Week 22-23: Gibraltar to Lanzarote (804nm)

We are delighted this week to have our first guest post on Life With Serenity First, written by Phil, who joined us for the passage from Gibraltar to Lanzarote. We really enjoy having guests aboard as it allows us to experience Serenity through a new set of eyes, and capturing these thoughts in a post means we get to share them with a wider audience. It’s worth noting that even though this was the longest passage any of us had done to date, it was by far the easiest we have experience on Serenity First, which is strongly linked to the knowledgeable and enthusiastic attitude that Phil brought to the boat and hopefully this comes across in his writing below 🙂

Apart from a week skiing together in Switzerland a few years ago, I’d spent little time with Alec since our families met sailing in the Caribbean nearly two decades ago. Along with all of you, I’d been reading Laura and Alec’s blog with great interest. As a keen sailor, I had long admired the diligence and dedication the couple displayed in refitting their boat.

When Alec’s father Barry advised me that Laura and Alec were looking for crew for the first of their Atlantic passages, I immediately said I’d love to join them, and held my breath hoping to be invited. Months after the elation of being confirmed as crew I found I’d been somewhat oversold as a “Spinnaker Doctor”. Whilst it’s true I have competed in a few thousand hours of yacht racing as main trimmer and lifted a few trophies, I felt upon arrival I should confess to Laura and Alec that I am an ageing if enthusiastic amateur and hardly the hot-shot they were expecting. To their credit they concealed their disappointment and made me very welcome aboard their beautiful craft moored up in a Gibraltar marina.

I was introduced to the departing crew, who, when not providing great humour and merriment, are in fact serious aviators. This reminded me of when I’d seen one of the Americans’ vast carriers outside Portsmouth (UK) a few summers ago during the annual Cowes Week regatta – the ship was a staggering sight which dominated the horizon of the eastern Solent, being far too large to enter the British Royal Navy’s flagship harbour.

Initial impressions of Serenity First are of a handsome, ocean-going yacht, with clean lines, capacious accommodation, and bristling with state of the art technology. The next thing that strikes the first time visitor are the signs of the live-aboard owners and their propensity for lists, schedules, rosters and procedures. One realises this is both the happy home of a delightful couple, and mission control for an assignment being executed with military precision.

After bidding farewell to Alec and Laura’s friends, our week together started with boat cleaning, running repairs and provisioning. Laura set about her planned maintenance regime and oil change for the engine, whilst Alec and I tackled overhauling the ropes, with particular attention to the halyards, the lines which raise sails to the top of the mast. Alec and I threw ourselves into this task with gusto and decided to replace or swap all of them. Regrettably, in our enthusiasm, we overlooked the fact that our method of restringing had a critical flaw – the narrow tape we used to rethread the strings slipped off the pulleys at the top of the mast and sometimes broke. Had we replaced the lines sequentially we would always have had several spare halyards to raise somebody to the top of the mast to drop a line down if anything broke. Only when we snapped the first tape did we see the error of our ways – if the others snagged in a similar fashion, somebody would have to physically climb the mast without a rope to raise them. So we gently coaxed the last surviving tape to complete its task of rethreading the last remaining line, which fortunately worked. Laura then came to our rescue and obligingly went to the top of the mast to rethread the remaining halyards. A salutary lesson learned, we rewarded ourselves with a delicious meal followed by a couple of rounds of caramel vodka shots

The next morning a dour Scotsman’s face lit up as he walked past Serenity First – it turned out he was an owner of the same model – an Elan Impression 434. A veteran open ocean sailor, he extolled the craft’s virtues and how it rewarded constant investment and maintenance – music to Laura and Alec’s attentive ears. He also added to the tales we’d heard of rogue Moroccan fishermen intentionally causing boats to run through their fishing gear up to 50 miles off the Moroccan shore in order to make erroneous compensation claims and demand recompense or threaten dire consequences.

As luck would have it, the weather window presented for the following week offered an alternative route far from the Moroccan coast. The choice was between a direct course largely under motor in a straight line close to Morocco, or adopting what we came to call “The Banana Route”, which meant heading west out into the deep Atlantic and weaving between the depressions to get the benefits of their strong winds whilst attempting to avoid the violent weather at the heart of these powerful systems. I asked Laura if she fancied a circuitous trip out to Madeira, and then south to the Canaries. Without hesitation Laura responded “Sure, why not …” and I knew we had a spirited lady owner on our hands. As explained in earlier blogs, Laura is technically the owner of Serenity First. When during cocktail hour, Laura and I discussed what Alec’s title should be, we concluded that “Executive Skipper” was appropriate, whilst Alec gave us a strained, bemused look.

We were happy to leave Gibraltar – a bustling, cosmopolitan port, which last week sat under a shadow of cloud that forms over “The Rock” when the strong easterly Levante wind is blowing. This cloud and the stiff breezes make the place feel drab, particularly when in contrast one can see Spain and distant North Africa bathed in bright sunshine.

Following departure, strong easterly winds through the Straits of Gibraltar allowed us to sail at speed downwind with just the genoa (the front sail). We quickly crossed the strait’s busy shipping separation lanes, full of heavily laden container ships and tankers moving rapidly in and out of the Mediterranean. We waved goodbye to Europe at Tarifa, the southern-most tip of the Iberian peninsula, and crossed towards north Africa with beautiful views of the Rif mountains, the coastal range in front of the High Atlas mountains beyond.

None of us slept well through the pitching and rolling of that fist night, but we made fast progress and a record 24 hour distance for Serenity First of 142 nautical miles, thus beating the previous record from Palma to Valencia of 110 nautical miles held with guest mariners for that week, Barry and Sarah. For those interested in stats, the average speed on our first 24 hours was almost 6 knots peaking at a respectable 9 knots on the downhill ride (tide and wind behind us) from Gibraltar to Tarifa, some way off the dazzling record speed of 10.9 knots established between Almeria and Adra.

We left the land behind us that first night, and settled into a three times four-hour shift system covering the pitch black hours between 8pm and 8am, the autumn equinox having occurred the week before. The nights were dark last week due to the absence of moonlight, resulting in the deck feeling like a lonely place as the boat pitched and rolled in the waves whilst they try to resist the hull being driven by the force of the wind in the sails. The darkness is punctuated with white foam illuminated by the boat’s navigation lights, plus dramatic star constellations, and the Milky Way, above when the clouds clear. Also glowing during the night is the haunting light of the instruments constantly showing position, course, wind, boat-speed, and a myriad of other data. Most of the time it’s exciting knowing you’re responsible for guiding an 11,000 kilo boat through the night whilst your colleagues are attempting to sleep below. But the combination of insufficient sleep and darkness occasionally conspire to disorientate one, particularly when the wind starts howling, the rain is sheeting down and you switch off the automatic steering to go manual to lessen the loads on the sails and stop them banging.

Serenity First emerged through all that was thrown at her over this last week with flying colours. Over 800 miles was covered in six days. This boat sails remarkably well in all conditions and all points of the wind. I innocently asked Alec how he and Laura had come to choose a little known make of boat that proved such a capable all-rounder, as well as being no slouch on the speed front. I was unprepared for the detailed account of a schedule of statistics and qualities of the many boats that were compared to each other to reach a shortlist, which were then further researched with each metric measured and quantified until the optimal criteria were identified and fulfilled. This exacting assessment by Laura and Alec has paid off handsomely. They have selected an excellent boat for their purposes, which they have improved with the addition of state of the art navigational aids, practical homely touches, plus a purposeful self-steering system. When I read that they’d attached the Hydrovane themselves I was surprised. When one sees the precision with which this stunning piece of technology has been attached to the hull, as I did when Alec and I tried to find any give in the mounting bolts, one realises what an awesome job Laura did in accomplishing a demanding task as well as any experienced boatyard could achieve, if not better.

Being at sea for a week means there are no dramatic port entries or excursions to report on. But there are plenty of equally thrilling events that take place. Their impact is heightened by the unpredictable nature of their occurrence and sometimes their sheer rarity. I’ve only once seen a single whale for a few seconds whilst at sea in a yacht. So imagine our excitement to be visited by a school of six or seven minke whales in open ocean 100 miles from land with 4 kilometres of dark blue water beneath us. It is humbling to see these enormous yet graceful creatures slowly surfing through the fronts of the waves next to the boat. These sentient mammals had clearly decided to allow us to observe them, as they satiated their own curiosity by coming to take a look at Serenity First. It was an experience none of us are likely to forget.

A few days later, a pod of 10 to 12 dolphins came to visit. Surrounding Serenity First, the dolphins played in the bow wave under the prow of the boat. The speed and agility they displayed was breathtaking. A few performed somersaults to close their show before turning around as the pod resumed its course in the opposite direction to ours. We three could talk of little else for several hours afterwards.

The sea gives in other ways. Before dusk Alec starts his preparations to see if tuna will be on the menu. On his first attempt in the Atlantic he caught a tuna which provided sushi within 20 minutes of capture, as well as a supplement to that evening’s meal. I was intrigued by Alec’s chosen method of sedating the fish on landing. Within seconds of capture, its last conscious experience is chilled vodka being poured into its gills to induce a brief hypnotic state before a painless death and preparation for the table.

Life on board Serenity First includes endless lists of tasks to be performed. When a list gets short, extensions and supplements are quickly drafted, and procedures and schedules prepared. I soon realised an amateur obsessive like me couldn’t compete in this league, so I set about the mundane, achievable and low-tech task of sanding down a handsome teak cockpit table which had been insensitively smothered in polyurethane during her decade as a charter boat.

Anyone reading this probably already knows the lengths to which Laura and Alec will go when wishing to prove their respective points of view. I have witnessed this several times over the past week. Most examples reach a conclusion, but one example stands out for having no answer. It is a debate about amortising the cost of Alec’s fishing gear versus the yield in fish, which seems to turn on whether a large tuna is 2x a small one, or some other factor. For any of you who have mastered comprehension of Schrodinger’s cat, string theory, quantum mechanics, or the Higgs boson, I invite you to turn your minds to this vexing mystery which I suggest should be titled “Marshall’s tuna”. At first I thought this was merely a riddle before realising it is a genuine source of considered debate between Laura and Alec. To date, the discussion has not been concluded – I suspect it may never be.

A few weeks ago, I promised Alec’s mother, Sarah, that I would observe Laura and Alec’s relationship and report on anything untoward. Having subjected them to close scrutiny for the past week these are the findings I have to report. The good news is that Alec loves Laura – that is self evident and a joy to behold. He is totally devoted to his dazzling wife for all the many understandable reasons. Equally, Laura loves Alec, and recognises the need to keep him on the straight and narrow whilst allowing him to believe he actually has some true influence.

However, I also have disturbing news to share. I have to reveal that I have discovered that there is another love in Laura’s life. His name is “Mick” and he lives on board Serenity First, concealed in a small airless room beneath the companionway steps. Laura puts on latex gloves before each of her numerous visits to Mick. No day is complete without attention to this Volvo Penta engine, a spotless piece of gleaming metal. The attention Laura lavishes on Mick knows no bounds.

We have enjoyed many discussions on board over the past week. Music is a frequent theme, and I have received a crash course in American country music. Much to my initial surprise, most of this genre is remarkably pleasant. Laura and Alec have educated me on the differences between country and folk, as well as hybrid sounds such as country/folk and specialist.

Tonight we’re sitting in a glossy marina in Arrecife, Lanzarote waiting for a band to play from midnight to mark the commencement of a Spanish national holiday known as Hispanic Day. This celebration commemorates Christopher Columbus first spotting land in the Americas on the morning of 12th October 1492. It’s amazing to think that 526 years later Laura and Alec have embarked on repeating this accomplishment. I wish them well with their continuing voyage, thank them for including me in a small part of it, and look forward to reading all about their continuing adventure through this blog.