The Crossing

As we head out, life on Severance goes on as you might expect with each of us falling into the rhythm of our watches, sharing the deck during the day but on a 4 hour watch rotation through the night and early morning.

On watch at night often times there is phosphorous lighting up around the keel wave, breaking in unusual but dramatic patterns. The moon follows us to it's fullest so light shimmers across the ocean surface to the edge of the horizon.

Three days out of the sight of land we spot our first vessel, a tanker heading for the Congo with a load of oil. We know this because of a ship identification system installed on Severance.

Identity, speed, draught, destination and most important, course are revealed. One afternoon, a super container ship with the same heading as ours came barreling past us at 21 knots. Sobering, because we know that regardless of radar small vessels aren't always picked up electronically or visually.



As we progress from the Verdes the colour of the ocean changes from an indigo blue/black to a brilliant royal blue. Now I understand the term “blue water sailing”.

Everything is warming up including the water which registers 83 degrees F.-beautiful. A surprise to me is the abundance of sea life. Every morning at the beginning of my watch I clear all the the flying fish that have died on our deck during the night.

At different times of the day fish are jumping, the rods are out and we are catching smaller mahi-mahi . Sail fish are hitting our lines hard but they are difficult to land as we have light line and we are under sail and they just generally break it off. Our specialty is mahi-mahi sushimi about 15 minutes after it has been landed. We are well equipped with wasabi and ginger and for that matter beer too. Eating this treasure on the aft deck will be an enduring memory for me.

As the temperature steadily mounts and the sun beats directly on us, our relief has been to tie a life line to the stern of Severance, dive off and quickly head for the line. The depth here is 5,000 metres, very deep, so it is a thrill to be out there separated from our vessel. We only do this below 4 knots because the life line is not long and it would be easy to miss it but also because at higher speeds it is difficult to work your way back and the thought of a shark attack, however remote, occasionally intrudes .

The winds have been very predictable so far and we have the mainsail and genoa “wing on wing” with Severance running towards Brazil. The spinnaker came out and worked well but tangled one night which was a real hassle. We are making steady progress without the extreme wind conditions as experienced on the run from Praia to Fogo.

Posted by Danny McJannet