Petronella and her contribution for a better world Today, September 10, 2022, we closed Petronella until Spring.  She is winterized, the deck clear of all sailing necessities and her belly packed. Hibernate and rest my darling, we will wake you up when the time comes. Thank you. Last week was an extremely busy one, and I am happy that we had Stas, our sailing companion during the last 3 weeks, with his youth and enthusiasm helping us. We were done ahead of schedule by about 5 hours, and this afternoon I was able to sit on her deck and relax while the sun, apparently a bit tired t ..read more

Of course, when I said I'd be posting pictures of the crossing tomorrow, I meant in a couple of days! Yesterday, our number one priority was to move from the Angra anchorage, which was extremely uncomfortable, into the marina. The marina was full, but Helena applied the full force of her persuasiveness (scary!) to the harbormaster, and somehow a slip materialized. We are now docked in the marina, and life is good. As I was going through the photos I took during the crossing, I realized again how difficult it is to capture the experience of sailing in photos or even video. I'm afraid my photogr ..read more

 2242 nautical miles. I’m just letting that sink in to my own brain. That’s how far it is, as the albatross flies, from Cape Henlopen in Delaware to Angra do Heroismo on the island of Terceria. We’ve arrived. We did it. It’s still not real, maybe because my brain is more than half asleep! We had another very slow night sailing with a 6 knot breeze on the beam. This petered away to nothing during Helena’s watch, as it often does in the small hours of the morning, but by the time I came back on watch at 6am, the wind had picked up again and we were sailing nicely, in the channel north of S ..read more

I don't know that today was a particularly hard day — it certainly wasn't — or if fatigue is gradually accumulating, or if the near end of our voyage has sent a signal to our brains, saying it's okay to let up on the adrenaline, we're almost there. Whatever the reason, today Helena and I were both feeling tired today. Also, coastimg along these beautiful islands, suddenly 4 knot seems VERY slow. It's one thing to do 4-5 knots in open ocean, where there's nothing to measure your progress against. It's another to watch an island slowly crawl by… So, we kept busy to keep us distracted most of the ..read more

Sloooow. That's my word of the day. We made very slooow progress today, sailing between Flores and Faial, ghosting along at 2-3 knots, without enough wind to go any faster. The twin headsails kept pulling well, but then the wind shifted significantly and we had to disassemble all that (much quicker than assembling them!) and go back to normal sailing, with the wind more or less on the beam again. If only there was more of it. But we weren't the nay ones short on fuel after a month's passage. We spoke on the VHF to a French boat with three 23 year old French guys who had sailed from the Caribbe ..read more

Somehow I lost count of the days, but I think it is actually 26 days from when we left Annapolis, so I am adjusting the title of this blog post and skipping forward a few days. Well, today I thought my big news was going to be how well the second pizza turned out. I always make enough dough for two pizzas, and it is always better the second day, I guess because it's had more time to ferment and get more flavorful. I've also refined my cast iron pan baking technique a bit, flattening the dough a little more evenly so it wasn't too thin in the middle, giving the first side 3 minutes, pricking it ..read more

At 0600 the wind really fell off and we had to pull out 'Orion', our cruising spinnaker. The name comes from the constellation of black stars sewn onto the large, light white sail. I also eased the out haul on the main to give the sail more draft, turned the boat to put us on a beam reach, and did everything I could think of to keep us moving in 6 knots of wind. Right now, we are making 3-4 knots, which is about as good as we can expect. Supposed to have this light wind all day. After doing all that, it occurred to me that we are getting A LOT of sailing experience on this trip. The equivalent ..read more

Well, we are *almost* in the Açores weather zone. Another 1/2 degree to the east and we'll be there. Everything takes longer than you expect at sea. Mainly because it's difficult to keep sailing at maximum speed all day long. For example, I just spent an hour making under 4 knots because I was hard on the wind, and not able to lay the course I wanted. Big mystery! I expected to have the wind on the beam. Why were we headed so far into the wind? Duh, because I had switched to the Angra waypoint, just to see how far we had to go to our first stop. Then I forgot to switch back to the next waypoin ..read more

Today was all about gradually emerging out of the eastern side of the Azores High and into what is effectively the eastern Atlantic. I guess officially this really begins at 35W — the border between Met Area IV, the western Atlantic weather region under the responsibility of the US, and Met Area II, under the French — but I was going by the perceptible change in the actual weather around us. For years, Les Weatheritt, Petronella's second owner, has been telling me that the US East Coast has the worst weather in the North Atlantic, and that we shouldn't be afraid of the unknown weather (unknown ..read more

This morning the wind finally dwindled away to nothing and we dutifully checked our fuel level, performed standard engine checks, and started the engine. It will be 24 hours of engine rumble until we find the northerly winds on the other side of the high. It's a long time to motor. I find myself wondering about the decisions I made about our route early on. Our friends aboard Kalyra, who left from New York the same day we left from Cape Henlopen stayed north of the Gulf Stream when we turned south. I think we had better weather than they did — our goal in heading south. It was certainly warmer ..read more