Last night was sporty as we thrashed along with two reefs in the main with wind gusts to the low 20s.   The wind really picked up around dusk and with a second reef in the main the boat settled down, mostly.

I tend to sail conservatively when on passage as I do not want to put excessive stress on boat and crew. To that end I subscribe to “reef early and often” and have the boat set up so that the process goes quickly.   

The process of reefing goes like this…

The first step is to release the boom vang so that the end of the boom goes up which takes pressure off the back of the sail, the leach.

I adjust the autopilot to head up more into the wind, generally 30 to 40 degrees.  This gets the sail luffing as the pressure of the wind is less.  Then it comes down smoothly which makes it easier to tension the luff (front) and pull in the leech (back) as we reduce sail area. 

The main halyard is marked with a single black mark at first reef, two for the second and three for the third so all I need to do is to drop it until the appropriate mark on the halyard lines up with the line break/clutch.   This sets the head of the sail up properly so I can pull the foot down and secure the luff, front, and the leech, back. 

Next, I hand pull in the luff reef line in as much as I can and then use the winch to pull in the last foot so that the bottom of the sail  is the right height off of the boom.  Again, that line is marked and while I generally know when it is properly tensioned I take a look to be sure that it looks right without any odd wrinkles in the sail indicating stress on the fabric.

I pull in the leech, the back of the sail, as much as I can by hand and then bring it in the last few feet with the winch.  The loads on this line are alarming and I am always worried that something is going to break.  

As with all heavily loaded lines great care is needed and I can generally hear when the electric winches are overloaded, something that is not obvious to someone who is not intimate with the boat.

I recall the first time I furled the big code zero, when I was new to the boat, accidentally pulling on the wrong line with the power winch and ripping the line right out of the furling drum.  At the time I was not tuned to the sounds of the winch when it has too much load to be safe.   I learned my lesson.

Finally, I take the slack out of the remaining reefing lines to be sure that they do not get tangled, wrap around the end of the boom or catch on something.  Left hanging and they can catch on something like the hatches in the dodger and rip it off, which has happened twice.

Once all lines are secure and everything is properly set I pull the vang back down to a position so the boom is roughly parallel with the deck. 

And finally, bring the boat back down to the prior course. 

All of this takes about ten minutes and can be done easily in the dark with a red headlamp.  I generally do not let crew do this as there are just too many opportunities to break stuff and I would rather be the one that messes up if things go badly.   

It took a lot of practice to get everything set up in a way that makes the process smooth.  The right sort of slippery reefing lines, marking the lines so I know when they are in the right place and other more subtle issues like how the winch sounds under load took some experience to get right.

The reefing setup was not quite right when I purchased the boat and it was not until I had a rigger look at it that I was able to get it to a point where I felt that the process would reliably go smoothly.

The forecast predicts that we will hit stronger winds over the next 12 hours, increasing to the low to mid 20s with gusts up to 30kts.  That is a lot of wind but the good news is that these peak winds are expected to be during daylight hours and should subside largely before it gets dark.

Once the winds get lighter, we will be in prime orca “play area” so that should be fun too.

As slow as the first half of the run was, the second is certainly faster and sometimes downright sporty but overall, it has been a reasonable passage.

Having said that, I would be lying if I said that I will be sad to see my voyage from Trinidad to Spain come to an end.  I have had more than enough sailing for now having been underway for two and a half months which is more than enough for one season. 

But as they say, “you have to do what you have to do” and getting Pandora to the Med was necessary to allow us to do some exploration over the next few years. 

After so much advance planning and so many days at sea since Trinidad, it is a bit surreal to realize that, if all goes well, in perhaps 36 hours my first transatlantic voyage will be completed.

With the looming orca “issues” ahead of us tomorrow, I do not know if I will take time to do another post but for sure, once we make landfall, hopefully late on Wednesday, there will be more to tell and I am hoping that my next post will not be all about orcas.   

A lot has gone into making this trip beginning more than ten years ago when an offhand comment by my dad “Bob, wouldn’t it be great to take Pandora through the Strait of Gibraltar?” planted the seed. 

Of course, that is not all of it but making my way past the “rock” will cap off a number journeys that have brought me here not the least of which was starting this blog more than 15 years and 1,200 posts ago which I started to share our journeys with Dad and Mom. 

And I continue to type away in my “office” aboard Pandora.

If you are curious about how my blog came to be, check out “why I keep this blog” at the top of this page.  It has been a long journey and perhaps, in some ways, it is just getting started.

For now, the seas seem to be settling down but I have no illusion that it is going to be smooth sailing for the next 24 hours with winds piping up between us and the Strait of Gibraltar.

Here is to the last mile or at least the last 36 hours. 

Wish me luck. 

For me, the hardest part of passagemaking is when the winds are unfavorable, either not enough wind, too much or from the wrong direction.  On this passage the wind has been very light which has slowed us down a lot. It has been quite frustrating to slowly motor sail much of the time.

Fortunately, with a bit more than 400nm left to go, Things are improving as the wind has gradually increased so, with brief lulls, we have been sailing well for the last day so I am happy.  As we get closer to Portugal, we will likely have too much of a good thing but at least we will be moving toward Gibraltar at a good clip.  

We cannot see Gibraltar yet but I am sure that it is out there somewhere…

Pandora has a distinctive hum when she reaches 7kts and I am hearing that welcome sound a lot now and the weather files from this morning predict that we will have fair winds for the remainder of the run.  

Sails setting nicely in 15kts.

It is hard to believe that with 400nm more to go it seems like we are “almost there” but after more than 4,000nm under Pandora’s keel since departing Trinidad more than two months ago I do feel like we are getting close.

Of course, “arriving” assumes that we do not run into any delays (orcas).  I checked www.orcas.pt again today and no new attacks have been logged.  I am not particularly superstitious but I am unwilling to predict that we will make it through without incident.  Although, I am counting on it.

Originally, I had anticipated arriving in Gibraltar late on Tuesday afternoon but now it looks like making landfall late on Wednesday or very early on Thursday morning is more realistic.  With some luck we will be able to make it to the entrance of the harbor during daylight but it is more likely that we will be picking our way into the harbor in the dark.

I contacted the marina to ask if there might be a place in the marina to tie up after dark but was told that they close off the marina and that I would have to anchor nearby, north of the marina and come in the next day.

He said something about “putting up the boom” as a reason that I was unable to enter after hours.    I guess that is some sort of barrier in the marina but who knows.

I have heard that with the north coast of Africa so close; a fair amount of smuggling goes on with small craft making the run into the harbor at night and unloading on the beach.  Perhaps the boom is about deterring small craft from entering the marina.

I am looking forward to being in Gibraltar for a few days and am really interested in making a trek up to the top of the rock, an image that has been with me since I was a kid watching “Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom” with the famous Rock of Gibraltar predominantly featured at the beginning of the show. 

I understand that there are resident monkeys on the mountain and that they are quite adept at snagging items, especially food, from unaware visitors. 

Based on the wind predications that are forecasting strong easterly winds between Gibraltar and Almeria, I expect that we will spend three days or so in Gibraltar before being able to move east. 

Down below, a bit of a mess, in cruising mode.

Of course, Peter and Steve playing cards. 

Peter

Steve

Our wake streaming to the west and it’s all downhill, in a good way I hope, to Gibraltar. 

It is hard to believe that once I make landfall in Gibraltar that I will have been aboard or underway with Pandora for more than 2 ½ months, beginning when I left Trinidad on May 4^th.  Along the way I visited more than a dozen countries, made crew changes 4 times, 5 if you count Brenda, sailed with a total of 8 individual crew members covering 4,500 nautical miles. 

Just for fun, down below when Pandora is rigged for a nighttime run.

And all that sailing included more “fixing broken stuff” along the way, than I want to think about.  And who can forget the root canal I had done in St Marten? 

With about half of the 1,000 miles from the Azores to Gibraltar under our keel, my thoughts turn to the “last mile “where we will possibly encounter the dreaded orca.

I have written a good deal about the orca menace and their attacks on pleasure boats along the coast of Portugal and the waters around Gibraltar and am very focused on trying to avoid becoming a statistic.   

For the last few years there have been many incidents where orcas bit/broke off the rudders of cruising sailboats, rammed the hull and in a few cases, sunk boats.

There are several websites focused on chronicling these incidents including www.orcas.pt.  On that site you can select a time period and see how many sightings and attacks there are in any given area.

This image shows a years’ worth of sightings for 2024 (in blue) and “incidents” (in red). Yikes!

Incidents in July and August of last year.  Still a lot… but mostly up north.

Looking at just the last three weeks, sightings and incidents.  Not so much.  I am encouraged.

And finally, hits on boats in the last three weeks. Not terrible, unless it’s you…

Having personally met two skippers over the winter that were attacked certainly brings home the scale of the risk.

Nobody really knows why orcas hit sailboat rudders but the leading theory is that the are doing this for sport and that the number of orcas involved in this sort of behavior is quite limited. 

There is also evidence that this behavior is being “taught” by a small number of adult females.  Yet another example of bad behavior among young males being encouraged by women. Just sayin…

The primary food source of orcas in this area is tuna and a leading theory is that the matriarch is encouraging juveniles and adolescents to “practice” catching tuna by going after the rudders of boats.

Early in the spring the risk of attack in the area near Gibraltar and southern Portugal is at it’s peak but as the season progresses, many of the orcas move north, following the tuna, up the coast of Portugal so the threat on the south coast of Portugal and near Gibraltar is less during the summer months.

Additionally, most reports of sightings are near the southern coast of Portugal and less far offshore between Portugal and Morocco.  That area, about 100 miles from shore is also where the commercial shipping lanes are located and my plan is to transit that area. 

Much advice is shared on Facebook and other resources on how to deter attacks such as sticking a metal pole in the water and hitting it with a hammer.  Dumping gasoline over the side, tossing sand in their path and even tossing big firecrackers into the water.

One of the most popular though is to tow an acoustic device that is supposed to repel them.  Sadly, the one that I ordered never arrived in the Azores before I departed.   I have written all about this but alas, I will never know if it would have worked.

Of course, none of the active approaches that involve deterring them will work unless you can see them coming and it is not uncommon for them to hit the boat before the crew is even aware that they are in the area, especially in the dark.

I heard of one report recently where the boat was hit so hard that it turned 360 degrees in its own length and many “victims” have reported steering linkages being broken.   It is advised to disengage the autopilot, turn on the engine and go as fast as possible away from them but also being careful to release the wheel so as not to be injured when it is yanked violently. 

It is hard to comprehend the power of one of these animals that weigh thousands of pounds.

If my steering gear is damaged, I have an emergency tiller that will allow me to steer the boat and I also had an auxiliary tiller fabricated for my wind vane steering as a backup of a backup.   

This whole thing is quite unsettling and all I can hope is that we are not one of the unlucky few that sustain real damage and that we can pass through the area with a minimum of fuss.

So, here we are, half of the way to our destination and as I noted in a recent post, “everything on a cruising boat is broken, you just don’t know it yet.”  I sure hope that does not include my rudder at the hands, or should I say mouth, of an excited adolescent orca.

So, to the question of “do orcas bite?” the answer, sadly is yes.  But for me, the real question is if they will bite Pandora. 

Oh, I sure hope not…

Details to come…

In contrast to the nearly three hours, between midnight and 03:00 that I spent swapping out the dead alternator yesterday, the last 24 hours have been decidedly uneventful.

My crew Steve and Peter have settled into the rhythm of passage making and I am happy to say that not a lot has happened.

Brenda likes to say that when we are cruising that “nothing happens aboard Pandora until noon”, typifying the relaxed approach to getting stuff done aboard.

One basic truth is that even the simplest task takes a lot of time when you are on a boat.  Whether it is meal prep, general cleaning or fixing broken stuff, somehow the next day rolls around with a lot of sameness.

Swapping out the alternator only meant taking off a handful of bolts but getting to them was anything but simple and required a good amount of sweat reaching around a hot engine and it took a long time.  Time that I should have been sleeping.

When I got up this morning, I noticed that I had a few more bruises likely related to my midnight contortions. 

Sadly, decent wind continues to allude us but we are hopeful that it will begin to fill in later today. 

 As we loaf along, waiting for wind to fill in, engine rumbling away, Steve challenged us to a game of hearts.   I have never played and the rules seemed a bit daunting to me.  Fortunately, a brief rise in wind called the game off after a few rounds…

As I have mentioned in past posts, strong north winds are common off the west coast of Portugal and while the wind to date has been frustratingly light so far, we should have more than enough wind to move us along smartly for at least the last several hundred miles.

Even when there has been wind, it has either been too light or from behind us so that we have been unable to keep up a decent speed.  As a result, we have motored a lot and today I decided to transfer some of the fuel I have in jugs to the port tank.  We have plenty of fuel and transferring from can to tank is yet another SLOW activity aboard Pandora. 

We are facing a deadline late on Wednesday evening to finish our transit of Gibraltar before strong easterly winds will begin blowing from the east.  While I prefer more leisurely sailing we will need to make up speed as we have not covered enough distance each day to ensure that we pass Gibraltar before adverse winds make progress impossible.  

As I write this we are about 300 miles into our 1,000 mile run and it will be a nailbiter hoping that we get through Gibraltar before the wind turns against us.

Perhaps I will close with a lovely sunrise photo, just in case you might have missed the countless sunrise photos I have already posted this season.

I guess that is about it for now, a post that is nearly as interesting as our day has been.  

So far, a good day and not a lot happened aboard Pandora, so far…

Now all we need is better wind.

My friend Mark loves to say that “everything on your boat is broken you just don’t know it yet”.  

That is so true an on just about every passage something important breaks.   

A belt, water pump and more things than I can count have given up the ghost on passage and on our first day out, Pandora acted true to form. 

Yesterday after a days of preparation, we dropped our lines and headed out, bound for Gibraltar. 

As expected, there was very little wind so we had to motorsail for about the first 18 hours and finally, about dawn today the wind picked up enough to sail sans engine.  Well, at least some of the time. 

On passage I carefully log information every few hours about boat speed, wind speed, location and other stats that help me keep track of how things are going.  I also log the battery status so that if anything unusual happens I will see it.  Is the solar keeping up with the loads, is the engine charger working well? 

At midnight as I logged the numbers, I noticed that the battery charge was dropping even though the engine was running.  That wasn’t right and it was clear that the alternator was not putting out power.

We tried several tests to confirm that indeed the engine was not charging the batteries. 

I have an alarming number of spare parts assuming that “everything is broken” and along with a spare for every pump on the boat, I carry a spare high output alternator,

It has been sitting in storage for seven years just waiting for the “old” one to fail and it did last night.

So, at midnight I turned off the engine, now 175 degrees, and carefully removed the very hot alternator.  The entire process took more than two hours but I got it back together.

We turned on the engine, held our breath, and NOTHING…  No charging at all.  Same problem. 

Ok, now what.   I took a deep breath, checked everything again looked all around and discovered one tiny wire that was not attached.   I plugged it in.  Started the engine and… still nothing. 

We turned off the engine again and I scratched my head…

Not ready to give up we started the engine again.  This time I waited longer and much to my surprise the power slowly came up to full charging, more than 100 amps at 24v. 

What happened?  I had forgotten that on a big alternator the voltage regulator is designed to “spool up” the load slowly to minimize the shock to the system and I had forgotten that.

Problem solved and after two hot hours working on the engine, problem solved…

Now I will take the old alternator and have it tested to see if it has indeed failed and if so, have it rebuilt.

I am not absolutely certain that the old one failed or if there might be a wire somewhere that was jostled during the “repair” and now works. 

The point is that aboard Pandora “everything is broken you just don’t know it yet”. 

Yes, Mark is right and like him, I keep a LOT of spare parts aboard, just in case. 

Of course, if I was to carry spare parts for literally everything there would not be any room for us so all I can do is to carry parts that seem “likely to break” and hope for the best.

I do not know what I would have done if I did not have a spare alternator to charge the batteries but I do have a small Honda generator and that would have helped at least a bit.   And, of course, we have solar panels and a wind generator…

All better now.

Well at least until I discover another part of Pandora that needs fixing. 

Let’s just hope that I have a spare…

It was a long night but all is forgotten, thanks to having a spare and a beautiful sunrise. 

Oh yeah, as I write this the wind continues to be fickle so the engine, now charging happily, is off for a bit and then on again. 

We have to keep moving with about 850 miles to go even a half not difference in boats speed will mean a difference of 12 hours of passage time to Gibraltar.