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9 days to England

9 days to England

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We set off in some rougher weather, 3m large swell and up to 20 knots of wind. Due to this Kathryn wasn’t feeling great, but at least we saw lots of dolphins and were going nice and fast.

The general plan was to set off in this worse weather and have it drop down to something nice within a day or two. Sail most of the way, and as we approach the UK have a lull, before the subsequent low pressure would start to catch us, and then boost our way into the English channel.

All of this weather planning ended up being fairly accurate and we mostly sailed as planned with a couple of days of motoring in the middle and made it into the UK after 9 days.

On the way we saw these interesting cluster-type things that at the time we thought were some kind of jellyfish, but it turns out were Gooseneck Barnacles in a little cluster.

The blender that we bought in Velas came in handy once again. We still had leftover frozen fruit from our last smoothies to blend along with some fresh stuff, so we had mid-crossing smoothies!

We ended up watching quite a number of films in the cockpit during this passage, so popcorn was also needed.

We came toward England quite close to the Isles of Scilly, and this was the first land we saw, we were almost home. One more night sailing along the English coast and we came in for our approach to Falmouth in very light winds the following morning.

We anchored in the corner of the inner anchorage area, and were the closest boat to shore. It turns out that it was “Armed forces day” and there were quite some celebrations going on, including a flyover of the red arrows just after we anchored, and a parade through the streets of Falmouth. This started to explain the presence of 3 naval boats in the harbour too.

Our friends Tom and Nat arrived in Falmouth shortly after to whisk us away for brunch, and evening BBQ on the beach, and a nice evening in a land bed, which was absolutely great!

Just a few more hops along the English coastline till Hannah is back in her home port of Dartmouth.

Atlantic crossing, BVIs to Azores

Atlantic crossing, BVIs to Azores

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Our crossing is complete, and thanks to Ollie we managed to blog including pictures on the route on Day 2, Day 4, Day 8, Day 9, Day 14, Day 17 with Day 22 being the final day with a post from the Azores.

We sailed roughly 2630 nautical miles over 22 days according to our Garmin Inreach, which means an average speed of around 5 knots (4.98). If we were to sail as the crow flies, the distance would be 2160 nautical miles, so we sailed 500 miles more than the most direct route.

During lighter winds, or when against annoying swell we would use the Volvo Penta D2-40 engine at 1000rpm to keep our speed up and give us a boost, (roughly 1-1.5 knots extra). Actually having run the engine for a prolonged period it was easier to figure out our fuel consumption, and on average we used 0.78 liters per hour at 1000rpm.

We didn’t set off alone, and both Escapade and Saga set off on the same day as us, but in the morning and from Saint Martin. Extress, Blue Note and Atlas all set off 4 days later, but caught up due to higher winds and a slightly more direct route.

Regularly in contact via email using our Iridium Go with the other boats, we had a nightly position report for everyone, which I plotted and you can see below. (There is also a combined screenshot from OpenCPN with dated waypoints at the bottom of this post).

Click title to show track
Hannah Penn
Extress
Escapade
Blue Note
Atlas
Artemis
Toubab
Saga
JestX

At one point as we were all leaving the Caribbean we actually all sailed within the same 50 nautical miles of the Atlantic ocean before then splitting off for our more southerly or northerly routes.

Artemis were in Bermuda and set off a few days after both groups, meeting Extress etc on their northerly route after a few days.

All in all, we had a good crossing, seeing lots of dolphins, jellyfish, birds, and many cargo ships, some of which had to alter course to avoid us.

For the entire crossing, we were close hauled, meaning the boat was healed over quite a lot, it was such a relief stepping back onto flat land again after living at 45 degrees for 22 days! (really it’s more like a 8-15deg heal angle but you wouldn’t guess it when you’re sliding across the cockpit floor!)

Finally, here is the OpenCPN screenshot of all the boat routes with dated waypoints. (Click to open the image full screen)

Atlantic Day 22: Arrival in Flores

Atlantic Day 22: Arrival in Flores

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We set off in the afternoon of the 8th May from the BVIs, and arrival in Flores, Azores was to happen in the afternoon of the 30th May, so a 22-day crossing in total!

Wildlife sightings were on the increase, with more and more dolphins and birds appearing every day.

One little bird even came and had a little rest on board for half a day.

The air temperature was getting noticeably colder still, and we had to dig around in our deep storage to find a wooly hat and a nice blanket for our night shifts in the cockpit.

On day 21 (the day before we arrived) we had our biggest lull in the wind for the whole trip, which latest around 12 hours. But this was a lovely opportunity to each have a nice long shower inside Hannah as we knew we were close to land and could spare the water, and the boat was nice and stable.

After the lull the wind picked up, as an area of low pressure was passing by the Azores.

We didn’t have the best approach to the island, needing to tack multiple times in the final half a day, on the southwestern corner, which is also where most of the chop and swell was building up and crossing over.

The tacking angles were annoying, and every time we tacked, after 5-20 minuites, the wind will have shifted (probably as it comes off the land) and we would find ourselves needing to tack once more to actually get closer to the island.

But, Land Ho!

What a wonderful sight!

And once within 1 mile of the island, the swell and chop really decreased!

Escapade had come into the port of Flores a few days prior and had tried out figure out where we were all going to moor as there is no marina, only a concrete harbor. Saga were a few hours ahead of us and already moored up.

They managed to take some pretty nice pictures of us approaching the harbor with our sails still up, before then helping us moor in the harbor. Here is our favorite.

We moored up alongside Sweet Life, and once secured and happy, we could head to land!

Having been cooking and cleaning for 22 days straight, job 1 was to find a local restaurant and eat some food prepared by someone else.

Steak and fish time, and of course a beer (for Adam).

Atlantic Day 17: 2,000 Miles Down

Atlantic Day 17: 2,000 Miles Down

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Tacking continues, and whenever we get a wind shift, that pushes us too far away from our target of Flores, Azores we tack.

We expect to be tacking for the next 48 hours at least, and then hopefully curve north on a port tack all the way to the Azores, hopefully ahead of the low pressure that is forecast to pass beneath the Azores.

The forecast is still changing day by day, and we currently plan to make landfall on either Monday 29th or Tuesday 30th May with around 550 miles left to sail.

We have had a few more container ship sightings, but more interestingly we probably came within 200 meters of a French sailing catamaran a few days ago, so close we could wave to each other 😀👋.

Podcasts have become our latest focus of entertainment during the mornings, and yesterday we also spent some time trying to get some great pictures of Portuguese man o’ wars. After managing to snap 20-30, here are two of the best.

The temperature continues to drop as we head north, and the days are noticing longer with the sun rising at 5 am and not setting until after 8 pm

One thing we really should have done before setting off was taking down the ensign we have on the mizzen topping lift, it really hasn’t enjoyed a month of sailing

We are still in contact with the other boats we have met along the way that all set off at roughly the same time.

One thing we like to do by email is riddles and quizzes.

Here is a copy of the music quiz we just created. We might put the answers in the next post!

The first 10 questions are lyrics, please guess the song name and artist!

  1. You were always on my mind, you were always on my mind
  2. Here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note
  3. And I would do anything for love, I’d run right into hell and back
  4. I tried so hard, and got so far, in the end, it doesn’t even matter
  5. You’re my doll, rock’n’roll, feel the glamour in pink, kiss me there, touch me there, hanky panky
  6. Are you ready, are you ready for this, are you hanging on the edge of your seat?
  7. I was scared of pretty girls, and starting conversations
  8. In one single moment your whole life can turn around, stand there for a minute staring straight into the ground
  9. I wanna love ya, and treat you right
  10. Instinctively you give to me, the love that I need, I cherish the moments with you

The second 10 questions are general music trivia

  1. How old was Michael Jackson his song ABC was released as part of the Jackson 5?
  2. How many times is the name “Jolene” sung in the song Jolene by Dolly Parton
  3. What are the first 17 words to the song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen?
  4. What is the first instrument you hear in Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash?
  5. What was the first major sea shanty to become popular on TikTok? Bonus points if you know the original origin of the song.
  6. What year did daft punk disband/retire?
  7. Who is the lead singer in the band Gorillaz?
  8. What comedy band features in the song “Everything is Awesome” from The Lego Movie?
  9. Where does the artist “Tones” come from, who sang the recent-ish hit song “Dance Monkey”?
  10. Who sang the latest James Bond theme song? What song? And what film?
Atlantic Day 14: Hammocks and Heaving to

Atlantic Day 14: Hammocks and Heaving to

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The crossing has continued to progress, we have sailed around 1,515 nautical miles at this point, and estimate we have another 1,000 to go at least.

We continue heading north east close hauled with full canvas during the day and some reefs in the main and Genoa at night on starboard tack.

Currently we have 15 knots of wind, equating to 19 knots apparent wind, and doing 6.5 knots in moderate swell with chop. Saga, who are around 80 miles ahead of us, have flatter seas and less winds now. We are looking forward to reaching this lower wind portion of the journey.

We are not alone out here and have had a few chats with other boats over VHF, including a French sailing boat called “Mustang”.

Last night in the darkness the AIS alarm went off as a 1,000 ft container ship approached us from behind. After a quick check on VHF at 3am they adjusted course to pass behind us with around 1nm clearance.

If your curious what we get to see on a night watch, here you go.

No dolphin sightings since the early days of the crossing, but the number of Portuguese man o’ wars floating around is increasing dramatically (at least we think that’s what they are).

Sorry for the low quality slightly blurry picture, it’s hard to get a good one of them!

We have been experimenting with our comfort aboard, and setup a hammock in the cockpit that we use sometimes. It’s not free swinging, as you’d swing all over the place, but is a lovely place to sit on the starboard side to not need to have to wedge yourself into the seat.

For the 3 days we have been heaving to for half an hour each day over lunch to bring a bit more stability to our lives.

This provides a lovely opportunity for a quick little shower / rise, using the loo while not being thrown around, eating some lunch and doing the dishes.

When heaving to for 30 minutes, we travel at roughly 1 knot backward, which is around 0.5 miles, but you also loose the 2.5-3 miles that you would have travelled forward. So this 30 minutes break looses us only 3 miles a day.

Over the coming 5 days we will likely be tacking east while still making some progress north. All of the forecast now seem to agree on this. Though the approach is still yet to be decided upon with a small low pressure forecast to be somewhere, and the position of the Azores high still also up in the air.

Atlantic Day 9: A change in the weather

Atlantic Day 9: A change in the weather

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Up until day 9, the weather has generally been quite pleasant.

And in fact in very recent days we haven’t had much wind at all, and the seas have been lovely and flat, we have been getting in the sea and also doing lots of cooking.

We managed to catch another fish, our first Mahi Mahi.

Somehow we have never caught the same fish twice on this entire adventure.

We roasted it with some veggies along side some fajita filling that we had made earlier.

However this morning the clouds started to appear and the rain started to fall, with the wind speed picking up again.

Before 9am we had our first 2 squalls of the passage, with further increased wind speeds.

At the time of writing this, we are actually in 20+knts of wind with a reef in the main (first time since setting off), and with the cockpit covers closed keeping the rain out, averaging 7.1knts SOG (speed over ground).

Also as writing this, we are crossing the 1,000 mile mark.

A bunch of us that are crossing at the same time are in communication daily, reporting our positions to each other and generally chatting about what’s been going on on each boat .

This now includes plotting all of our routes on a single map.

You can see clearly the 2 different groups that set off a few day apart. We are in group 1 which has headed further east initially, and the second group initially headed further north.

As we start to approach the final 10 days we start to have a better idea of what the weather will look like as we approach the Azores.

The weather routing by predict wind above shows us sailing beneath the Azores high in an area of lower winds for the coming days, before taking up to the Azores. And it look like this might be the route most of us follow.

With any luck (and according to the forecast) this rain should subside as the evening draws closer, and the winds should also stabilize. Otherwise sleeping tonight might be a bit of a challenge.

Until next time!

Atlantic Day 8: It only took 8 days to catch a fish

Atlantic Day 8: It only took 8 days to catch a fish

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We have started turning to the east, and in general are making great progress to the Azores. So far we are very happy with the window that we set off in, as we have had rather flat seas the whole way, and mostly enough wind, though we have been motor sailing through some lighter wind spots.

During some of those lighter wind spots, we jump in the sea, have a cool down and a little wash, before rinsing with fresh water onboard Hannah with the solar shower.

We (one by one) hang off the back of the ladder at the back of the boat while sailing, with an extra line also out the back in the water. We wouldn’t be doing this if we were in lighter winds and flatter seas. This time, we also jumped off the bow to try and get a picture of Hannah sailing past before grabbing the line, but you can’t get very far away

During our peaceful sailing times, we keep getting more and more birdy visits. The larger of these birds kept swooping down right next to the cockpit on the look out for scraps of food.

Also recently up for dinner was pizza. Little did we know before setting off, we accidentally bought cashew milk mozzarella. It’s okay, but looking forward to opening the real pack of mozzarella we have soon.

We were not very successful in fishing coming east to west due to all of the seaweed. The rods have been out the back of Hannah during the day time since day 3 of this crossing. We had one bite, that came off while being reeled in. Another bit that took the whole lure and leader. But finally today, we reeled in a little tasty Amber Jack for our dinner. We cooked it with some tomato, onions, courgette, lemon juice, dill and butter.

Another evening draws to a close aboard Hannah, as the magic autopilot continues to steer us on.

Tomorrow might be quite a low wind day, and we may end up motoring quite a bit, after which the winds should come back and allows us to continue sailing on toward the Azores.

Still no sign of the other boats we are near, but hopefully we will catch up with them in the coming days.

Atlantic Day 4: Bananas and Buoys

Atlantic Day 4: Bananas and Buoys

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It’s Friday, and we are 2 hours away from being into our 5th day of sailing.

We are currently plodding along northward (course over ground of 15 degrees) at a speed of 3.5 knots. The sea has calmed and we have 4 knots of true wind, so all things considered we are going quite fast.

When looking at the weather some days ago, Friday may have been the right day to break north, and the last 2 weather forecasts also confirmed this, hence the new direction.

Yesterday (Thursday), we didn’t have so much wind and had to motor sail for some hours to keep some momentum up. This included heading a little south hunting for wind, before ultimately deciding to go north this morning.

We left the BVIs with 2 bunches of nice green bananas hoping that they would last some time. Unfortunately, they are already all getting mushy, not helped by the fact that we stood on 2 of them.

Eating 2 bunches of bananas at any speed when they are already mushy is probably a bit much.

So, on with the baking! And delicious banana bread and some breakfast cookies.

While sailing we have now spotted at least 3 buoys adrift, one of which we managed to pick up and which includes the lettering “EH6425” on it.

We jumped in the sea yesterday in the lighter winds (one at a time), and will be doing so again today.

Unlike our crossing from east to west, we have seen and heard quite a few other boats in the first days.

Right now we actually have a boat called “Caringa” (mmsi 211167510) 4 miles in front of us.

You probably can’t see them in the picture, but doesn’t the sea look awesome?!

We will probably be heading this way for some time now, before gradually curving east to stay below the Atlantic low-pressure systems.

Saga and Escapade are still somewhere northeast of us, and the others we know in the BVIs have not yet left.

Until next time!

Atlantic Day 2: Dolphins & Spray

Atlantic Day 2: Dolphins & Spray

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We are over 24 hours into a crossing back to Europe, and yesterday (Tuesday) we were visited by the first pod of dolphins we have seen in quite some time!!

They stayed with us for some time and we managed to snap this picture of them playing around the bow

So far it’s been quite the bumpy ride, as we have spent the past 42 hours beating into wind close hauled, and it’s unlikely that will stop in the next day or so, though the winds might vary a little.

The boat is getting sprayed quite a bit as we pound our way through the waves.

We managed to achieve an average of 6 knots so far, but this will probably be unrealistic to maintain for the entire crossing.

The big decision for us will be when to cross the high pressure zone, or just when to head further north. We might decide something for this come Friday.

Generally you might cross to the north of this high pressure, however in recent weeks it’s been all over the place, as well as there being little wind in the western Atlantic, north of the BVIs, so we are taking a slightly less conventional route.

Thanks to Ollie for posting this. We were just about to send it to Ollie to post, and another giant pod of dolphins just appeared, so here is another picture from the bow (Wednesday).

Hopefully these past 2 days are a song of things to come in terms of dolphin sightings. Very excited to have them back, as there were not many around the Carribbean.

Atlantic departure to the Azores (we think)

Atlantic departure to the Azores (we think)

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It’s currently the 8th, and we are indeed leaving the BVIs today ⛵⛵⛵.

As we are writing this post we have already been sailing for an hour, and are currently still within internet range and the protection of the islands.

Come 10pm (6hour time) we should be out in the open ocean for the first time in quite a while.

Our day in Road Town was a success, and our marina time was well worth it.

We went out for a final on land dinner last night, that we also didn’t need to cook (lots of cooking coming up during the crossing), and got an early night.

The hunger had really set in, so we failed to get any picture of our main courses. But you can see the pizza that we also ordered, in preparation for having leftovers to take with us.

During the morning of the 8th we did 3 washing machines full of laundry in the marina, bought an additional 200USD of food including fresh veggies, stowed the dinghy, generally cleaned the boat up and put things away, filled out water tanks for the last time and downloaded as much entertainment as we could from the internet!

As 2pm approached we had a little dip in the marina pool, had our first and last on land showers for quite a while, paid up the marina fees and got the Hannah on the move!!!

Good bye to the BVIs, and helllow open ocean.

We will be blogging on the way with help from Ollie (who joined us in Antigua), so keep an eye out for posts in the coming weeks.

Remember, you can follow us using the various tracking links / maps at the top of this site (Predict wind and Garmin will be the best while crossing), and you can even send us messages there.

⛵⛵⛵