2021 on Merrimac

Waiting for family on Faial

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 18:00:59 +0200

For about six weeks I was on board alone in Horta, on the island of Faial. Very relaxed: I wasn’t going anywhere and had little else to do than wait for the family’s holidays to start. A bit of work on the boat and, for the rest, being sociable. You’re in just about the best possible spot for that, because Horta is of course the hub for ocean sailors, the place everyone passes through between America and Europe. On top of that, the summer weather on Faial is lovely. Sometimes a bit cool (17 degrees), but usually low twenties, with plenty of sunshine.

3,200 miles from Bonaire to Faial (Horta)

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 19:14:00 +0200

I had been looking forward to crossing the Atlantic from west to east for a long time. Sure, we had done east to west, but that turned out to be very easy: point the bow west with plenty of wind from behind! Ten days is very fast, though; it’s actually a bit too short for the real experience. Since I was on Bonaire on my own, I had plenty of time to go through the route planning properly. If you try to sail the rhumb line from Bonaire, you have to sail hard on the wind for a long time, and after that you (often) end up in a large area of calms and light winds. On Merrimac we have a PredictWind subscription, which lets you set up a polar diagram describing how fast the boat sails in which wind. It’s never quite right, but it’s reasonably close. At sea you can fine-tune things a bit more: you can enter a percentage of your polars, which winds you want to avoid, and whether you want to sail fast or comfortably. The Bonaire - Faial route is actually too long, some 17 to 25 days, to be routed in full: the forecasts don’t look that far ahead. But on Bonaire it’s pretty clear: there’s a huge area of high pressure and little wind. So we opt for the “classic route” after all: try to go around that area; along its northern edge there’s westerly wind. You sail north first, and then east. That takes you almost to Bermuda, or even past it. That’s handy too: if anything goes wrong you can divert there. In normal times you’d drop in there anyway, but in Covid times that’s all a hassle again with quarantine and so on.

Diving with Martijn

Wed, 12 May 2021 16:55:00 +0200

On our crossing in 2019 André sailed with us. He used to be a fanatical diver, but his ears started giving him trouble. Our ears, on the other hand, he talked right off about how awesome diving was. Yeah yeah, André, but right now we’re sailing…

Bonaire in lockdown

Mon, 10 May 2021 17:36:00 +0200

Until the end of April, Bonaire was in lockdown because of Covid. Even on my own, lockdown was perfectly bearable, with social contact with Uli (Baradal) and Astrid and Stefan (Intrepid Bear) from Germany on one day, and Robbert and Luuke (8) and Jeanette and Jeroen (Fidelis) on another. Later Kitty and Marco (Liquid Spirit) joined in too. Strictly speaking you were only allowed one visitor, I believe, but it’s possible that a blind eye was turned here and there, by me at least. In the meantime more or less everyone got vaccinated – if you were staying on Bonaire for a longer period, that was possible. We could get good food at the supermarkets, which simply stayed open. Fresh fish was hard to get from the fishermen, as they’ve already promised everything to the middleman (and later the restaurants), but Van den Tweel had gorgeous fresh tuna.

Fish under the boat

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 20:14:33 +0100

Here on Bonaire the water is so clear it’s like diving into a swimming pool. Here’s a 360-degree video, so make sure you look around in every direction. The fish mostly hang out under the boat and around the concrete block the mooring line is attached to. Keep an eye on the blue fish that clearly thinks I’m invading his territory and comes right up close! Later, at the concrete block, he gets chased off himself…

Farewell Aruba, Welcome Bonaire

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 22:33:15 +0100

After 4 months I finally sailed from one island to the next again. On Monday evening it became clear that the wind would be lighter all week. On the Leeward Islands it always blows from the east, you see, except when a hurricane passes further away in the Caribbean. But outside hurricane season it’s guaranteed 100% easterly, always, and at 25 knots beating into it is no fun at all. On top of that there’s a constant westerly current of 1-2 knots. In normal times sailors hardly ever go from Aruba to Bonaire, but these are not normal years.