It’s Wednesday morning and we are underway, and bound for Bermuda, 850 miles to the north, the first big leg of my run to Horta in the Azores.
The seas are very calm and the breeze light enough to use our big headsail, the Code 0. According to the latest forecast, we should arrive in Bermuda sometime on Monday.
After only a few hours underway, the crew is settling into “passage mode” lounging around and enjoying the gentle roll of the swells.
George manning the helm.
Dave chilling…
And down below, Pandora in cruising mode with all the cushions covered with canvas.
When I think back to the last year and all that has gone into making plans and getting Pandora ready for the run, it amazes me that we are on our way. Sailing north to Bermuda at 7kts in 9-12kts, just forward of the beam. A beautiful start to a passage that is expected to be light wind sailing much of the way.
Between the trials of the last few weeks beginning with the last items to get Pandora ready to head north along with the ridiculous chain of events including engine issues and, who would have guessed it, an emergency root canal in St Martin, I can hardly believe that we are finally on our way to Bermuda.
Just deciding where Pandora will spend next winter, once I get to the Mediterranean, was hard enough. I contacted perhaps two dozen marinas to find a place that I felt comfortable with and was at least sort of reasonably priced.
Lining up nearly a dozen crew for the various legs, back and forth to Trinidad, twice, and from there north to St Maarten, onto Bermuda, Horta and finally Almeria Spain was a big deal.
And, I won’t even talk about the fear of my rudder being bitten off by an orca as we make our way from the Azores to Gibraltar. I have no idea what the odds are of that happening but running into a guy on the beach in Falmouth Antigua, who had been attacked just a few months earlier, certainly made it seem plenty “real”.
I cannot begin to describe the number of items that I had to purchase, from extra water pumps, spare autopilot driver, a remarkably complete medical kit and an alarming number of prescription drugs, mostly antibiotics, just in case. They say that on a cruising boat everything is broken, you just don’t know it yet.
And, on top of all of the medical supplies, as scary as all this sounds, how about a mechanical skin stapler. Oh boy, I hope that never comes out of the bag.
The number of nights that I woke up thinking of “what have I missed” are too many to count and as recently as a few days ago I thought that I would have to bag the entire trip and head back to Trinidad when I was warned that the engine repairs might take weeks to sort out which would put me beyond a reasonable window to cross to the Azores.
Oh, that was fun to think about as hurricane season is coming up very soon and it was only about a year ago when the massive hurricane Beryl trashed the SE Caribbean. If I was not going to Europe, I would be heading south to Trinidad yet again or perhaps home to New England. If I could not go this year, who knows if there would be another chance.
And, all of this is just the planning for Pandora, and does not include all the details of being away from home until mid-August when Brenda and I return from Europe. The last time I did not cut my own lawn was when Rob and Chris were kids.
Oh yeah, and being away from Brenda for six weeks, including our 58th anniversary, my 70th birthday and, worse of all, MOTHER’S DAY, to top off the list has made this tough.
Brenda has said for years that our lives, are “way too crazy”. And, while I generally resist that label, over the last few weeks it does seem that way.
However, I always fall back on the idea that we, in the words of our financial advisor, are in our “go-go years” that will in time be replaced by the “slow go years” and ultimately the dreaded “NO-GO years” all in due course. With all that, and the craziness all of this seems to ladle on our lives, it is clear to me that we need to go-go while we can. As near as I can figure, there are no “do-overs”.
We were supposed to depart for Bermuda on the 18th and with little wind in the forecast, we waited and waited for what seemed like a long time but finally, complete with forecasted wind for much of the trip, we have departed, three days late.
As crazy as this has been, I keep reminding myself that it was just a little more than a year ago when I contacted the Salty Dawg board of directors to see if there might be interest in running a new rally to the Azores as I wanted to go and would love to lead the fleet.
Much to my surprise, they embraced the idea and more than a few jumped on board to do the planning.
A “bucket list” had never been something that I have focused on but I can still remember when Brenda and I were on vacation in Maine many years ago and visited briefly with a couple that lived on their boat for several months every summer, a lifestyle that seemed unattainable to me as I held down a very demanding full time job.
However, a few short years later retirement seemed within reach and suddenly I just had to have a boat that could “cross oceans”. Of course, Brenda was not particularly amused but went along as we made plans to head to the Bahamas, then Cuba, the Caribbean and now…
Crossing the pond…
As I have mentioned a number of times recently, my dad, gone over ten years now, once remarked, “Bob, wouldn’t it be amazing to take Pandora through the straights of Gibraltar”.
Well, here I am, on my way and setting aside the 4,000 ocean miles and a menacing pod or pods of orcas between here and there, I might just do that.
Only 850 miles to Bermuda and one step at a time. I cannot believe all of this is happening.
Editor: I posted this while at sea and will continue to do so regularly so if you are interested in following along, and I hope you are, sign up on the upper right hand of this page and you’ll get an email when I put up another post.
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