could go a little faster
with three sails up. The books say don't do it, but we experimented and
found it gained about 5% or better speed in these conditions. Most of the
rest of the day was spent with the gennaker and solent out.

It seems like we should be making really good time compared to the other
boats. But we didn't really know since we weren't getting email. They might
all be going faster than us.

Fishing report:

Fishing is interesting when the boat is moving at 10+ knots. On one pole we
have heavy line (50lb.). The other pole has something about 200-300lb. line.
When we get a fish on at this speed, it's almost impossible to reel when the
fish is in the water. When it comes to the surface, it's time to make hay.
Ideally the fish just kind of skis and skids along the surface. If the fish
dives, you just have to wait until it surfaces.

I was reeling in a fish today and it jumped out of the water. When it hit
the air, the tension on the rod and the line was enough to pull the
three-pound dolphin about 50 feet in the air toward the boat. It was kind of
scary. It's the same kind of action that occurs when Jerry is removing a
bass lure from a tree.

Anyway, the line wrapped around the tip of the pole. After some thrashing, I
got the line clear and reeled the fish in. Dolphins are notoriously hard to
kill. This one was dead on arrival from the pounding across the waves. Thus
easy to clean!

Arts and Entertainment:

Today's musical entertainment was comprised of Bob and I practicing the
sousaphone parts of "In the Mood" on the baritone. It was ugly.

Daily Log for the Minnow

Monday, November 28, 2005
late night

Today we finished baling the water out of the front hold and started drying stuff. By this afternoon, everything was back to
normal. We even got most of the instruments back on line. Apparently there is a short, or bad connection, or broken instrument
somewhere in the seatalk network. Everything is fine now except one of the external autopilots and instruments in one of the
bedrooms.

Then the gennaker ripped in two. That was pretty exciting. We took it down, bagged it, and dropped it into the formerly flooded
hold. We still have a smaller foresail called a solent, and three spinnakers, but that will cost us some time. Apparently the
gennaker bottom chafed on a cable at the front of the boat and began the rip there.

Jim caught a dolphin today. The movie tonight was, "Brother, Where Art Thou." It is a fine motion picture. I think I shall play You
Are My Sunshine about 3:00 am on the baritone.

I just got the last weather faxes from New Orleans, and I dialed around on the radio to see if there were any others. Now I'm
picking up one from Hawaii. That's not very useful to us at the moment, but it's pretty cool.

Water temperature is 84.3, air temperature about 80, and the wind is from 190 degrees at 10 knots. Mars is out, but the moon is not.

http://xpda.com/mars

Daily Log for the Minnow

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Last Thursday or Friday we ran the Iridium satphone out of minutes. We thought when we used up our bulk minutes, we'd go to more
expensive minutes, so we were in no rush to re-up the bulk minutes. However, when we ran out of our bulk minutes we couldn't make
any more phone calls. Oops.

Cathy eventually called us. We asked her to buy some more minutes, but the place was closed until Monday. So we've been using the
technology of the ancient seafaring vikings, with weather faxes and voice HF communication. And Cathy's been calling with the
weather reports. She's not quite as ancient as the vikings.

The tropical storm has fizzled a bit, and is 200-300 miles to our northwest. The water was pretty rough yesterday and this morning,
but we still averaged 9 or 10 knots. We guessed the waves were over 12 ft. today. This boat handles really good in that kind of
stuff.

Today I woke up early, as usual, about 10:30 or so. Serge had planted a cooking timer behind my back. A fishing pole holder was
loose, and I tightened it. Then the hydraulic winches stopped working. But we have winch handles. Then the autopilot quit. But we
got it working by turning off some stuff on the seatalk network.

When messing with the autopilot, we noticed that the rudder was being used more than normal. And our speed seemed a bit slower than
it should be.

Then David took a shower and noticed that the boat was lower in the water than normal. At least on that side. This is not good in a
boat, particularly if the boat is hundreds of miles out in the ocean. He checked the forward watertight locker. It had about 5 feet
of water in it, maybe a couple of tons. Someone didn't close the hatch well, and water had been splashing in for a day or two of the
rough weather. Then David got really loud.

We spent a couple of hours going east, with the wind, away from our destination, pumping, bailing, and otherwise evacuating the
water from the hold. There's still some there, but we quit when it got dark. The majority of the water is out now. Now the autopilot
doesn't use the rudder as much as it was earlier today. The speed is still slow, but that's because the wind is slower and from a
bad direction -- mostly in front of is.

Now we have only a few boat problems:

1. A little water in the forward hold.
2. Wet stuff that was in the forward hold, such as suitcases and toilet paper.
3. A spare watermaker and windmill that is still underwater in the forward hold. They need rinsing in fresh water, drying, and
hopefully that's all.
4. Flaky hydraulic winches. We have to use winch handles! This was "fixed" before we left France.
5. Fishing line is tangled on the rudder or prop. It shouldn't be too bad because we haven't been motoring.
6. The main halyard is chafing where it goes through the deck. It's worn through the cover. We need to make the hole bigger.
7. We have some failure in an instrument or connection on the seatalk network, so now either the autopilot or true wind speed and
direction display work, but not both.
8. Three or four of our live vests auto-inflated today during the thrashing. Oops. We have recharge kits for most of them, and
spares.
9. We're missing some setscrews on one of the furlers of the foresails. We have to be careful about that.
10. A saltwater leak, maybe coming through a window in the living area.
11. Some wooden trim around the freezer fell off 3 times.

The baritone and sousaphones are still in fine shape, as are the stereo/dvd player, so we're in excellent condition overall. Except
Mike is a litte chubby.

Today we got into 4th position in the catamaran division, and 26th overall. We gave back about 25 miles this afternoon when we were
thrashing about. We haven't run our motors, and we got behind when there wasn't much wind for a couple of days. Once I even went
swimming and could keep up with the boat.

Fish caught so far:

Nov 21: 2 dolphin, big one 19 lb
Nov 22: zip
Nov 23: tuna and little dolphin
Nov 24: 2 dolphin
Nov 25: 3 dolphin, one at 11 knots.
Nov 26: 3 dolphin
Nov 27: One flying fish. It flew to my feet when I was messing with the sails a few minutes go. I sent him on his way.

It's tough to reel in a fish when you're moving 8-12 knots! We lost several. I'm surprised they'd bite anything going that fast.

The water temperature is 86°F. That's warm! Maybe even warm enough for a tropical storm, huh? I'm the only one up at the moment
(2:15 am). We are at 22°19'N, 31°53'W, headed west at 7.5 knots. Wind is out of the west southwest at around 15 knots.

“The Minnow” ARC 2005 Atlantic Crossing

 

Mike’s Exciting Day 4 Update!

 

Bob is 50 years old today!!!

 

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday dear Bob,

Happy birthday to you.

 

He’s 50 years old today! That’s really old. Old enough to be a grandfather. But he doesn’t seem any more senile than he has been for the past 40 years. Serge made him a special birthday loaf of bread. And a special birthday piece of fish. And I made him a special birthday chocolate cake. We figured he would be pretty depressed being that much older than us.

 

Scenic Photographs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On to sailing. Lighter, light, some, very nice. That was the wind today. We finally got moving. We put up our biggest spinnaker and were going nearly as fast as the wind was blowing. For you sailors out there, we did this with an apparent wind angle of about 90 and a true wind angle of 140-160. Good wind continued for most of the day. In fact around 11:00pm we had to take down the biggest spinnaker (which David has dubbed “Whomper”).

 

With Whomper down, we put up the next biggest spinnaker and continued into the night. OK, OK, I was downstairs reading when all the spinnaker-changing activity took place. But I did come up and hand them a flashlight at one point.

 

One thing about this big sail is that someone has to be watching it almost all of the time. Most people don’t use the autopilot with a spinnaker much. Well, Bob and I use the autopilot almost always, and the other three have begun to come around. Not only can we be a lot lazier using the autopilot, so far none of us can keep the speed up as well as the autopilot. It’s hard to argue with more speed and less effort.

 

Yesterday there was a lot of book-reading going on. Today there was more sailing. Imagine that.

 

This morning was very nice eggs and fruit salad (thank you very much David), at noon fish, birthday bread, and green salad (je-ne-se-pa? Serge), and tonight was fried chicken and fried potatoes (Mom still cooks potatoes and chicken better than me durndoggit). Don’t worry. We had plenty of our “Four C’s” (cookies, cakes, colas, and candy) all day long.

 

Arts and Entertainment:

 

There was some piano playing, but it’s a little more difficult to rock and roll on the keyboard as the boat rocks and rolls more.

 

The highlight was “Bob’s Party Mix” blaring on the boat-wide stereo from 8:00pm till the wee hours. “Bob’s Party Mix” is a collection of several hundred unrelated tunes. Some of the favorites were “I Am the Frito Bandito,” “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “I Feel Pretty,” “Whisky in a Jar,” and “Smoke on the Water,” and the theme song from “MASH.”

 

 

 

 

Daily Log for the Minnow

Wednesday, November 23, 2005
10:38 PM UTC

It's my birthday! Last night about midnight I was out on the back of the boat playing Moonlight Sonata on the piano. About the end
of the first movement and beginning of the second, the moon started up over the horizon. That was pretty cool. Maybe even 68
degrees.

Early this morning when I got up (about 10:00) there was some racket, movement, activity, and general confusion on the boat. We were
finally moving! The spinnaker was up and there was a little wind! It's gotten better throughout the day. Now we're doing 7-8 knots
in about 12 knots (true) of wind with the big spinnaker up. The wind is from about the 8:00 o'clock position.

Serge caught a fish today. We never did figure out what kind it is, but we (Serge) cleaned it. Do they have poison fish in the
ocean?

This afternoon I was up messing with some ropes and other sailing stuff. I came down into the living room and there was a cake with
50 (or more) candles, all but one lit (the slackers), and a bunch of balloons. Party time! Being 50 is really good. Now when I
forget stuff I can say I'm just too old to remember, instead of dealing with the harrassment I've had to put up with since I was
about 12.

We're behind in the boat race, after having a couple of 50-mile days. I think we're going faster than most of the other boats at the
moment, so maybe we'll catch up.

There's a giant low-pressure system a few days in front of us. Well, it's not really giant, but it is significant. The 24 and 48
hour forcast today said there's a chance it could become a tropical or subtropical cyclone. According to our boat book (Chapman),
that means hurricane. That is hard to drive a boat through.

But it probably will weaken. We are thinking about going over the top (north) of the low and catch some tailwinds into St. Lucia. Or
we may go south and have some headwinds instead. Or the weather may change to something completely different before we get there.

We're north of most of the other boats, but there are several boats in the racing division up here with us. We're hoping they know
what they're doing.

Since I started writing this the wind has come up to 15 knots (true). We may have to pull down the spinnaker before long, because
it's a pretty flimsy sail.

Yesterday I cut into a piece of bread that Mike cooked in the breadmaker. There was a big chunk of metal in it. That guy can flat
cook!

Bob

Mike's Exciting Day 3 Update!

Light, lighter, none. Lighter, none, light. Lighter, none, none. None,
light, lighter. I'm describing our wind today.

In the middle of the afternoon, Bob decided he could out-swim the boat. So
he dived in and took off. He was able to keep up with the boat for a few
minutes but it was close to full-speed swimming so he didn't last very long.
He made a few tries at swimming a circle around the boat but never made it.
It seemed like every time he tried, we got a puff of wind that shoved the
boat a little faster than his stroke.

If you are wondering, we were dragging a rope in case he needed to grab it
while he was swimming. We were slow enough he didn't need it.

We had pancakes for breakfast, fruits for lunch, and a fancy fruit/veggie
salad for supper. Then we ate freshly baked bread later in the evening (I
used yeast this time). Sounds healthy. We need to eat healthy in order to
offset our daily intake of the "Four C's" (cookies, cakes, colas, and
candy).

Fishing was a lot more normal today. We let the lines out in the morning.
When it got dark we pulled the lines in.

We use a lot of water on this boat. We have a watermaker that uses some kind
of hocus-pocus to make water. To run the watermaker we have to run the
generator. It makes 20-some gallons an hour. We were expecting to need to
run the generator extra just for watermaking.

We also use a lot of electricity on this boat. When we bought this boat, we
wanted a lot of solar panels. It had four on it, and we wanted 8-10. The
boat salesman (David) told us that four was plenty. We told him that we
didn't turn off lights all that well. And that we normally had computers
running, and cameras and stuff charging, and breadmakers cooking, and
printers and radios on, and so forth. We ended up settling for six.

"David the boat salesman" is the same as "David our boat-mate for this
crossing." He seems a little surprised at how often we have to run the
generator. But I think he's already given up on trying to control electrical
usage. At this point, we only need to make water about 20% of the time that
we run the generator. I'll try to keep you updated on this interesting
statistic.

When the wind is "light, lighter, none" on this boat I observed two things.
One, there's a lot of time to do whatever we want since sailing takes about
1-2 minutes of every hour. In other words, if we divide the workload evenly,
every five hours each of us needs to sail for 1-2 minutes. Two, the other
people on the boat are a little more edgy when the boat speed is 0.7 knots
than they are when the boat speed is 7.0 knots.

Actually, it was an extremely relaxing, pleasant environment. If we were not
trying to go fast we would have been completely enjoyable. (of course, I was
able to completely enjoy myself since I've never been edgy)

There is one other thing I observed. When we got the position report of the
other boats it showed that the ones that chose the southern route made good
time. We are taking the northern route and we made really bad time. When the
other people read that report they were somewhat more edgy (maybe even a tad
cranky).

Arts and Entertainment:

Bob broke out the piano. We had entertainment live from the cockpit off and
on throughout the afternoon and evening. And into the night .

Ps. This was Bob's last day to be younger than 50.

Daily Log for the Minnow

We are now flying along at the incredible speed of 0.5 knots! Modern sailing technology is amazing. We got our positions last night.
We're in pretty good shape compared to the other boats, ahead of all but one catamaran. But the other two Catana 52s didn't report
their positions.

Mike cooked bread yesterday. He was apparently observing a religious holiday because he didn't use yeast.

Yesterday I went part way up the mast to fix a lazy jack line. Today David went up the front sail to fix a loose set screw. We've
had some chafing here and there. Other than that, everything is working well.

Bob

Mike's Exciting Day 2 Update

Today we had some medium-to-light wind to start the day which was pretty
nice. We were expecting to have some lightish wind much of the first 2-3
days.

On the Minnow we have a number of strict rules. On the open sea, in order to
maintain order it's important to adhere strictly to a set of rules. We have
a zero-tolerance policy onboard the Minnow.

The first rule is "no falling in."
The second rule is "the fishing poles have to be in use during the day."
The third rule is . well, we don't have a third rule yet, but there is
currently no rule against adding another rule.

So far we have not had a problem with rule breakers on the Minnow.
Therefore, we were fishing this morning. A couple of dolphins (mahi-mahi)
bit our hooks. David grabbed the first one (a 19-pounder) and Bob started on
the second one (a little one). While the fish were being dragged toward the
boat, a gaff hunt commenced. A gaff is a broomstick with a curved hook on
the end for grabbing the fish out of the water and onto the boat.

It was exciting. The big one jumped out of the water a lot and was fun to
watch. When we finally got the fish to the boat we just left them dragging
along about 10 feet behind the boat. This was due to the failure of the
gaff-hunting expedition.

This prompted a fish-glove hunting expedition. It failed, too, but I did
find a pair of slick leather gloves. So I donned the gloves, grabbed a fish
cleaning knife, and headed down the steps to take on the fish. Bob dragged
the little one up on the steps and I wrestled with it quite awhile before I
finally got some fingers in it's gill.

Since dolphins are notoriously hard to kill so I stabbed it in the head
about 100 times. This worked pretty well. It did quit flipping, although it
was bleeding all over the steps.

Then, as I started to turn my attention to the bigger fish, it returned to
life with a vigor. So I held it down best I could with both hands. Wet,
slimy leather gloves are very slick. It kept flipping, and flipping, and
flipping. This would have been OK except it was flipping right in the pool
of blood and slime. I was covered.

After the other guys stopped laughing, they began a discussion about how to
kill the thing. Apparently alcohol in the gills will kill one. We took a
verbal inventory for booze on board. None. Rubbing alcohol? None. Could I
sever the spine? I tried but couldn't. Bob decided that a hammer was the
ticket and fetched one. Some spirited blood-splattering, skull-crushing, and
fish number one was pronounced officially dead.

The next one succumbed to skull-crushing quite easily and the rest of the
fish cleaning went without incident.

The ensuing clean up took longer than the fish catching and cleaning
combined. It required a long session with our
newly-installed-saltwater-washdown faucet in the back. But the freshwater
shower and clothes washing took even longer.

The good thing . we seemed to be going noticeably faster since we were about
240 pounds lighter (30 gallons of fresh water).

Oh, the other good thing . the fish was tasty.

Arts and Entertainment:

After dark Serge, Bob, and I watched Smoky and the Bandit. Serge learned
some new English phraseology from Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie
Gleason).

11/21/05

Very light air right on the nose all day long. The day’s highlight were two dorado, quickly converted to a delicious lunch.
Again, we could not reach Don SSB, but the GRIBS we received by email forecast several more days of light wind. We expect a long
passage and discussed conservation of both fuel and eggs.

Jim

11/20/05

The send off today was spectacular. Marching bands serenaded us at the dock. hundreds of well wishers lined the harbor and the
jetties to see us off. Our Sousaphone-playing crewmembers performed over twenty national anthems as we headed out to the starting
line, putting their instruments away at the five minute warning. We had a light spin run down the east side of Gran Canaria and got
walloped with a 35 knot WESTERLY as we reached the south end of the island. Lots of excitement on board as we pounded thru
initially steep seas and sorted-out a mis-run main reef 2. Tonight we tacked out into the Atlantic leaving the Canaries to
starboard.

Jim

Our first day!

Our race started today at 1:00pm Canary time (7:00am in Oklahoma). The start
was interesting. There were 225 boats all around and trying to position to
cross the starting line in the right position at the right time. There were
also a lot of other boats watching and taking pictures.

Serge, David, and Jim were all getting the sails up and ready. Bob and I
were playing tunes on our sousaphones. We were in the middle of a
rip-roaring rendition of "In the Mood" when the other three started yelling
and running around. We had a rope stuck somewhere it shouldn't be right at
1:00.

Anyway Bob and I played a while longer and then actually helped sail.

So far today we have used 5 different sails. The main sail (full up, first
and second reef), the gennaker (big jib), the solent (little jib), a huge
spinnaker, and an even bigger spinnaker. The wind, starting at 10-12 knots,
has been as low as 2-3 knots and as high as 35 knots. All in the fist 3
hours.

Currently we are sailing upwind heading 200 (south southwest) about 60
degees off the wind. The wind speed is about 25 knots and our boat speed is
about 9 knots.

By Mike

We're Off!

We're off! We started the ARC to Stars & Stripes and In the Mood, sousaphone on the tramp. (naturally)

Here's a crew and some periscope pictures.

26 hours to start! Mike and Serge are out picking up up fruits, vegetables, and our last laundered laundry for a while. Jim is asleep (after 25 hour flight plus a night out). David is cooking eggs. Most of our "to do" list is finished, and all of the "required" items are done. I think we need to break something.

Mike and I plan to play 25 national anthems in two-part sousaphone harmony today, and tomorrow on the boat at the start. It could start a war.

Bob

Las Palmas

Mike, Mathieu and I are on the boat in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. I think that's Grand Canary in English, but I'm not sure. We joined the opening day parade today. We didn't get a written invitation, but that must have been an oversight. Next year we will probably be explicitly invited NOT to play...

There are a bunch of boats getting here preparing for the Altantic crossing, and more are on the way. I think will be somewhere between 225 and 250 boats in all.

Here's what we've got to do this week:
1. Hook up and test spare anchor.
2. Fix loose batten.
3. Clean props and check zincs.
4. Clean boat bottom.
5. Change engine oil.
6. Rewire light over chart table.
7. Inspect all rigging.
8. Varnish some wood.
9. Add missing washing next to cotter key.
10. Install sat phone antenna.
11. Put straps on helm seat cushions.
12. Add salt water faucets in back.
13. Replace board at washer/dryer thru-hull.
14. Raise microwave cover.
15. Mount life sling and man overboard module.
16. Vacuum engine rooms.
17. Make water filter mount more sturdy.
18. Make TV more sturdy.
19. Mount knife near cockpit.
20. Reorganize food and storage areas. (Mike and Serge will do this alternately for most of the trip.)
21. Install third propane alarm, in Kitchen.
22. Get groceries
23. Get the right number(?) of sheets, blankets, towels, etc.
24. Get some wood and fiberglass epoxy to hold eyescrews to fasten the propane tanks to.
25. Tie wooden plugs in the bilge near each thru-hull fitting.
26. Get toilet paper, pillows, hand towels, rubber feet for microwave, printer paper, 1 red hand flare, 3 red parachute flares, 4 white parachute flares, ziploc bags, frying pans (2), dish drainer, tea-brewing glass, paper bowls, towels, and cups, trash bags.

There's a swedish girl named Emma looking for a boat to join, but there are probably 5 wives who would object to her on this boat.

We were thinking that, at 225 boats, 4 people per boat, 3 meals per person per day, 20 days, that is a LOT of food people are buying here this week!

Getting close to Las Palmas

Mike called and said they'd get to Las Palmas in a few hours. He actually said ten hours, but that was some time ago. He also said he'd gone 21.3 knots. But the phone connection was bad, and I'm not sure if this was boat speed or Mike's speed on the way to the bathroom.

ARC Progress Reports

You can check the progress of The Minnow or any other boat in the ARC here:

http://arc.worldcruising.com/en/

You'll have to wait until the crossing starts on November 20, though.

The Minnow will cross the Atlantic (hopefully) in the ARC, Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, later this month. The crew of the Catana 52 is made up of

Serge Bigotto, Paris

Jim Forquer, Southern California

David Renouf, Southern California

Mike Webster, Pryor, Oklahoma

Bob Webster, Pryor, Oklahoma

Serge, Mike, and Bob have a history of sailing together. However, much of it was in a 15-foot open power boat. Last summer the three, along with a couple of their offspring, managed sail a Bahia 46 from Norfolk, VA to La Rochelle, France without sinking. Catamarans are notoriously difficult to sink.

Jim and David are competent sailors and allegedly know what to do with all those ropes. It is not known, however, whether they'll be able to untangle the gorilla knots commonly used by Oklahoma farmers.

Sailing with multilingual crews has been a challenge almost as long as there have been sailboats, and this voyage will likely be no exception. While French-English communication is not a problem, there may be a considerable language barrier between English and Okie, as nautical terminology is nonexistent in the latter.

The Minnow is fully outfitted with modern maritime equipment necessary for a transatlantic voyage, such as an electric piano, a baritone, and two sousaphones. Bob and Mike Webster are threatening the Canary Islands in general and the ARC specifically with loud 2-part sousaphone renditions of the national anthem for each of the 25 countries represented in this year's ARC: Australia, Austria, U.K., Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Leichtenstein, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, U.S.

Mike and Bob have performed in prominent locations such as the MGM Grand in Las Vegas (they were eventually escorted out) and the Navy Pier Auditorium in Chicago (where they were asked to leave by the police). Research may be undertaken during the crossing by Jim, David, and Serge on the effectiveness of sousaphone bells as a series drogue.

http://rwebster.com/sousaphones.htm

In case anybody is interested in joining in, here's the music.