We finally rounded the Cape Finisterre

Johanna

N 42° 7.154', W 8° 50.682'

I don't think I have to find a roller coaster for a while, we just had our own for about 24 hours. We did not do a loop upside down, but I think everything else was there...

So, we ended up spending 18 days in La Coruña. It was a very nice city, but we are still very anxious to go on, so it was kind of a pain to be stuck there.

A kind of good weather window opened up for us yesterday morning. The strong winds were gone, but so were the winds all together. We motored almost all the way to Baiona, 122 nautical miles.

A couple of days ago a very big storm hit Europe. We didn't get the winds, but we got the waves. The day before we left the waves were 6 meters. The morning we left they were 4 meters. And yes, 4 meters does not sound much, but they were STEEP, something I've never experienced before.

Life on board was quite unpleasant, but we are happy we made it. Now we rounded the tip of Spain and are one step further down south. There was no telling when the next and maybe better window was going to open so just had to go. And we were not the only ones. There were at least 7 boats that left the same morning than we did. Some have waited for the weather window for 3 weeks.

I think the surfers have enjoyed these waves along the coast for a couple of days.

Stuck in La Coruña

Johanna

N 43° 22.055', W 8° 23.148'

When we first arrived to La Coruña our plan was to stay here for a few days and then continue down the coast.

Well, that was two weeks ago. It's not that we are not eager to go on, but because of the constant low pressures that keep hitting the Cape Finisterre. Every morning we download the grib-files and every other morning we say "Hey, after two days there could be a weather window for us". And by the next morning it has closed down. 

But I don't want to complain too much. We are already in Spain. Our friends in Finland have hauled up their boats and are scraping the ice of the car windows in the morning. We can still go out wearing t-shirts. 

Now it looks like we might be leaving on Tuesday, but we'll see...

And looks like we are not the only ones to wait for the wind to be more favorable. If you go to Mini Transat 2013, you see that they were supposed to start on the 13th, and they are still postponing the start.

Bay of Biscay

Johanna

N 43° 22.055', W 8° 23.148'

I've heard so many stories about the Bay of Biscay. Usually they consist of strong winds and monster waves. We didn't meet either of these.

We believe that the main reason was our lack of schedule. We can wait for the good weather prognosis (and then hope for it to be accurate).

We were not alone with our plans, since quite a few other boats left Brest the same day. 

Swedish "Rose" leaving Brest

All the boats that we new that headed for the Biscay left during the day. We waited for the evening and high water so we had the advantage of the tidal current to begin with.

The first night and day we saw some fishing boats and other sailing boats. We also saw some dolphins, I just love to watch those creatures to swim around us.

The second night was pitch black and all we saw was stars. There weren't even any AIS targets on the chart plotter. Just for the reference, when we passed Rotterdam there were 421 AIS targets on our system.

On the North Sea and English Channel we also got quite use to the constant voices on VHF. Now there was no sounds for over 24 hours. It's easier to sleep when it's quite, but there's also sometimes funny things on the air. Like in the English channel when there were "securite" messages warning the traffic about cross channel swimmers. There were three swimmers at the time we were there.

On the Third night we got some AIS targets again, Spanish fishing boats, passenger ship and some cargo ships.

Most of the way we were only using our main sail. For the first day it was hoisted all the way, the second day we had one reef and the third day we had it down to two reefs. In the end we opened our head sail a bit (while the main was still reefed).

Crossing the Bay of Biscay took us 69 hours for the 357 NM. 

Dunkerque - Brest

Johanna

N 48° 22.639', W 4° 29.302'

There was an incredible amount of ferries between Dover and Calais. On the background you can see the coast of England. We sailed very close to the French coast, but England was not very far.

When we left Dunkerque we thought about stopping in Cherbourg. The wind was so good that we just gybed near it and went on.

Going down wind was rolly, but going the other way really didn't look like fun...

We almost had good wind all the way to Brest. The wind died completely after 300 miles of good sailing. We motored for a couple of hours and anchored in total darkness right before the entrance to Rade de Brest

This is what we saw in the morning when we motored about 15 miles to Brest.

And this. For some reason, when I see lighthouses like these I remember the books "The famous five" written by Enid Blyton.

We'll be staying in Brest for a while. We are waiting for a package from Finland and then we've also ordered some more electronic component for Timo to play with.

When we get our stuff from the mail, we start to look for the good weather for the Bay of Biscay.

Finally some good sailing

N 49° 44.455', W 1° 58.480'

While writing this I see the lights on Guernsey. Once we thought we might stop there, but now that we finally have good wind we want to go on.

We are on the second night at sea. We left Dunkerque early yesterday morning. First we thought of stopping in Cherbourg, but the wind and current was excellent so we continued. The current was so good that it kind of shot us out of the English channel at the speed of 4 knots. Our GPS was then showing 11.6 knots.

Our life on board is quite easy. The wind is from behind so the boat of course rolls a lot, but it's so much better than beating and banging to the waves.

Our watch system is very simple. During the day and in the evening the one who is more tires gets to rest. When the other one feels more tired than the other we switch. During the night we both usually wake up about once in an hour to ask a couple of questions. What time is it? Is everything ok? Do you still want to go on or do we switch places? We actually switch places about every 3 or 4 hours.

So Timo is sleeping now and I'm on the watch. Let me tell you what being on watch on board Iiris is like. Autopilot is doing the actual driving. I sit on the couch and look out the windows. We have this deck saloon, so there is no need to be outside. We only go there to trim the sails. And while going down hill, there is nothing to trim.

We are hoping to get to Brest on this wind, but we'll see where we end up.

Two new countries in two days

N 51° 2.610', E 2° 22.389'

We ain't in the hurry, but we still got two new countries in two days :)

We were too eager to head for the open sea, so we didn't wait for the wind to turn, only waited for the wind to die. We motored from Roompot to Zeebrugge, Belgium. But we did it in the right time of the day, and got a good current that helped us.

We were still very eager to continue so we only spend one night in Belgium. The next morning started out very foggy, we could barely see the breakwater. We watched very closely at the radar and AIS and off we went.

The fog was not too bad when we got out of the harbor. But it was enough so we didn't see any of the Belgium coast even though we were only 2 miles from it.

The current helped us again and we reached the French city of Dunkerque in the late after noon.

That was yesterday. Now our plan is to leave early tomorrow morning and according to the grib files we might actually have some wind from a right direction for couple of days. Let's see where we end up next.

RFI problems

timo

N 51° 35.564', E 3° 43.165'

Previously I wrote about our first installation of SSB radio with Winlink. After a great struggle we were happy that it was at least working somehow.

It wasn't that easy, as you might have guessed.

I was requesting a GRIB file while sailing and Simrad autopilot steering the boat. When the radio started transmitting, the boat started spinning. I was alone at night watch. It was good that nothing bad happened.

At the next marina we found out that RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) was making the rudder angle sensor to report ridiculous angles.

There are two ways the RFI can get to rudder angle sensor. Through air or through 12V electricity.

Wire to the sensor was long and the shield was not grounded. I changed the wire, added a ferrite bead and a 0.01?F capasitor parallel to sensor wires. It helped, but not enough. Angles were still changing about 10 degrees when transmitting.

Next I checked the 12V system. When not transmitting it looks like this:

Some of our battery chargers are making the nice figure.

When transmitting it looks this:

Icom IC801E is really causing trouble. It is taking about 30 Amps and it has bad decoupling.

Eliminating RFI is not easy. I added a ferrite bead to SSB power input.

After that the angle changes were only 1-2 degrees.

I also put 0.1?F capasitor parallel with 0.01?F capasitor connected to ground at both sides of this inductor, making it as a ?-filter.

Problem is now solved. No problems with autopilot. As long as we are transmitting higher than 7 MHz. We are not expecting to have good connections below 7 MHz at sea anyway.