Technical Summary: In both our passages from Beaufort to Bermuda and Bermuda to Virgin Gorda, we were overall very pleased with the boat’s behaviour in rough seas. This boat is made for that stuff! The only problem we encountered was the furler profile (which was half-way furled) becoming undone from the lower drum which required us to drop the sail completely on deck. Of course, this happened at night with 20 knots of winds...Heiner knew right away what the problem was and next morning, in a 12 knots breeze, we were able to fit the sail back in the aluminium profile and hoist the sail back up. Otherwise, no other sail-related problem occured!
We made use of the engine much more than anticipated: our Volvo Penta MD11D (25HP) was put to a real test. It overheated between Beaufort and Bermuda and Heiner changed both impellers, raw water and antifreeze impeller. Of course, he had to do this in heavy seas...thank God for Gravol which allowed him to be in the engine compartment without being sea sick!
A couple of days after leaving Beaufort, our marine head did not seem as efficient anymore and too much effort was needed to rinse it clean so Marleyne, who is in charge of changing valves, did just that... and everybody was relieved to see it fonction properly. In our second leg, Heiner had to clean the pump for overboard discharge...An essential piece of equipment the marine head!
Vibrations: amazing what motoring for days at a time will do to a boat and its parts. Our stove problem was in part due to vibrations! The stove burner probably became untight and leaked thus imbibing the asbestos plate under the burner. After 20 minutes of burning, the whole thing ignited!
In summary, it is in most part due to the captain’s vigilance and good maintenance schedule that we have had so few material breakdowns during this rather demanding passage.
From Beaufort to Bermuda (November 9th to 16th ), these were 704 nautical miles that we did in 8 days. We ran the engine for 58 hours. From Bermuda to Virgin Gorda (November 23th to November 30th ) , these were 870 miles and we ran the engine for 93 hours; our Volvo Penta was super economical with a consumption of ca.1.54 litre per hour! Oh, I forgot, Marleyne smoked 4 packs of Marlboro light between November 2nd and November 29th!!!! She is now cigarette smoke free and only smoking cigars....with Cruzan rum! As for Heiner, he is now off Gravol and had noticed that after 3 days or so, he began having auditory hallucinations...like voices talking on the SSB. He was somewhat amused by them but this impaired his sleep at times...When he switched to Sturgeron, this did not happen but he noticed some queasiness near the 7th or 8th hours if conditions were rough. He took medications for the complete duration of both passages.
We would like to conclude by saying that this passage is not, as Don Street once wrote in Cruising World’s magazine, a straightforward passage. He had insinuated that you had to sail east and when the butter started melting, you had to go south...well, it ain’t that way and it was not a Cruising World’s passage. If we take into account all the written and experienced testimonies of sailors, it looks like conditions are very different for each passage and that one will have to be prepared for all types of weather and seas when undertaking this trip. Ideally, we would have done Beaufort - Virgin Gorda in one stretch and in about 11 days...ideally.
Bilan
Cette partie est difficile a écrire en français à cause des termes techniques que j’ignore malheureusement...mais l’important c’est que nous avons eu très peu de difficultés techniques et cela est dû, en grande partie, au zèle du capitaine qui a toujours veillé à inspecter le matériel aussi souvent que possible avant et pendant chacune des deux traversées.