Margarita's
Voyage
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Margarita's
Voyage
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Correspondence school (after about a year trying it on our own). Calvert and University of Nebraska. Calvert runs up through 8th grade and University of Nebraska covers high school. We don't bother getting an official grade for Calvert, we don't need credits, we just need the kids to have learned up to their grade level. We send in the tests for Univesity of Nebraska so that we can get the required high school credits. Both of the school systems work well for us, and the kids don't need much parental involvement.
Water maker, Alpen Glow lights, Inverter and monitor, Monitor, Yamaha outboard, solar panel, satellite telephone GPS.
Wilcox Crittenden Toilets, wind generator. Both good products, but required far too much maintenance from poor Neill.
Hmmm. . . . .Because it was possible. Good self motivated kids, work that was possible from afar, and a family willing to chuck it in for an adventure. Although we only signed up for 11 months! Because we love to travel, and had been sailing most spare weekends since Bronwen was one year old.
What do we do during the night at sea?
During passages, across the Atlantic for example, we can spend days or weeks out of sight of land sailing to somewhere new. Anchoring is no good at sea, both because it is impossible (the ocean is too deep), and because anchoring would gain us nothing: we would gain no protection from wind or seas, and boats, the main concern in mid-ocean, could still hit us. Besides, anchoring would do nothing to advance our position. If we want to stop at sea for some reason we can heave-to, which also calms the motion of the boat, but we rarely want to do this. Instead, at night Neill and Sarah take turns doing watches. Throughout the night someone checks conditions and looks for boats every fifteen minutes, adjusting the boat as necessary and steering if there is no wind. To do this, Sarah and Neill take turns of 3 hours each. Neill is up from 8-12 and 3-6, and Sarah from 12-3 and 6-9. This lead to great sleep deprivation, although they do nap during the day to make up for it. On long passages we are able to get into a routine well enough that sleep deprivation is not a problem - except when it gets rough.
We have had a lot of stormy weather, especially in the Pacific ocean. Our very worst storm was the one that we had on our first passage, from Anacortes to San Francisco. Until after the weather had hit us, the weather faxes didn't show any rough weather. The waves were huge, up to 25 feet according to data taken from the weather buoys. We surfed down them under minimal sail, and had our speedo pegged at 12.5 knots, which was scary and out of control.. Our self-steering gear broke several times so that we ended up having to hand-steer, which was extremely exhausting in those conditions. On one of the first days we took a huge wave down below, soaking Douglas's bed and flooding the back cabin with water. It was not fun. Even steering at the wheel the helmsman had to be clipped in with a safety harness so as not to get washed overboard by a wave. It was the only time we were actually scared of the weather - except for places where we had heavy lightening as in Malaysia, and the San Blas Islands
Knot is short for nautical mile, or nautical mile per hour. One knot is equal to 1.15 statute miles. A knot is a handy unit of measure because one knot is equal to one minute of latitude (and to one minute of longitude at the equator). We travel at a rate of about 5-6 knots.
What was your longest passage?
We had two longest passages milewise, each about 2800 miles long. Both passages were out of sight of land and without stopping. One was from the Galapagos Islands to Easter Island in the Pacific, and took us 34 long days The other was across the Atlantic, from the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Eastern Caribbean, and took us 21 days. The first one took such a long time because we had bad Pacific weather. We had a series of storms and calms, and our engine was broken for much of the passage. Not one of our favorites.
Do we ever worry about pirates?
Yes! There have been certain areas in the world where piracy has been a real concern. The Staights of Malacca, the north eastern coast of Venezuala, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden near the island of Socotra. In Townsville, Australia Neill was told by the owner of a marine chart shop that he would be mad to take his family into South East Asian waters, and many sailors avoid this area all together. We made sure to stay at least 100 miles off the island of Socotra, and within several hundred miles of this area we only gave our position on the radio in code. In the Red Sea we had several incidents of boats approaching at night and behaving in a very bizzare manner, matching every evasive course change and closing in. We avoided the NE coast of Venezuela, going 100 miles offshore and in very close convoy with another boat. Because of this fear, getting approached by an open boat with several men has on occasion been very alarming. This has happened to us as much as 300 miles from shore. However, all these men ever want from us is water, cigarettes, and the opportunity to sell us some fish. The problem is very real however, and the occasional boat is not so lucky.