The Atlantic crossing.

We left Dakar on November 30 and motored out into the Atlantic. Land soon fell out of sight as the low lying hazy shore disappeared quickly. With the dust and smell behind us it was great to head out into the ocean. I was glad to leave Dakar, it was a tiring port to be in and I was looking forward to doing more sailing as we were likely to catch some good wind heading across the Atlantic.

One of the students had started a bucket shower challenge and quite a few staff and students participated. The challenge was to only have bucket showers for the entire Atlantic crossing. I signed up to be in the bucket challenge as well. As we needed to be cautious about how much fresh water we were using every day, it was also a good way to help cut back on fresh water usage. The water got warmer as we approached the Doldrums and it wasn’t much of a cool down as it was pretty much the same temperature as the air. Being so used to water temperatures in Canada always being cold, it’s actually a shock to dump a bucket of warm ocean water on your head! The bucket challenge was made easier though by the fridge cooling system that was rigged up by the engineer. The fridge had been ailing for a few ports but in Dakar it really gave up and the engineer rigged up a heat exchanger for it that resulted in a hose of warm sea water available for use on deck at all times. While this system represented a great amount of work and stress on the part of the engineer and captain, once rigged up it did keep the fridge cool and made the bucket shower challenge a lot easier!

There were some amazing skies with beautiful clouds.

The fishing club was in fine form and caught a few big fish including a wahoo and mahimahi.

Overall the trip across was hot and lacking in wind. We did sail a few days but mostly we had to motor. I have to conclude that I am a coastal sailor after being on Class Afloat. I find the offshore sailing (well it was mostly motoring) boring. The view is the same, water all around and when you are sailing there’s not much to do as there’s very little sail maneuvering happening. I’d rather be tacking, gybing, ripping around islands and exploring bays. When I sailed with Toronto Brigantine we would talk about how sailing across the ocean would be such an amazing thing to do. Now having spent some time sailing offshore, I know that I like coastal sailing.

On the crossing there was a challenge that was much more difficult than the bucket challenge. The no AC/ventilation challenge. There wasn’t a choice with this challenge however. The sleeping areas were awful! 28-30 degrees and humid. At one point the student dorms were 39 degrees Celsius! I actually went around with a thermometer and took temperatures throughout the ship after a particularly sweaty morning of cleaning stations. I was worried about the students because their sleeping areas are so hot sometimes and it’s already challenging for them to get enough rest.

When staff were complaining about the heat we all got told to stop complaining because we were bringing down the morale. Then we were told that the AC system was not broken and was working fine. During a staff meeting we were lectured by the first mate that we shouldn’t use our blankets and then we’d be cooler?!?!? Thanks tips!

AC that doesn’t work when it’s hot outside doesn’t seem like it’s working fine to me. But after that meeting we no longer had a voice. Staff meetings were very quick because nobody wanted to comment on anything or you’d be told that you were bringing down the morale. One sweltering night Cody and Collin decided to try and fix the AC/ventilation by changing the dial around. They made it wayyyyy better but then they got in trouble because they weren’t the engineer so they shouldn’t touch the switch. The captain was raging about it. It didn’t make sense because they fixed it when the captain and engineer didn’t. That was just one of the nutty things that happened.

The sweltering heat onboard following Dakar (which was a challenging port) really killed morale. I think it would have helped if there had been acknowledgement that systems weren’t working properly and efforts made to improve air circulation in the sleeping areas but unfortunately that was not the case.

We crossed the equator on the voyage which meant that we all had to be turned from pollywogs into shellbacks by Neptune. It was a rather gross experience of getting compost dumped on us but it was fun for some people. Everyone gets a shellback name after the ceremony, mine is nurse shark unsurprisingly.

Arriving in Fernando was great! We were at sea for two weeks so seeing the island was fantastic!