Day 9: Azores to Ireland

May 26, 2022

Well, we made it to Cork, Ireland, in 8 days and 3 hours, and we’re thrilled to be here.

It really was a mixed bag of a passage, with 4 very distinct phases:

1. The Beginning – Fast and Furious from the minute we left the marina, with gusts up to 46 knots and 3-4 metre seas for the first 12 hours

2. Settling in – two lovely days of moderate winds and seas

3. The Boring middle bit – no wind so we motored for 2.5 days non-stop

4. The Spicy ending – The last two days felt like the “real” North Atlantic. Cold, windy, big swell and plenty of rain and breaking waves

Despite it being far from champagne sailing, we feel very fortunate to have had the weather we did – since our departure there has still not been another window which would have been as good, nor does there seem to be one in the next 10 days in the forecast – instead, leaving on any other day since then or into the foreseeable future would have involved at least 500 miles of strong headwinds – something which we would not willingly undertake in this patch of ocean.

So in short, we got lucky with the weather, and are grateful for it.

We’re also grateful for the incredibly warm welcome we’ve already received in our few short hours here. It’s a cliche that the Irish are famously friendly people, but it’s just incredible to see it in action. Literally every person we’ve spoken to since we got here has been warm, friendly and wanted to help in as many ways as we could think of and a few that we couldn’t.

As one example, the Government vet came to Steely last night to conduct Coco’s Compliance Check, and brought his 8-year-old son with him, just because the son likes sailing and so Dad thought he’d get a thrill from coming on the boat. The compliance check itself took 5 minutes, and the rest of the hour was spent shooting the breeze about a wide range of topics. It’s just that sort of place.

Completing this passage also brings to an end our Atlantic Ocean Odyssey. We still have a further 300 miles to get to Largs, where we’ll consider the first half of the circumnavigation to be complete, but since they are coastal miles, and Cork is really the alternative to our intended destination of Falmouth, it feels like we can put a big tick against the Atlantic Ocean.

It bothers me more than it should that I can’t technically say I’ve “crossed the Atlantic”, having instead traversed it from south to north, but after 7,700 miles, we can certainly consider that we’ve done it pretty thoroughly! Full statistics are below for those who like that kind of thing.

Our onward plans are somewhat fluid at this stage. The original plan was always to stop and work in London for 6-12 months at the halfway point in our circumnavigation, to keep our skills current work-wise, and to spend time with my parents, as well as to keep the finances in good order.

Covid meant it’s taken us 4 years to get here, rather than the original plan of 2, which means the finances are definitely in need of some TLC – so at this stage we know we’re going to stay and work for 2 years at least.

We’ve also come to realise that many boats undertake a mid-circumnavigation mini refit, and Steely is definitely ready for some love. We already have a list of close to a hundred items that we need to attend to, some small, some large, but all of which will take time and money. We need to be careful to balance what’s essential to what is desirable, or we could find ourselves land-bound for 3 or 4 years, or even longer if we get too comfortable, enjoy our work too much, or fall into the trap of chasing perfection on the boat.

We’ve come to realise that this time is something to be cherished though, not begrudged.

Jen has always wanted to live and work in the UK, and for me, having made a decision to emigrate 22 years ago (something I’ve never regretted), I now see the opportunity to spend an extended period of time close to my parents and brother as a real privilege, and something I hadn’t ever really factored in as one of the benefits of our decision to circumnavigate.

The immediate future has a little bit of flux in it too. From here the plan is to sail to Largs, have an emotional “homecoming”, and then spend all of June with my family, including a gathering of the clan for my Mum’s 80th birthday extravaganza in mid-June.

In the perfect world, we’ll then spend two months cruising the West Coast of Scotland, then sail through the Caledonian Canal and down to London at the beginning of September to base ourselves in St Katherines Dock, where we’ll both have amazing jobs waiting for us.

We’ve started putting the feelers out for work, and already I have couple of very interesting irons in the fire. If the job is right, and it’s important to them, then it may well be that we need to cut short the time in Scotland and get down to work sooner than planned. But that’s OK, cruisers’ plans are always written in the sand at low tide.

I imagine this will be the last tracker blog for a long time, although I will revert to the occasional general blog on the main part of the website in due course – I’ve discovered I enjoy writing too much to give it up entirely, and when the time comes, I’d like to a better job of documenting some of the refit work than I did first time around when we did the major refit in Sydney.

Jen of course will continue to post on our Steel Sapphire Facebook and Instagram pages – at least until we’re settled in London. There’s plenty of stuff to share from the Azores, and no doubt from our adventures in Ireland and Scotland still to come.

In the meantime, thanks for following along on here. It never ceases to surprise us just how many people have been interested in keeping track of our travels, including a surprising number of people we’ve never met, some of whom reach out to us by email from time to time – it’s always such a privilege to receive those emails and to know that (especially during Covid) documenting our travels has been inspiring for some or even just some light relief for others.

Cheers
Pete, Jen and Coco

Azores to Ireland Passage Statistics:

Total Time on passage: 8 days, 3 hours
Total Distance covered: 1,181 nm
Total Distance Sailed: 1,217 miles (we lost 36miles to negative current)
Average Speed: 6.1 knots
Max Speed: 11.1 knots

Max wind Speed: 46 knots
Average Wind Speed (not including 2 days of no wind): 22 knots

Total Engine Hours: 67
Total Generator Hours: 13
Total Fuel Used: 372 litres

Percentage Sailed v Motored: 67% v 33%

Number of fish caught : 0

Episodes of “24” watched (Pete) – 26
Episodes of Downton Abbey watched (Jen) - 15

Cape Town to Ireland Combined Atlantic Odyssey Statistics

Total Distance Covered over the ground: 7,706 nm
Total Distance Sailed: 7,650 miles (we gained 56 miles to positive current – it’s remarkable to us how well this balanced out in the end, given that sometimes we had 2.5 knots of positive or negative current.)

Total Time on passage: 57 days, 6 hours
Average Speed: 5.6 knots
Max Speed: 13.5 knots

Total Engine Hours: 260
Total Generator Hours: 204
Total Fuel Used: 1,736 litres

Percentage Sailed v Motored: 81% v 19%

Number of fish caught : 4

Total Amount of Water Made: 4,033 Litres (since Azores we have been using dock water)

Total Number of nights since Cape Town: 120
Nights at sea: 57
Nights at anchor: 6 (at Ascension Island).
Nights on Moorings 24 (Namibia and St Helena)
Nights in Marinas: 33 (Azores)

Nights stayed off the boat: 4 (camping in Namibia)

Most accurate Forecast: ECMWF – it was so much better than the others, that we only ever looked at GFS to ensure there wasn’t vast divergence. But if they were in the same ballpark, it was always ECMWF that was correct.

Total number of pre-cooked individual serve meals consumer from the freezer on passage: 121

Total number of meals consumed (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner x 120 days) = 360
Number of meals eaten in cafes/restaurants: 19
Number of meals eating in someone’s house: 1 (thanks, Tanya and Herby)
Number of times grocery shopping: 6