Positive Waves sets sail!

August 13, 2020

Flying the Code Zero.

We left Treguier on Sunday August 9. Our current plan for the rest of the summer and beginning of the fall is to sail to Sweden via the Kiel Canal. It's pretty far and we're late in leaving because of delays due to coronavirus, but we're going with the attitude of "let's see where we end up and take it from there." The boat is built for all weather and pretty much any and every sea state, so it's really just a matter of our personal preferences for comfort and ease. We had two errands to run before we can set our sails toward the Kiel Canal: 1) fill up on diesel fuel in Guernsey, and 2) get our leaking dinghy repaired in Southampton.

A circus came to town so of course we had to go.

We sailed to Guernsey on Sunday. It took a lot longer than we originally estimated mainly due to the crazy strong tidal currents between Brittany and Guernsey. The majority of the crew also had to cope with some seasickness which is never pleasant. Once you start feeling seasick it's hard to overcome it. The best thing to do is get active with sailing, sit outside, watch the horizon, eat something simple and salty. But what you really feel like doing is curling up in a ball and waiting for the infernal motion to stop. Freja and I found our best spot is the windward side coach roof, eating pretzel sticks, and playing silly word games. "If you could own a candy store, what would it be called? Candy castle." Or, "I'm went to the zoo and I saw an alligator, a bat, a crocodile, ..."

Eating candy and playing word games on the back deck. Freja and I are wearing harnesses and are tethered to the boat. Matilda is tethered too but she doesn't like the harness so wears a lifejacket and tether. Tethers are required for every crew member all the time.

Favorite position for being seasick, but also a guaranteed way to prolong it.

Guernsey is Covid-free so they are completely closed off to visitors. If a resident leaves the island, they need to quarantine for 14 days. But the fuel dock is open and it is super cheap. Since we had over 500 liters to fill up, it was definitely worth the stopover. We had to call the harbour master in advance to arrange our visit. We tied up at the "isolation pontoon" which is basically a floating dock in the middle of the harbor covered with bird poop. We definitely felt like we were on the leper dock. On Monday morning we motored over to the fuel dock and went through a remote style process of fueling. The dock hand put the fuel hose on the floating dock so it was waiting for us. We fueled up, returned to the boat, the dock hand came back and left the credit card charger on our deck, we ran the payment, etc. etc.

Guernsey harbour.

We left the isolation pontoon on Monday evening and motored overnight to Southampton. There was pretty much no wind in the forecast for almost a week, so we decided to make the trip anyway instead of wait for wind. We knew the dinghy fix would take at least a couple days so it was worth it to get that started and wait for wind at the same time.

The overnight motor was flat calm. Absolutely no wind and the sea swell flattened out as soon as we were about 10 miles north of Guernsey. The kids slept in the vee-berth to be further away from the engine noise. Hans and I had our first overnight watch using all our fancy electronics. Totally different than on Whisper. On Whisper, night watch consisted of standing up every 15 minutes and doing a full 360 degree scan of the horizon with the naked eye. On Positive Waves night watch is more akin to a video game. We have a multifunction display which overlays AIS, radar, and the chart. We can follow our course on the screen, tap on the little boats that pop up and get information on their length, speed, direction of travel, and our closest point of approach aka how close we will get to the ship. Pleasure boats have to give way to the big container ships because we have more maneuverability so we had to stay hyper-alert and change our course little by little to avoid the big ships. Hans was on watch for the busiest portion of the ship traffic. He woke me up at 2AM, gave me about an hour tutorial of how it all worked and what to look for, then he slept from around 3AM to 6AM. Tho he didn't really sleep. We'll get more settled into night watches as we gain more experience.

Satellite weather, AIS, charts, radar--we're fancy on PW!

We motored past the Needles at sunrise and started motoring up the Solent. The tide was against us and we were only making about 3 knots. We pulled over to the side of the river, dropped anchor, and had breakfast and went swimming. When the tide switched we weighed anchor and continued on to the River Hamble at about 7-8 knots. The current is no joke.

The Needles

So.many.boats.

The dinghy guy picked up our leaking dinghy and we've spent the past couple days cleaning the boat, getting some fresh produce, a pub lunch, and exploring the woods next to the marina. We picked tons of blackberries last night.