Day 10: Sailing to Zanzibar

Wednesday, July 7th 2021

In the same way that every passage (good, bad, or average), has its lowest point, it also has its highest.

What makes sailing so particular is that, while the difference between a low point and a high point can be absolutely massive, they can be very close in time. One day s*cks, the next is your best one, but then all of a sudden something goes array and all hell breaks loose.

When sailing, and especially offshore, “c’est la vie!”.

Before last night and the miraculous recovery of our satellite communications through the inReach, we had spent four days in a bit of a rut, navigating through clouds, weak winds, and confused seas, trying to keep the spirits up.

But this morning, I was in a great mood when I woke up at 3:50 AM (as always), to take my watch.

With some solid winds stabilizing the boat, we all had gotten a great night of sleep. So today, I took the time to wash my face, brush my teeth, and put some fresh clothes on before making my way up to the cockpit. The day had barely started and I already felt amazing.

During Ryan’s watch, our weather router Charlie had sent us text messages on the InReach with a forecast for the day and a waypoint he wanted us to sail to.

It is important to mention that the InReach is a much simpler device than the Iridium Go, but as we are currently experiencing, is a great backup. As opposed to the Iridium Go that allowed us to send lengthy emails and download well-presented weather forecasts to the Predict Wind Offshore app, the InReach only enables us to send 160 characters text messages and track our route.

At this point and until we reach the Azores, we can only receive basic weather forecasts and sailing recommendations, that need to be tailored to our position, our route, and our sailing capabilities.

This morning, Charlie wanted us to sail North to 38°40 North to then gybe and sail towards 39°10 North.

Our angle to the wind was perfect and a calm sea state made for a lovely sail. I was sipping my morning cup of coffee down in the cabin as we were getting close to 38°40 North when I glanced at the chart plotter and I caught a glimpse of an AIS target that appeared and disappeared around 10 nautical miles away from us.

I thought I saw the AIS target carrying a blue marker, indicating that the target was registered in our chart plotter as a buddy boat.

“No way” I thought to myself. I jumped on the radio and tried my luck.

“Zanzibar, Zanzibar, Zanzibar, this is Polar Seal, Polar Seal, Polar Seal, on channel 16. Do you read me?”

Nothing.

“Zanzibar, Zanzibar, this is Polar Seal, Polar Seal, do you read me?”

“Polar Seal, this is Zanzibar, good to see you again! We have been in touch with Sargo and Charlie wondering what happened to you! We learned through Sargo’s shore contact, Twig that they saw you on satellite AIS, but it’s good to have confirmation you guys are alright!”

We continued talking for 10 minutes and when I hang up I realized that of course, Charlie would have sent us to the exact same waypoint

*The old inReach isn’t the easiest device to send messages with, but it comes in handy!*

This morning, we sent text messages left and right to tell our friends and families that we are OK.

We learned from Willem that he had to beg Garmin and his request to buy a data plan for our unit without having access to the account it is associated with was escalated. Thank you Garmin for letting Willem do that, it saved our butts, and thanks Willem for not giving up on us!

We also learned that there were a few worried comments on our blog, but that Willem had answered them. We learned that a few of our sailing friends had checked us out on satellite AIS and found our signal.

We learned that our friend and official social media manager when we are offshore, Erin, posted on Facebook to let everyone know about our situation. Today, there is apparently a blog post coming out on our website telling the story of what happened and where we are. I have no idea what it will say, but I’m sure it will be funny.

We could have finished our passage without satellite communications, but there is no question that having it back is a huge relief.

The Azores high is forecast to move North of the Azores by the end of the weekend, meaning that we need to place ourselves as far North as possible before sailing South to Horta in order to get a good angle to the wind. Any other angle to the islands would give us some really tough upwind to sail to.

This is something we didn’t know before texting with Charlie and Jen today, and a piece of information that, had we missed, would have made the last stretch to Horta very uncomfortable.

So this morning, we are all breathing a little better. And until we get the next forecast, we are having a very smooth sail North/North East!