Crossing the Equator

The equator is a huge heat sink where warm air continually rises, cools and then subsides over the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, flowing back towards the equator.  As this air moves south it is deflected by the Coriolis Force, pushing the wind to the west and creating the trade winds that carry us around the world.  

Las Perlas

Only forty miles from Panama, yet the archipelago of Las Perlas feels very remote. A small group of pretty islands, famous for their pearls, they are largely uninhabited. Densely forested, with rocky outcrops and hidden beaches of the finest white sand.  With large tidal ranges, the water turns green as the tide ebbs and flows, suddenly clearing at slack water to reveal the sea life beneath.  Poorly charted with isolated rocks lurking just under the surface, we proceed with caution, the Bauhaus pilot book our constant companion.

Compendium, guest written by Andrew

I have been aboard for a month now and it seems time to pen something.

So we have arrived at the Las Perlas Islands, 50 miles from Panama city.  It is a big relief to have finally got sailing again after 10 days in Panama. The canal was fascinating (25,000 dead from disease and accidents in the construction) but it is a long slow route from the Atlantic to the Pacific and once you have seen one lock the next 5 are all the same. I seem to be blasé about locks having experienced the mega locks on the Rhone.

Panama Canal

It is dark when the heavy pilot boat surges up alongside. A big swell is running as the pilot takes a firm grip on my hand and jumps aboard. We are with eight other ARC yachts at the Flats, an anchorage near the commercial shipping terminal in Colon, where cranes work under neon lights like giant insects as they load containers onto a freighter, bound for Europe.  Finally, just after 9pm our pilot receives clearance on the VHF and we raise anchor.  We follow the red channel markers towards a sea of bright lights until we make out the shape of huge lock gates. A tanker in the opposing lock floats fifty feet above us. We are about to transit the Panama Canal.

Panama, guest written by Kez

It feels somehow fitting that on my last morning on Juno I have her to myself just for a little while and so can quietly say good-bye and remember all the special moments on board and how she has magnificently looked after us during some fairly boisterous passages and kept us safe. But that ability to keep us safe is far from automatic and comes with an awful lot of care and attention from Paul. Since being in Panama he has done little else, forgoing the trip to the Embera Village, the city tour and also, before transiting, our trip to the Observatory to see both the construction of the new locks at Gatun and the workings of the existing ones.

San Blas Islands

After 24 hours of gale force winds and heavy seas, we sail into flat water inside the barrier reef on the eastern approach to the San Blas archipelago. It is a moonless night and pitch black as we ghost through the water, relying solely on our charts to guide us through the channel towards Holandes Cays, a small atoll surrounded by a complex reef system. We have heard that 6 boats have been lost here since Christmas so we check our pilotage carefully, silent in the cockpit, straining our senses to see or hear something in the inky black night.

Santa Marta to San Blas guest written by Sarah Rose

When asked to write a guest blog I wanted to try and find a theme to hang it on – that hasn't really worked, but perhaps this hotchpotch is a fairer representation of a novice sailor thrown into a completely new experience.

Firstly an update on our progress.

Santa Marta, Colombia

‘Juno, this is the coast guard, come in please’.  We are stowing the spinnaker pole on the foredeck as I hear the VHF crackle. ‘Juno, this is the Colombian navy, come in please', the voice slightly more insistent this time, not used to being ignored. To my relief the shoot bolt on the end of the big spinnaker pole springs shut, securing it on the mast. I reach for the hand-held VHF attached to my belt. ‘Coastguard, this is Juno’, I reply, slightly out of breath. ‘Juno, this is the Colombian coast guard, welcome to Santa Marta, we will escort you to the port’.

Chafed sheets

It is our third night at sea and we have made very good progress. This part of the Caribbean is notoriously windy and we have had strong trade winds since we left St Lucia; rarely less than 20 knots, gusting up to 30 around the squalls. We spent Saturday and Sunday on starboard gybe, sailing west to keep within the band of stronger wind, then on Monday morning we gybed onto port, heading south towards the headland at Punta Gallinas on the northern Columbian coast.  As I write at 0500 local time on Tuesday morning we have covered 580 miles in 60 hours, averaging almost 10 knots through the water - and that is fast.

World ARC start

Well this is it. Today is the start of the World ARC 2015: a circumnavigation of the globe, twenty yachts sailing from East to West along the trade wind route, around 26,000 miles in all. Crewed mostly by couples of our age and their friends, from every nationality, sailing in company. A life-long ambition for most. Years of planning for everyone just to get to the start line and today at midday we depart St Lucia on the first leg, heading for Santa Marta in Columbia.

Happy Christmas from Juno

We finish the ARC at around 11pm on Tuesday the 9^th December, 15 days after we left Las Palmas. Our final gybe as we round Pigeon Island is now well-practiced and for the first time for two weeks we are sailing up-wind into 20 knots with a reefed mainsail. Just as we approach the finish, a large motor yacht drops anchor ahead of us, completely obscuring the line so we duck behind it and come up hard into the wind, shooting the line and barely missing the committee boat – now that would have been a bad way to finish.

Finished!

We crossed the finish line at 11pm last night. All well on Juno.

Thanks to everyone for your emails and comments. We finished 4th in Cruising B and 17th overall in the cruising division.

More details to follow after we have had some sleep!

ARC 2014 Day 15. Almost there

On the ARC in 2012 Kim brought with him a gift from Dr James Ashby, a close friend of his from Cornwall. If you have ever fished for crabs as a child you would recognise it immediately: a wooden frame wound with heavy monofilament fishing line, a large brass swivel impregnably attached to the end. When Mitchel, our grumpy fishing reel, gave up and cast all my best lures to the deep on our last Atlantic crossing, it was this hand line that came in to its own; we wound it onto Mitchel, despite his sulky protests, and hooked a big Dorado that we were able to winch in with no fear of the line breaking.

ARC 2014 Day 14 written by Fatty

Well get this! I have been invited from below decks to sit in the authors’ chair of the eloquently written Juno blog. This is surprising, given that my vocabulary stretches to that of an average ten year old, but perhaps the intention is to attract a younger readership.

ARC 2014 Day Thirteen

We have been sailing on a broad reach all day, making reasonable progress and hitting our target of 200 miles in the past 24 hours, despite one hour of the day when we were almost stationary, all eyes focussed on the action at the stern of the boat.

ARC 2014 Day Twelve

Today was an eventful day with disaster narrowly averted and I am pleased to report that everyone is safe and well but with Fatty nursing an injured hand. 

ARC 2014 Day Eleven

Yesterday started badly when I took over from Paul at 3am and he said ‘you might need your foulies’. This was an understatement. Rain was lashing the cockpit as he bade me goodnight and scuttled off to his dry cabin, leaving me sitting in puddles of water in the cockpit. Then things got worse: the wind dropped away leaving us rolling drunkenly in the swell, and still the rain fell. 

ARC Day Ten guest written by Kez

With all this talk of the difference of having two girls as part of this crossing compared to two years ago (clean heads, delicacies for supper etc), I thought I might correct any impression that Fatty and I spend our time cleaning and cooking. In truth there is a very fair division of labour, with Paul a more than dab hand in the galley and Frewie was even caught yesterday baking bread. 

ARC Day Eight and Half Way

We have now covered almost 1,500 miles since we left Las Palmas a week ago, around half way to St Lucia. We celebrated this milestone last night with Dark and Stormies at happy hour, followed by chicken curry served with accompaniments created by Thermo, our high tech galley slave. This tropical mood has been brought on by a marked rise in temperature as we work our way south towards to the equator.

ARC 2014 Day Seven

It is 10pm Juno time and I am on watch until midnight. We are on a broad reach and I have rigged a new sheet on our big genoa that reeves around a block on the port quarter, allowing the clew of the sail to rise, opening up the slot between the mainsail and the genoa, improving our downwind speed by a precious fraction of a knot.  I have realised that ocean sailing is a long game, not won by short sprints, but by sustaining above average boat speeds over the length of a passage.