One Less Plane

I have finally made it, 7 months and around about 5300 miles later (I think), from the UK to Bermuda by wind power! (Well, mostly, including 200 or so miles with the engine running, and not including my fossil fuelled detour to Dominica!)

Captain Ted, ‘Restless’ and I, sailed into St George’s harbour on Friday (15th May), after 8 fun and musical days and bright moonlit nights at sea. This included some rough close hauled sailing (this means it was very rolly, bumpy and the boat was on a steep slant) which made me ill and a bit grumpy, contrasted with a few very calm days when we almost came to a standstill and the water went spookily smooth and ripple-less for the middle of a great ocean. In our becalmed state, we put the engine on, but then I was happy to find that Ted knows how to appreciate life on a sail boat, whatever the weather, and after a couple of hours, decided it was too horrible, switched of the engine and pulled out his saxaphone, and we sang and played sing along tunes until the wind picked up. (We also realised from radioed in weather advice, that we would never avoid the cold front (which would give us a wet bumpy rolly ride into Bermuda) which we were racing to avoid, so there was no point racing). This skipper was very open and accepting of my preferred vegan diet (now with the exception of the occasional wild fish!) and my enjoyment of experimental cooking, and I was allowed free reign of the kitchen, hooray – I fully appreciated this with some mid-ocean baking – bread, pizza, pancakes, sweetpotato patties, and seaweed soup…

Sargasso Sea Soup

Despite my incessant staring at the sea, I again saw not one whale, however, we did see little patches of yellowy brown seaweed floating by, which got bigger and bigger until we were gliding through lines of it a meter wide and stretching from horizon to horizon. This seemed really surreal to me, out in this remote and deep deep ocean (25000 feet down – one of the deepest of them all!), where is it coming from, where is it going, how is it still alive? Ted had set out the fishing lines optimistically, but after the 20th time he’d reeled in a tangled heap of seaweed he was giving up. Then, excitingly, I discovered it was edible! According to the edible seaweed identification guide in my ‘Survival Guide to Homesteading the Ocean’, this was ‘sargassum fulvellum’ – ‘found drifting in the Sargasso Sea … and more often than not found fouling up fishing lines’ – a perfect identity match I think! So, you can dry it and sprinkle it on salads and things or cook it in soup – unfortunately I experimented with the latter, in which it lost all of its nice seaside flavour, and I had to eat boring onion soup with chewy little branches in it, for the next 3 days. It really was tasty when I nibbled it raw, and I reckon it would be yummy dried, so any readers who are also experimental cooks and sailors of the Sargasso Sea – don’t be put off by my story of boring soup!

The Sinking of the Pants

One day, through an act of total stupidity and grumpyness – probably due to strange sleep patterns, being cooped up in a very small space in a very small community of 2, and me being a bit stubborn and not taking advice, I managed to accidentally throw overboard, with their washing water, all my underwear, mid-ocean and with no hope of recovery. So now all my few, precious and well travelled pants lie 25 000 feet down at the bottom of the ocean, I imagine wreaking havoc, or maybe just confusion, with the beasties and ecosystems of the deep. Or, as Ted tentatively joked just after, there is now a pod of 4 stripey panted dolphins leaping round the Sargasso Sea, perhaps the envy, or the embarrassment, of the local dolphin community.

Nearing Bermuda

The first signs that felt to me like we were nearing Bermuda was seeing little (fantastically named) ‘Portuguese Men of War’ occasionally floating by. I remembered these, with a shiver down my spine, from childhood visits to Bermuda. They are bizarre beasties that look like a bit of plastic bag from afar, but close up you can see they are little transparent blue balloons floating on the surface with long, long bright blue tentacles trailing along behind them – I was always terrified if I saw one anywhere near me as apparently the tentacles will stick to your skin of they brush against you and cause excruciating acid burns. Incidentally, i learnt today from a marine biologist that they are not technically jellyfish, and are actually a little community of animals, all stuck together and working together, amazing. Anyway – I imagined that they were all floating past on their way from Bermuda, so that meant it couldn’t be far!

The next, and more definate sign of Bermuda came after sunset on the 5th or maybe 6th day, I could see a small orangey glow on the horizon northwards. At first I thought it might be the beautiful yellowy glowing moon rising again, but then I saw a sweeping white glow – the lighthouse! (For the romantics- I later found out that I was seeing Gibbs’ Hill lighthouse – where my sister’s husband proposed to her, ahhh.) On the eighth day, because of the direction of the wind (coming from the North East) we had to sail straight up to the sandy south shore of the island, to within a tantalising few hundred meters, but then had to almost double back on ourselves for a few miles back out to sea, in order to then sail further east around the island, where Ted let me take the helm to take us through a narrow passage between rocks (slightly nerve rackingly!) and into the cosy, sheltered and very very pretty St George’s harbour, where we anchored.

Bermuda

 I whizzed across the island on the bus, with Bermuda and family memories flooding back at every bend. The final final leg was in a taxi, and although it has been 10 years since i was last here - finally a very familiar driveway came into sight, then a familiar house, then two familiar faces with open arms! My grandparents welcomed me in happily, and, in a nice normal practical grandparenty kind of way, we promptly sat down to tea in front of the 6 o’clock news. It suddenly seemed more like I’d just popped in to visit them from down the road, no big fuss, and in some ways it is like that, I just planned to come and visit my grandparents, like most people do, it’s just that they live quite far away and my chosen mode of transport meant it took quite a while and I had a bit of an adventure on the way!

My journey stops here for a year, until the winds start to blow in the right direction again and the weather’s just right for me to sail back home to the UK. Not sure if I’ll carry on with the blogging in the meantime – I’m having a think about that one…

THANK YOU to absolutely everyone (in the whole wide world, so it feels) for encouraging me, supporting me, letting me sleep on your couches/beds/beaches/bunks/boats, feeding me, giving me boat rides, car rides, piggy backs, bike rides, kayak rides, for arguing with me and telling I’m an idiot and should just fly, for teaching me songs, knitting, weaving, sailing, new languages, for sailing, hiking, chatting with me, for drumming, singing, dancing, playing, cooking, eating and washing up with me, for sitting in rivers with me, de-niting me, snorkelling with me, digging, weeding, planting, painting with me, and sending me nice emails. I definately could not have made it here without you!

Love, Charlotte

(I’ll finally be uploading lots of photos soon, so watch this space!)