EILEAN’S ATLANTIC CROSSING
“In a reasonable Atlantic swell we have been registering speeds or 12 to 13 knots”
Last time in Santa Cruz with the VA we’d come out of the water for a week to scrape and antifoul the schooner, but this time we leave, just after nightfall, Monday 16 January, within 24 hours of my arriving. There are four of us joining Eilean’s permanent crew
of four. I have known skipper Andy Cully for several years, since he set up his Classic Yachts website – a register of wooden boats on
www.classicyacht.info. He joined Eilean at the end of her restoration in 2009, having worked with other classic yachts like The Lady Anne, Mariquita and Adix. His regular crew are engineer Stefano Valente, chef Stefano D’Oria, and stewardess Jesse Green from Weymouth. Two Italian delivery crew are Edoardo Nardelli who runs a crew delivery business and Giovanni Funis – our fit nipper who is in his early 20s. Andy had also found room for two sailing journalists – Japanese photographer Yoichi Yabe joins me from Yokohama for the passage. Eilean had come to Santa Cruz from her Italian base just before Christmas, so everyone is keen to get to sea. We’ll sail south around 1,000 miles to get into the trade winds between the 18th and 16th parallels and then west. In the time-honoured tradition we’ll be in three watches but Andy favours the three-hour night watch so there are three four-hour watches from 0800 to 2000 hrs and then it goes from 2000-2300, 2300-0200, 0200- 0500 and then to 0800 again. The system will kick us
along so we are not doing the same watch each night. Last-minute preparations include picking up laundry and filling every space in the saloon and forepeak with fresh vegetables and fruit; a string hammock in the forepeak between Chef Stef’s and Jesse’s bunks is full of green, yellow, orange and red stuff.
I am put on watch with the ‘Chianti Crew’, engineer Stef and Giovanni. Not called that because they love wine – this will be a damp, if not quite dry ship when it comes to alcohol for this crossing – but they come from the Chianti region, which of course is the best place in the world. Yoichi joins Jesse and Andy; Edo and Chef Stef make up the third watch.
SHIPBOARD LIFE
Shipboard life quickly establishes a pattern: keeping watch; filling in the log, eating, and getting enough sleep are the order of the first few days. After the first night we hoist Eilean’s cruising mainsail, a loose-footed shorter-headed sail which has to be sheeted to the deck on one side of her boom; tacking takes a few minutes to re-reeve her mainsheet to the other side. Her mizzen, even reefed down, gives her too much weather helm even with her jib topsail set from the end of her bowsprit. We’re 200nM off the coast of Africa but the easterlies are bringing a rain of fine red dust off the Sahara. This gives the sea and sky an
CLASSIC BOAT APRIL 2012 13
Above: Chef D’Oria and his bunkside hammock of veg
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100