Sail to Canaries

We write the text for our website in English. The multiple language selection feature is an auto-translation by Google. This translation is not perfect; it sometimes uses peculiar words and even expresses things in a very different way than what we actually meant. So, if you’re reading in a language other than English, and you read something strange, switch back to the English version to read what we actually meant to write!

If you’d like a shorter/summarized version of our posts, read only the “Highlights” section below and stop before “The Captain’s Log“, which is much more detailed, more like a logbook / diary and contains information for our reference as well.

Highlights – the overview

It occurs to Wim, as he is switching on the navigation equipment, that there’s no course heading value in OpenCPN. Hm. Sometimes that takes a while. It’s the magnetic direction of the boat and sometimes in a marina there are magnetic disturbances. It will come up once we’re out.

There’s no wind here so we motor out of the port. Hm. Still no course heading value. That’s odd. The new Signal K dashboard works fine except for the fuel rate being wrong (310 instead of 2,8L/h) and the true wind gauge (wrong direction). We’ll check the programming next time when we’re at anchor. Let’s close it for now and use the existing dashboard in OpenCPN. Ah, that’s why there was no heading: there’s no data from Dione IV’s NMEA2000 network at all!
Sher steers us out to the ocean while Wim is trying to figure out what’s wrong. The N2K to USB interface is not communicating with OpenCPN. Wim tries many things but it’s not working. Well, we have plenty of backup systems so we can continue to Lanzarote but it’s a bummer… We turn on the tablet with Navionics and in the meantime we’ve come out of the wind shadow of Madeira and the wind has picked up to 15 knots on the port beam so we set full sail and Dione IV picks up 6-7 knots of speed 🙂

We have a nice 13-18 knots breeze precisely on our port beam and Dione IV is doing a nice 6-7 knots. The only thing is, the sea is pretty rough. There’s a big swell (2-3m) with a long period that doesn’t really bother us except a breaking one hitting us every now and then but on top of that swell are short wind waves that make Dione IV move pretty uncomfortably. Wim suffers from a light seasickness (as he always has in the beginning of a passage) and Sher’s stomach is a bit off as well.
Well, we recognize this and we know it’s over after the first day or even half day. We keep eating small things, dry crackers, and drinking plenty. That helps.

At dinnertime we’re past the 2 small southern islands of Madeira (Illas Desertas). We hoped the sea state would change and smooth out, but that’s not the case.
We don’t have much appetite. We eat some more crackers with some chicken and cheese.

During the evening the wind decreases gradually and after Midnight, when Sher takes over the watch, we have only 4-5 knots of wind left and the sails start flapping because Dione IV moves a lot in the waves. We decide to furl-in the Yankee and pull the sheets of the Main and Mizzen tight and start the engine.
There’s a half moon and it’s partially cloudy. But between the clouds we can see thousands of stars and the moon lit the ocean. Beautiful!

At 5 o’clock, Wim’s watch, the wind increases to 8 knots (still on the port beam) and he sets sail and turns the engine off. We do 3-4 knots.

At 8 o’clock the cruise ship passes us at 20 miles distance. Sher is on watch but she only saw his bright lights at the horizon when it was still dark. But in daylight, we don’t see him.

1100h. 24 hours underway. We did 111nm. 159nm to go. The wind is 8-10 knots, beam reach, full sails. The sea has calmed down but the swell is still big. It’s sunny with some hazy clouds.

The sun set in clouds so no beautiful sunset picture today. The wind increases a bit to 10 knots from the northeast and we keep sailing close hauled to gain height for tomorrow, when the wind is expected to be east-northeast.
Maybe a bit too close hauled because when Sher is washing the dishes and Wim is trying to get some sleep, we make an unintentional tack. We have to tack back and it takes us a while to get Dione IV back on course…

During the evening the wind increases slowly to 12 knots from the northeast. There’s a half moon that lights up the ocean but regretfully it sets at 0230h so the rest of the night is pitch black. But with thousands of stars!

We did set the autopilot to sail to a wind direction, a course of 50° to the apparent wind (rather than a constant course heading), to keep us on course to Illa Graciosa but the waves are getting really big now and bumping into these waves isn’t fun and slows us down. So, we decide to sail 60° to the wind and we adjust the sails accordingly. Now the waves hit us at a somewhat better angle and we speed up to about 6 knots.

The sea is terrible… very confused and with really big breaking waves. We get a lot of water on deck. The dorade box (air vent) of the bathroom is leaking some drops. We’ve never seen this before. Well, sometimes massive water breaks over it but it’s a 3-chamber dorade box and it shouldn’t leak because of that. We’ll have to disassemble it to see what’s wrong.
Anyway, it’s a very uncomfortable ride. Dione IV gets thrown around like a little ball on a stormy sea. The wind increases to 18 knots but that’s no storm…

It’s a cloudy morning and the conditions haven’t changed. Outside, everything is salty. Inside, we’re trying to be as comfortable as possible. We’ve both slept reasonably well during our time being off-watch. Even though the boat is moving like crazy, our bed is near the “sweet spot”, near the center of the boat, where the movements are less.

We decide to keep the autopilot steering at 60° to the wind. Like that, we have an average between keeping height (to the wind) and speed. We do 4-5 knots. Because the wind shifted from the northeast to the east-northeast our destination Illa Graciosa is no longer an option. That’s too much against the wind. Our current course heads to the south side of Lanzarote. There’s an anchorage and a marina there, too. We send a message via our Zoleo satellite device to our “Captain Ashore” (Wim’s sister Klarien) and ask her to have a look at the actual wind forecast. Hm. Not much different from our existing Grib file. We’ll just have to continue this course and see where we get in the end…

1500h. Conditions unchanged. It’s about 60nm to the south cape of Lanzarote, Punta Pechiguera. At this speed we’ll arrive there in the middle of the night.

The sea state is still terrible, the wind varies from 6 to 20 knots and it’s raining. 😕
50nm to go. That’s 10 hours.

At midnight we anchor at Illa Graciosa. A lot of boats are anchored here and it’s pitch black. No lights on the shore, not even a light house. The numerous anchor lights look pretty chaotic. The moon is covered by clouds. We have been communicating about the situation with 2 boats we know. They have advised us to anchor at the outside and seek a better spot inside the bay tomorrow at daylight. A German guy (Peter from the boat “Sabir”, we were neighbors at the Porto Santo anchorage) told us: “I leave my AIS on and my neighbor (the Dutch boat “Nomad”) also has his AIS on. Just drop your anchor between these 2 AIS positions”. How great! While Sher carefully moves Dione IV to that position, watching the AIS positions on the screen, Wim lights the anchored boats with our powerful flashlight. We drop our anchor exactly at the advised location. It’s 18m deep here so we let 50m of chain out. Thank you, cruising friends, for the guidance!!!

After we pulled the anchor in the sand by reversing the engine, the clouds break and a beautiful half moon pops out 🙂

This wasn’t an easy passage. On Tuesday, it was a struggle to keep sailing in very light winds. Tuesday-night, Wednesday during the day, and Wednesday-night, there was this very ugly sea with confused waves that were much bigger than expected for the approx 15 knots of wind. Dione IV was rocking and rolling like crazy and we’ve never seen so much water on deck! We got really beaten up and even a couple of things started flying around inside, although our interior and storage areas are pretty seaworthy… But the 3 of us (Dione IV and we) did great. We slept reasonably well when off-watch, we ate well, we didn’t get seasick, nothing broke down or malfunctioned (except the dripping dorade box in the bathroom, which was caused by a bad sealing joint between the stainless steel box and the deck, after all) and we even enjoyed the harsh environment although it was uncomfortable. It’s a joy to see how Dione IV handles those, sometimes, huge waves: they crash against her bow with loud bang, making her hull tremble, spray over the fore deck, and then she pushes the wave aside with big force in white foam as if she says: get off, you! We didn’t see any sea life although the area seems to be famous for seeing dolphins and whales.

The Captain’s Log – the complete story

October 20.

There’s no wind here so we motor out of the port. Hm. Still no course heading value. That’s odd. The new Signal K dashboard works fine except for the fuel rate being wrong (310 instead of 2,8L/h) and the true wind gauge (wrong direction). We’ll check the programming next time when we’re at anchor. Let’s close it for now and use the existing dashboard in OpenCPN.
Ah, that’s why there was no heading: there’s no data from Dione IV’s NMEA2000 network at all!
Sher steers us out to the ocean while Wim is trying to figure out what’s wrong. The N2K to USB interface is not communicating with OpenCPN. Wim tries many things but it’s not working. Well, we have plenty of backup systems so we can continue to Lanzarote but it’s a bummer… We turn on the tablet with Navionics and in the meantime we’ve come out of the wind shadow of Madeira and the wind has picked up to 15 knots on the port beam so we set full sail and Dione IV picks up 6-7 knots of speed 🙂

While we sail in the right direction Wim keeps figuring out what can be wrong with the board computer. Suppose the N2K to USB interface is malfunctioning. We have a WiFi transmitter in the N2K system as a backup for that. Let’s activate that WiFi connection in OpenCPN. Hm. We have N2K data now but it’s intermittent. We recap what has changed on the board computer during Wim’s experiments with the new dashboard. With the dashboard software closed down, the only thing that has changed on the computer is the Signal K server software running. Let’s stop the server. Hm. That improves the N2K data stream in OpenCPN a lot! Although it’s still slightly intermittent. Let’s reactivate the USB interface. All good! Steady data in the old dashboard!
Okay, Signal K brings many new possibilities and advantages but this issue has yet to be solved… Or we’ll stick to the old and well-proven dashboard..

Re-thinking it, the Signal K server was using the Actisense NGT-1 USB device. So, OpenCPN couldn’t access it. That caused the problem. It could even be that the SK server was using the Actisense W2K WiFi device, too. Overloading the WiFi stream and making it slow and intermittent in OpenCPN. We’ll have to check that once we run the SK server again.

We have a nice 13-18 knots breeze precisely on our port beam and Dione IV is doing a nice 6-7 knots. The only thing is, the sea is pretty rough. There’s a big swell (2-3m) with a long period that doesn’t really bother us except a breaking one hitting us every now and then but on top of that swell are short wind waves that make Dione IV move pretty uncomfortably. Wim suffers from a light seasickness (as he always has in the beginning of a passage) and Sher’s stomach is a bit off as well.
Well, we recognize this and we know it’s over after the first day or even half day. We keep eating small things, dry crackers, and drinking plenty. That helps.

At dinnertime we’re past the 2 small southern islands of Madeira (Illas Desertas). We hoped the sea state would change and smooth out, but that’s not the case.
We don’t have much appetite. We eat some more crackers with some chicken and cheese.

October 21.

During the evening the wind decreases gradually and after Midnight, when Sher takes over the watch, we have only 4-5 knots left and the sails start flapping because Dione IV moves a lot in the waves. We decide to furl-in the Yankee and pull the sheets of the Main and Mizzen tight and start the engine.
There’s a half moon and it’s partially cloudy. But between the clouds we can see thousands of stars and the moon lit the ocean. Beautiful!

At 5 o’clock, Wim’s watch, the wind increases to 8 knots (still on the port beam) and he sets sail and turns the engine off. We do 3-4 knots.

We see no other ships or yachts although on MarineTraffic we saw (when we had internet) there are some yachts on their way. But at 6 o’clock, a cruise ship appears on the AIS on our stern. It’s the Azura which we saw when we left Funchal.

At 8 o’clock the cruise ship passes us at 20 miles distance. Sher is on watch but she only saw his bright lights at the horizon when it was still dark. But in daylight, we don’t see him.

1100h. 24 hours underway. We did 111nm. 159nm to go. The wind is 8-10 knots, beam reach, full sails. The sea has calmed down but the swell is still big. It’s sunny with some hazy clouds.

We steer a little bit higher than our destination. That gives us a beam reach, better speed and it keeps the sail filled better. According to yesterdays Grib file the wind will shift to the east-northeast tomorrow so we can fall off then to have an easier angle. We do around 4,5 knots.

In the afternoon, the wind shifts to the east-northeast and is pretty variable. The direction changes all the time (sometimes 45°) and the speed is between 5 and 8 knots. We changed the sail trim to close hauled and try to keep as north as possible while maintaining some speed (3-4 knots). The weather is sunny and the sea is calm now. There’s still the huge swell, hills of water. But they gently move under us 🙂. Outside temperature 27°C.

The sun set in clouds so no beautiful sunset picture today. The wind increases a bit to 10 knots from the northeast and we keep sailing close hauled to gain height for tomorrow, when the wind is expected to be east-northeast.
Maybe a bit too close hauled because when Sher is washing the dishes and Wim is trying to get some sleep, we make an unintentional tack. We have to tack back and it takes us a while to get Dione IV back on course…

During the evening the wind increases slowly to 12 knots from the northeast. There’s a half moon that lights up the ocean but regretfully it sets at 0230h so the rest of the night is pitch black. But with thousands of stars!

October 22.

At the start of Wim’s watch at 0300h the wind has increased to 15 knots. We decide to reef the Yankee. Not really necessary now but it’s better to do it now, before the wind increases further .

We did set the autopilot to sail a course of 50° to the apparent wind to keep us on course to Illa Graciosa but the waves are getting really big now and bumping into these waves isn’t fun and it slows us down. So, we decide to sail 60° to the wind and we adjust the sails accordingly. Now the waves hit us at a somewhat better angle and we speed up to about 6 knots.

The sea is terrible. Very confused and with really big breaking waves. We get a lot of water on deck. The dorade box (air vent) of the bathroom is leaking some drops. We’ve never seen this before. Well, sometimes massive water breaks over it but it’s a 3-chamber dorade box and it shouldn’t leak because of that. We’ll have to disassemble it to see what’s wrong.
Anyway, it’s a very uncomfortable ride. Dione IV gets thrown around like a little ball on a stormy sea.
The wind increases to 18 knots but that’s no storm…

It’s a cloudy morning and the conditions haven’t changed. Outside, everything is salty. Inside, we’re trying to be as comfortable as possible. We’ve both slept reasonably well during our time being off-watch. Even though the boat is moving like crazy, our bed is near the “sweet spot”, near the center of the boat, where the movements are less.

We decide to keep the autopilot steering at 60° to the wind. Like that, we have an average between keeping height (to the wind) and speed. We do 4-5 knots. Because the wind shifted from the northeast to the east-northeast our destination Illa Graciosa is no longer an option. That’s too much against the wind. Our current course heads to the south side of Lanzarote. There’s an anchorage and a marina there, too. We send a message via our Zoleo satellite device to our “Captain Ashore” (Wim’s sister Klarien) and ask her to have a look at the actual wind forecast. Hm. Not much different from our existing Grib file. We’ll just have to continue this course and see where we get in the end…

1500h. Conditions unchanged. It’s about 60nm to the south cape of Lanzarote, Punta Pechiguera. At this speed we’ll arrive there in the middle of the night.

The sea state is still terrible, the wind varies from 6 to 20 knots and it’s raining. 😕
50nm to go. That’s 10 hours.

At midnight we anchor at Illa Graciosa. A lot of boats are anchored here and it’s pitch black. No lights on the shore, not even a light house. The numerous anchor lights look pretty chaotic. The moon is covered by clouds. We have been communicating about the situation with 2 boats we know. They have advised us to anchor at the outside and seek a better spot inside the bay tomorrow at daylight. A German guy (Peter from the boat “Sabir”, we were neighbors at the Porto Santo anchorage) told us: “I leave my AIS on and my neighbor (the Dutch boat “Nomad”) also has his AIS on. Just drop your anchor between these 2 AIS positions”. How great! While Sher carefully moves Dione IV to that position, watching the AIS positions on the screen, Wim lights the anchored boats with our powerful flashlight. We drop our anchor exactly at the advised location. It’s 18m deep here so we let 50m of chain out.

After we pulled the anchor in the sand by reversing the engine, the clouds break and a beautiful half moon pops out 🙂

This wasn’t an easy passage. At Tuesday it was a struggle to keep sailing in very light winds and Tuesday-night, Wednesday during the day and Wednesday-night there was this very ugly sea with confused waves that were much bigger than expected for the approx 15 knots of wind. Dione IV was rocking and rolling like crazy and we’ve never seen so much water on deck! We got really beaten up and even a couple of things started flying around inside, although our interior and storage areas are pretty seaworthy… But the 3 of us (Dione IV and we) did well. We slept reasonably good in our off-watch, we ate well, we didn’t get seasick, nothing broke down or malfunctioned (except the dripping dorade box in the bathroom, which was caused by a bad sealing joint between the stainless steel box and the deck, after all) and we even enjoyed the harsh environment although it was uncomfortable. It’s a joy to see how Dione IV handles those, sometimes, huge waves: they crash against her bow with loud bang, making her hull tremble, spray over the fore deck, and then she pushes the wave aside with big force in white foam as if she says: get off, you! We didn’t see any sea life although the area seems to be famous for seeing dolphins and whales.