23 days alone across the Atlantic in a small boat

all right i checked out of bermuda and now i need to leave within an hour so first challenge is pulling up the anchor in uh 20 knots of wind which wouldn't be too bad but now there's this boat it's right above my anchor so i'll get them on the radio and see if i can get them to put out fenders or something because i'm gonna be slamming right into him so we got no response from sea breeze but i'll just stick out some fenders and i'm sure we can we can uh get along here okay we got the anchor up that was a struggle that guy whose boat was right on top of my anchor i don't understand why he would he would anchor there there was plenty of room uh but we're free now i just had to kind of kick his boat back a few times and uh a few little bumps but no no damage so i'm off to the azores so we're going out this channel i would like to explore over there it looks pretty nice maybe next time we're looking at about 1800 miles for this nautical miles for this trip and it's i think it's going to be our actual distance travel it's going to be a lot more maybe over 2000 because we're gonna have to go north and avoid some high pressure systems and we might even have to dodge some lows that are coming down from above so uh it could be a while i'm predicting 18 days give or take i'm pretty i'm i'm nervous i'll be honest this is my biggest it's not as far as the hawaii trip but i think it's gonna be the most difficult but i like the challenge and uh let's get out there and do it and rocky start good post speed though doing five and a half knots a little fresh out here i uh picked up a pizza before i left it's my kind of old tradition when i go on a long trip let's get a pizza for the first uh you know day and a half something easy to eat on you don't have to cook so the waves have gotten really uncomfortable uh they're hitting us right on the side of the boat and we just get these these breaking ones that come over and they just kind of like push us down almost on our side the whole combing goes underwater and just the cockpit filled with water so i'm trying to bear the boat off so we can have them hit maybe from the back but sometimes they come at a different angle and it i don't really want to be out there steering or anything i can't see what's going on i mean well they're not huge they're just like i guess it's the angler yeah but a lot of them are breaking too it's weird so the wind's just picked up to 30 knots so i hope to and we're we're drifting i don't know maybe 90 degrees off of course to the north uh we seem to be taking the waves a little better this way though i think i'll i'll do this overnight and uh i think i could probably i could sail on this much wind reasonably well just at night it's kind of hard and i know we just want to get some rest and i'll deal with it in the morning i spent last night hove too i just kind of needed to psych myself up for these waves i needed a break we got we got wind waves coming from one direction and swell a bigger swell from another direction because uh we had strong wind for a while and then it shifted the day i left and it's making it pretty difficult to avoid having the waves hit us right on our side um i i got up this morning and finally like dragged myself out in the cockpit and hand steered for like about about an hour or two i was able to finally like kind of maneuver my way through it eventually i got comfortable if i was i was able to let the wind vein steer again but it's definitely not quite as good as hand steering i i say yeah some of these waves are getting up up to uh 10 feet maybe the camera doesn't do them justice i think this is that tropical system that was uh kind of dissipating as i left it's just above me right now we got drenched probably every every minute or two away would come in over the front or the back they're coming from all directions it's just so hard to try to steer through them pretty miserable honestly just thinking about why the heck am i doing this you know i i know it'll get better but i think it's going to be like this for a few days it looks like it's clouding up the rain's coming there's there's so many waves coming over the boat there's seaweed hanging from the uh the lifelines right now i'm not seasick i'm just trying to read a book now and let the wind vein steer but it's really rough like all this stuff just keeps flying out all over the place there's salt water on the floor coming from somewhere i don't know everyone's probably water even comes in through the hatch i feel like it well could get worse but let's hope it gets better from here all right day number three i'm gonna go out there and uh hand steer for a while because i've been 45 degrees off the course i want to do just to keep the weight from hitting the boat and uh knocking us over all right i'd like to get closer to course i wanna see if i can make adjustments all right i think i got a boat uh back on the course and it's waiting sunrise it's actually a pretty nice morning really nice i was getting pummeled yesterday staying completely dry inside just finished uh adrift without that guy that's in a his his ship crap his little sailboat crashes and he's in a life raft for like 70 days or something it was pretty good but it kind of gave me anxiety um figuring out at sea having kind of bad weather for the first few days i had one iphone cable already fail on my last trip and then one another second one failed on on this trip luckily i've got i think i got 10. i got i got 12 iphone cables that's how i keep my phones charged i'll get out two new ones i'm gonna try this duolingo app uh i downloaded the portuguese lesson so see if i can learn some portuguese by the time i get to the azores the conditions have really improved it quite a bit i can't i couldn't ask for much there conditions of this on offshore passage waves have dropped down to about maybe a little less than seven feet and uh they're hitting us just on our half quarter so uh it's a little rocky but it's reasonably uh comfortable i got the fourth reef in i could probably put the second reef in uh add a little more mainsail but every once in a while i do get a gusty little squall comes through with a little bit of rain um i mean i'm not sure if really even a skull it's the right word but it does pick up and it kind of uh puts us over the rail digs the railing so i don't really want to have to be putting the reefs in and out especially when it's kind of lumpy uh water the waves are coming from the same direction now which is making a huge difference i think that was the main my main source of angst the other day was just the waves coming from two different directions made them they weren't huge but then they would when they put their car in two different directions they would stack up a lot more frequently and uh you get these big ones that would just kind of lift the boat up and kind of drop it on a side and by its side i mean maybe like a 45 not really like on the or the mass in the water or anything but it kind of feels like it and it makes a noise like you're on your side uh but uh right now it's really great the weather is it's just the perfect temperature out here you know maybe right at 70 degrees we got a nice breeze a dodger is just offering perfect uh protection from the little splashes we do get we just got back from uh the cockpit had to go out and do a uh uh adjust the course and pull put a little jib away because the wind shifted man we were we were taking we were taking buckets of water over the front today i'm attempting to cook a real meal i got some sausage growing up over here some red peppers and my potatoes are in the gimbal right now i'm trying to keep it on everything make sure nothing drops it's pretty it's pretty much a challenge when the buzz boats rocking this much but uh i want to use the like at least just this really expensive pepper before uh that goes bad i paid like seven dollars for that at uh bermuda well no uh scalding burns and uh probably 75 of the food hasn't been on the floor i call that a success that food hit a spot still a long way to go though it's been raining a lot today on and off so i'm staying mostly inside we're doing oh just under five knots at both speed which is perfectly fine if i can do 100 miles a day i'm happy we did we did that yesterday and the day before that and they were that there's so many days to go i think my mood's pretty good i had lots of scotch after after uh after lunch and watched the movie i only have five movies left because i guess my internet wasn't very good in bermuda to download more movies and uh i was planning on practicing the portuguese a bunch so i got to either as i had like some good vocabulary built up uh but apparently it only downloaded like the first dozen lessons so that's a bummer i feel like i could have got a lot a lot done i still i've got plenty of books so i'm gonna work my way through those and get napped all i want and not feel guilty i hardly see any ships maybe one or two a day and they're they're 10 miles away i can't even see them i just see them on the ais you ever caught the first flying fish smelly one a little bit of electrical issues notice my fridge is giving me a low voltage warning and shut off and also the battery was saying a little bit i mean the radio was giving me a low voltage but uh i'm getting 13 or just under 13 volts on my battery monitor and my charge controller says the same thing but sure enough when i measure uh my circuits back here i'm only getting 11 volts across my negative bus and my positive so let me go check the actual battery itself and see if that's see what what's what's the deal i've never had this problem before all right i traced my problem wire down it's this guy here it's definitely hot that wire is hot too and uh the screw is loose so maybe if i tighten that up we'll try that first see if that brings the voltage back up tightening tightening up the nut did the trick voltages are back to their normal levels my iridium go uh keeps flying all around the uh the cabin so i'm gonna mount it on my control panel it looks like there's a little recorder 20 uh threaded uh hole back here i happen to have a screw that fits so just drill a hole into my control panel that's like a perfect spot for it right there i can easily turn it on and i can hook that antenna up there now that goes right next to my other satellite messenger all right today maybe four five eggs day four this is the first day i've had the drive on the higher the entire trip including sailing to bermuda i was on the it was a starboard attack the whole way before so we drive now we're in the fourth i put the pole out the whisker pull and the jib's all the way out keep in mind keep the vane uh small and tight just to keep them flapping around we are rocking pretty good i think the wind's gonna pick up soon anyway well conditions are quite nice today um and it's dry enough to lounge in the cockpit we're cruising along maybe three knots i think it was good conditions to troll a fishing line i wish i hadn't thrown those flying fish overboard maybe i can walk around and find another one uh but i've got some lures and uh there's not a whole lot of sargasso weed either so maybe um maybe that won't catch my uh that line i mean there is some i guess i've heard you can put a scotch tape over the hook so i'll try that if it gets kept if it catches on the wheat i'm also going to pump out the bilge um the electric pumps only get the top half that got going here i get the bottom takes a while to get it started but then this thing removes a lot of water just keeps going and going and going so i took advantage of the calmer weather and i went up to the uh front and i pulled my massive 50 pound anchor off and i'm going to take it apart apart and put it underneath the uh the sole down there this i was happy to have this anchor in in bermuda because it was really windy i think it was worth putting it out but i don't think for uh whatever 15 day passage or longer that it's good to have that much weight on the front of the boat it might not seal quite as good supposedly having weight in the ends isn't good you want the weight to be centered in the boat the spade anchor is also one of the best anchors you can buy they're not cheap but um there they got a design which this shape makes them always roll so the point goes down and there's lead in the tip so they have all the weight concentrated on the really point pointy tip right there and then the this part is hollow so it kind of keeps all the weight where at the very comes apart with one bolt which makes it easy to store relatively flat i'm gonna take advantage today and try to get the boat in really good shape i felt well after like day one or two after leaving bermuda i felt like i hadn't done enough to prepare for this trip and it's it's gravity um just everything just was all getting knocked all over the place uh but i have a chance to uh i'm gonna do it do what i can i just found my little toiletry bag which i've been looking for for the past like five days because my fingernails are ridiculously long that it's a stupid little thing but i've been driving me crazy so i'm gonna get that i'm gonna go through all these bins and uh make it so everything doesn't like stop like sliding banging around um that that's probably going to take all day and then uh all the laundry that's kind of soaking wet i'm going to hang that outside get that all dry um and finish up the last few little projects like getting this thing cleaned up and uh i'm gonna open all the port lights and clean all those out because when they're when they have salt crystals on they tend to leak more i get those nice and tight um we're gonna get this boat the way it should have been before i left um okay now i got a chance to and uh when it's rocking hard and the wind is strong i just don't want to do any of this kind of stuff but right now is a good opportunity so i'm going to make myself do it and i'm i'm saying it on camera so it will happen just just yesterday i was thinking about how this boat didn't have a wet locker and uh i have an idea i think i might just put a hook like right under here that i can hang all my wet weather gear here and this piece of floorboard is already um pretty rotten uh but i i this this was all rotten anyway so then the water i'll end up taking that out eventually but the water will just drain down there into the bilge and then it'll be right there very easy to get on um well nothing's easy to get on and it's really rough but it will be accessible for going out in the companionway into the weather i found this hook just the right size awesome how perfect is that it seems so so obvious now i don't know why i didn't think of just hanging it right there next to the trash can there's still plenty of room for the trash can and the stairs and then of course i have to move it i have to get to the engine but that's not that common next order of business is a proper preventer that's the line that goes from the boom up to a forward dot cleat i'm just using that extra blue dock line right now and it goes from the middle of the boom up front ideally you might have this a little bit further off but um i found it i feel like it's too risky having it for the back because it could swipe off my my solar panels um and uh maybe the second best thing would be to kind of spread it out between spread the load like it does on the uh spread the load across multiple points like it does on the uh the main sheet right there but for now i just have it in the middle but what i like to do is i'd like to have that line long enough that it can run to the front and then all the way back here so i can clean it off and then i can adjust it without having to go forward when conditions are rough and then when i have to jibe i just release this end i move that back here and i take that and and that that goes on the as the boom comes over i reattach it so all i have to do is walk a little bit forward to readjust it i kind of did a similar setup on the swedish fish that it never worked great but see if we can make this better i do and and i could also add a uh i've got a block and tackle somewhere i can maybe have a way to tighten it down but um just being able to clean it off is usually good enough because then i can use the main sheet to tighten it up i just over um let it out let the sail sheet out further than i want and then tighten up the preventer and then shoot the sail into where i just dug this line out it looks like an old halyard or a sheet or something um maybe a jib sheet i'm gonna i think this will be perfect it's nice and thick and looks like it'll be long enough to run all the way to the front of the boat and back all right the fishing line is in the water so i'll throw that around see if we catch anything it actually might be good conditions to fly the spinnaker right now i just want to make sure i have everything uh good to go because once i get that up i kind of sometimes i end up being dedicated just hand steering or you know tuning all the lines uh eventually i could be hands off of the spinnaker but it takes a lot of setup so make sure you get everything good and then maybe if the conditions are still holding we'll fly that spinnaker i got some more uh sausage and taters okay so we're going really slow we're just under two knots and maybe maybe three three knots of wind there's still about four feet left over of uh a residual swell or wave action um and it's flapping the sails around so i don't know if the spinnaker will even hold up i had to switch to the electric autopilot but i figured it's worth a shot not much can go wrong with this in this light of a wind it's just allowed to set up and put away if it doesn't work outside outside yeah that's good tires free the tangles outside just going outside outside up the slide stop banging okay all right let's give it a shot it'll be pulling all the way to the top that's good all right perfect all right let's stay open though this guy play with us a little bit all right so i got the spinnaker up it stayed it's steadying the boat a little bit but the wave action is making it flop around a little bit more than i'd like so so it gave us about between half an hour to one night of extra boat speed i'd say probably closer to an extra now we're going about three knots now this is the first time i did this spinnaker single-handed it's a symmetrical one and um i went up without a hitch eased the lazy guy a little bit and now it's sitting a little better it still kind of completely collapses every every once in a while i wish that pole was just an extra like three feet longer i have to have dave help me make one out of carbon fiber using those ends maybe one day but we're going an extra knot for sure sometimes we're doing a half extra speed so i think it's worth having out this is a symmetrical spinnaker and i've never actually tried the asymmetrical i think they're supposed to be easier generally they have little tricks like furling or uh socks that make them easier to get out and put away but uh you can really get a lot of times you can get a free uh symmetrical spinnakers because people aren't using them or uh or really cheap so that's what i've always done i've always got them for free and they're not they're not really that difficult you just gotta take your time and set up all the lines and i usually i watch the video a few times on youtube to learn how to do it the secret is to remember that your your poll goes on the opposite side of your boom and your main sail and then the real secret is to launch it underneath your uh your main sail underneath the boom over here you launch it from this side once it's all the way to the top then you take the spinnaker sheet and you pull it over and that will deploy it and open it all up into the wind all at once so it doesn't get twisted up and then just kind of fine tune the uh the down hole you're gonna want to down haul in your pole you don't necessarily need down hall for a whisker pool but for a spinnaker pole you do want the downhaul and then you can adjust the downhaul and the uh the lazy guy which is just the starboard corner right now the spinnaker and then if you do need to jive it um you can uh you can take the pole and reattach it but item slowly picked up and uh the sales dude spinner christine opened pretty well um but now the sun's getting kind of low and uh the wind's kind of picking up so i think i don't really need to have that i'll switch back to the genoa i'm not quite brave enough to run with this thing uh overnight yeah either i i suspect it'll probably get up to 15 this evening at least so here goes the fun part putting it away with trying to keep it out of the water i just pull it out underneath the mainsail i'm back into the cockpit i'll use the gopro in case uh anything crazy happens so i can have it all documented all right on the part trying to get this all in got a little wet so the spinnaker got dunked in the water a little bit just at the top so i let it dry out and then we'll pack them up for next time ah we've been sailing wing on wing all night long winds picked up a little bit we got the following seas about 12 knots of wind making good time straight to our destination this is the type of sailing that uh you know you look forward to now that we got enough wind i can uh disconnect the autopilot and reconnect the uh the wind steering vein i think this sail's dry enough to put away we'll pack it up in its bag so it'll be ready to deploy next time i'm ready to use it today's book is a loan against the atlantic it's this uh guy sails this 10-foot boat from virginia to england pretty interesting day seven on the passage nothing too eventful we've been sailing wing on wing downwind about eight knots of wind exact same as yesterday overnight the wind died down to maybe three or four knots and we we only averaged maybe a knot overnight but now we're now we're doing probably probably close to four knots of boat speed which i'm pretty happy with it does look like we could be coming up on a high pressure system and completely losing our wind for up to maybe three days which that's going to be rough if that happens but i don't trust the weather that much so i'm not i'm too concerned about it i do have a lot of books i've been reading uh webb childs this guy has some very interesting single-handed voyages on on small boats and some of the ocean stuff i'm reading one about where you sailed an open cockpit boat across the pacific and it's pretty cool so this is day eight of our passage of the azores this might be the last day with wind for a while so i decided to take advantage of it and put the spinnaker up and it still wouldn't go very light about uh eight or nine knots but that gave us an extra night of boat speed just to try to get as far as we can before we run into this high pressure system but you never know maybe we'll have wind and i'll just be able to like keep the spinnaker up for a few days and just keep this and keep us moving it's been you know not eventful just kind of working on projects keeping the boat clean and organized napping reading listening to podcasts more the same saying that the spinnaker of course takes me like 15 or 20 minutes just to get all the lines ready because i don't like to i don't have to do it twice because that takes a lot longer i didn't catch anything on the fishing pole yesterday but i'm gonna put the lures back in and we'll try again this company uh van top they sent me their their knockoff gopro and i i actually quite like it um it says it does 4k at 60 of course i only shoot at 1080 and 30. um but the best thing it has is image stabilization which you only get on like the last two i think generations of gopro and it's quite good um it looks it looks pretty smooth i put it on this really long uh it's like a 10 foot selfie stick that uh one of the viewers uh contributed and it makes these awesome shots they're like not quite as you know good as drone shots but it's kind of like when i don't when it's too windy to fly the drone i want to get a similar kind of effect i can get the camera really far away and it's still stabilized and i'm pretty happy with this little camera my primary camera is always my phone though because it's just a thing i always have on me i don't have time to go set up these these extra cameras usually these are just for every every once in a while i want a special shot that's underwater or like in a rescue situation where i don't want to use my phone um i'll use the the gopros for that or the drone i installed this uh the saltwater foot pump down here it's been great i wash all my dishes with it and i cook things like potatoes and pasta with salt water because i drained the water off after i'm done it gives it just the right amount of salt and i don't have to salt my food and i don't have to waste my fresh water either sausage and potatoes and pepper today that's the last of the sausage and of uh the fresh peppers but i got plenty of potatoes left and plenty of bacon left and plenty of eggs um we got lots of apples left and we haven't even broken into the canned foods yet but i'm really looking forward to switching to canned food but i will when i have to i put out a second uh pole on the spinnaker just for this end and i don't know i think it might be helping a little bit it was just completely it wouldn't stay open at all and now at least it's a little spread more out at least it's not shaping as much on the head sail should probably find some way to secure that a little better okay sorry i secured that pole up there a little better and i got some kind of momentary success seems to be staying pretty pretty well open and not not chafing on anything and that pole isn't that well secured but it's kind of holding the fan flat in place right now oh back went to the main though oh no maine's back okay this is the sam holmes patented double spinnaker pull setup it involves a lot of lines but it kind of works just not for the faint of heart there's hardly any wind but we are doing about two knots with the uh with my spinnaker creation and i got the mainsail up as well i really wish this pole was about like two or three feet longer i could really get that spinnaker way out over on that side i refuse to turn on the motor until there is absolutely zero wind um and i'm actually looking forward to that period because that's when i'm going to jump and go for a swim i might just dump a few buckets of water in my head right now it's getting comfortable but speed has slowed down to about one knot which i think i can swim pretty easily so i'm gonna go jump in clean myself off maybe shampoo my hair get clean cool off it's pretty warm you can see the everything's gotten pretty pretty still there's just a real gradual little ocean swell and we're not really we're moving a little bit but um i'm just gonna leave the sails up because it's kind of a nuisance to put up and down oh great when uh suds up and then jump back in and rinse off feels so good to be clean um i think we're out of the sargosa sea because uh i don't see any more is that a seaweed so i've been putting the fishing line in more see that it's like a theoretically there should be more fish around the seaweed i think but they would always tangle up in my hooks every like five minutes and so i was never catching anything but i'm gonna control the line the rest of the trip we'll see if we catch anything today on cooking on a boat with sam it's gonna be some pasta and with bacon and eggs here's my cabernet masterpiece probably use half salt water have fresh water in the pasture next time especially if you're putting bacon in there because it's kind of salty but pretty good otherwise i'm probably gonna be here for two weeks and i have to make these pickles last one two three four five six seven eight nine ten all right a pickle a day it is well now we are absolutely becomed might as well just put the sails away you're just kind of bobbing around out here i think i might go for a second swim that's so hot right now it's like 85 maybe 90 degrees yeah i think i'll go for a swim and then maybe turn on the motor it's probably good to run the motor every every few days anyway just to kind of make sure it let's still work [Music] good all right the water here is at least three miles deep so i'm gonna drop a washer [Music] do [Music] okay so [Music] maybe overnight but uh i definitely need to change the the main belt because i think that's why it was loosening it was it's really worn it's like almost completely worn away right here and then there's it's like thicker it's just uh yeah it's uneven so for this new belt you can see it's been just tearing itself apart doesn't seem to do the trick the motor is running way smoother than it has been lately i guess i need to change that a while ago i figured out my fuel leak problem so this was leaking so i kept tightening it and then it's actually there's a crack right there so the more i tighten it the worse it was getting but um i don't think i need i think this has a vent right here so i think i can take this and just run it straight into that hole and that should maybe work okay so now the fuel return goes just straight into a hole here definitely not ideal but better than we had before got a whale over here it's a big one how cool thank you for watching um at this point i'm only about halfway across the atlantic and this is my little sailing video so i hope you'll tune in for the next part if you got something out of the video or it spoke to you maybe think about subscribing or making a contribution there's links in the description but no worries if you can't i just want to thank everybody who has supported the channel in any way you guys are allowed me to share these experiences with y'all and invade while at the same time like doing what i love doing my dreams sailing across the oceans i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Sam Holmes Sailing

Views: 1,048,176

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Id: oBvl_nq65KQ

Length: 40min 53sec (2453 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Demonthrall22]

Ive Watched a few hours of this guy's stuff.

Fascinating

[u/jooginsploogin]

You wouldn’t even know it was that deep if he hadn’t dropped the coin

[u/bananaman_420]

I want to do this