After a long pause for big repair works, we are finally back at sea. The new crew has made the decision to not sail so aggressively to start with, so now we are heading south along the Brazilian coast for Rio de Janeiro.

Tonight we stopped outside Morro de Sao Paulo, a popular tourist hangout that was rumoured to be a very nice place. Though we found only a luxurious tourist trap and didn’t like it very much. But the sailing is very nice in light winds and little waves.

One thing that I clearly did not make strong enough was the anchor arm. It was bent a few times already before we left Sweden. And in the swell in the anchorage outside Ascension it got really destroyed in a big wave. The force of the wave was made worse by the fact that the anchor chain had gotten jammed in some cracks in the lava rocks on the bottom, so the length of chain that was acting as a spring was not at all as long as it should be.

So I gave up on fixing this in aluminium. Here in Salvador I located a stainless steel workshop and gave them a drawing of what a new one should look like. I was slightly apprehensive of the result, since the shop was pretty trashy and the man had only two fingers left on one hand. But today he showed up on the dock with what is actually a pretty good looking piece of work. This is now in 6mm stainless instead of 10mm aluminium, so it is much much stronger.

I remember when the tanks were pressure tested in the yard. As the pressure increased there were plates going “Boooink” as they adapted to the pressure. I should have taken that as a sign that something was wrong, but at the time I was thinking that the tanks would never be exposed to that kind of pressure in real life. Now I know it was a sign of possible movement that I should have listened to.

Today the second tank was completed and pressurized. Silence. Nothing moves. Solid. Good. I’m happy. Now I just need to put the interior back together. And wash my bloodstains from the boat after I cut through half of my finger when a drill bit broke earlier today. No worries, it seems I heal quickly these days. I’ll just put on some groovy music to get into a good mood for interior remount. It feels a lot better to put things together than it did tearing them down!

Doesn’t feel any different here in the city centre though. But I wonder what will happen if the police are still on strike when the carnival starts…

And then there’s the heat. The equipment thinks it’s hot too. The old-school HF Ignition unit has had its cover taken off, and my small car heater is used as a fan to try to stop it from overheating:

But anyway, the work feels good enough. Now the tank plates are quite solid. They will stop moving, I am pretty sure of that:

So, half a day more lost before we could actually move in and start to set up equipment. But now we’re so close! The material is on deck, the boat is in position, the power cables routed and everything! I think we can actually get started today…

By the way, as you can probably see, it is hot. Very hot. Even those who are native are complaining!!

Now about half of the interior is completely dismounted and the boat is a complete mess. It took longer than I thought to do due to the massive heat. I simply had to go out and cool down pretty often. And now I am in a bit of a depression because I keep thinking about how this time really should have been spent fixing all the small details of the boat that I want to perfect, not tearing down stuff to make structural repairs. But that’s life…

Yesterday we went hunting for materials. Three different major aluminium outlets. The last one did have good 25mm L-profiles, which is what I want to use as stiffeners on the tanks. They had no idea what alloy it was, though. So we took a small test piece, did a bit of welding on it in Roberto (The welders) shop. And now I am testing it in concentrated salt water to make sure it is OK, and not some 3000 series aluminium that will corrode instantly…

Notice my new favourite tool: A cut off kitchen knife. Hard, thin and flexible. Perfect for getting in the glued joints and cutting them apart. Still hard work, even if the joints are heated with hot air gun. Sweat sweat sweat.

So far I only had to saw one wall panel apart. There were some spots where the Estonian builders had actually followed instructions and not glued everything together. And actually, one joint where there was glue despite it wasn’t supposed to be there. But they had glued before removing the protective film on the panels, so the glue didn’t stick at all. Good for me!

You can see the tank plating in the image. This plate is about 800x800mm, which is too large as I have now learned.

You can also see the first temporary fix we made at sea outside the Swedish coast in September. Very ugly glueing :-D because the interior was not removed at that time, which made work extremely difficult.

The plan is to put reinforcement stringers on all these plates at about 300mm distance, and re-weld the cracks.

Now we are in the better spot, which is the old marina in front of the city market. Much nicer. There was no room here until now due to a French cruising rally that had booked the whole marina.

It is not so easy to arrange for all the different repairs that I need done here, but I am hopeful. I have gotten an interpretor to work with me to sort out things, hopefully that will help.

We were a bit lucky with our timing, and arrived just the day before one of the bigger events of the year, the “Lavagem do Bomfin”, which is a big religious event starting with a gigantic parade from the city centre up to the Bomfin Cathedral. 2 million people on the streets, lots of music, dancing and of course Capoeira shows. Plenty of photos from the parade are available here.

This is what popped up over the horizon this morning. After a total of 21 days at sea and 7 days at the godforsaken piece of rock that is Ascension Island it is almost close to mind-blowing to enter the city of Salvador Bahia. 3 million people, noise and music everywhere.

I’m actually pretty excited about going to Brazil, I think it will be fun! We are going to Salvador Bahia, with an estimated time of arrival on the 11th of January.

The planning pages on this site are not yet updated, I didn’t have the time. But that will be done in Salvador.

I thought I should do a little writeup of my experiences of what Ascension is like for cruising sailors. There’s not too much of that available on the net. Hopefully people should be able to find this post via search engines…

The Georgetown port harbour is a decent achorage. To the NE of the pier is an area with fixed bouys. These are not available to visitors, who must use their own anchor.The bottom is a mix of loose sand which does not hold anchor very well, and volcanic rock that does hold well.

Outside the pier the swell is sometimes uncomfortable. In Clarence Bay to the NE of the pier you get less swell but longer transports. If arriving at dark, watch out for the floats that mark the underwater pipelines.

The swell makes the beaches difficult to land a dinghy on. It is adviced to use the landing steps on the pier. There are floating mooring ropes extending from the steps, make a loop knot in one of them and tie your dinghy to it.

The Port Office is located on the pier and handles clearance which costs £15. Immigration is handled by the police. An entry permit costs £15 per person. Permits should be applied for in advance, but this rule is not strictly enforced.

You can get diesel and water at the pierhead, but you will have to take it to the boat in cans. It is not possible to moor a yacht to the pier. There is a public toilet at the pier, but both the bar and the hotel have better facilities available that are open around the clock. Fresh water showers are available free of charge at the public swimming pool, which is just 300m from the pier (opposite the fire brigade).

There are two food stores on the island, one in Georgetown and one in the Travellers Hill village at 5 km. The selection is very limited, all supplies are brought in by ship from Cape Town. The only resturant in Georgetown is the hotel. Meals here need to be booked in advance. Credit cards are usually not accepted in stores, and there are no ATMs. You need to bring GBP cash or do a manual withdrawal at the bank.

Georgetown is small. The Police, bank, post office, store, hotel and bar are located within 5 minute walk from the pier. The hotel and bars have limited opening hours, but their premises are not locked so you can hang out and use restrooms etc when they are closed too.

Internet access is only available at the hotel, and is rather pricey but works OK. There is no mobile phone network. Car hire is available from the hotel, but hitchhiking is an alternative if you are only one or two people. Usually the first car you hail will take you.

After a crossing that took much too long we are now on Ascension Island. Remind me never to fail to take ocean currents into account again ;-)

This place has less than 1000 inhabitants, and life centers around the big Air Force base which is jointly operated by the UK and the US. It used to be a large hub for transatlantic cables, but it has been routed around a bit lately so that importance is diminishing. It does not really have a harbour, only a large pier that extends far enough for shallow draft boats to land goods and people. The anchorage is good but a bit windy.

Last night I went with the crew to the beach just north of our anchorage. We are in the nesting season for the big green turtles. These animals grow to 250 kg and live for up to 300 years. They come here to mate and lay their eggs in the sand dunes every year. One had just crawled up across the beach and was busy digging her hole to hatch her eggs. We stood silently in the dark and watched her work from about 3 meters distance.

For me, this experience stood in stark contrast to the last few days of work. There has been a little too much trouble recently for my taste. That there is a constant flow of maintenance tasks on a cruising yacht is something all sailors know. But destiny has not exactly been smiling on the Journeyman the last months. At the same time that a lot of the purchased equipment (Bow thruster, toilet, stove, etc) wants to break down, we had a collision that wrecked a rudder, and now the ballast tanks are acting up.

We did have a ballast tank leak on the first leg of the journey, back in September. That was fixed and things have been OK up until this last leg when a new leak appeared in the other tank. I fixed that leak, after some swearing over the yard workers in Estonia who had very clear instructions to make sure everything in the interior was possible to take apart. And still they glued things together so that I had to saw it to pieces to get it open…

But now it didn’t take very long now for two more leaks to appear, one in each tank. And since I had the interior panels removed now, I suddenly saw what was happening. The welds that are cracking are single side welds, they are quite weak. The sloshing of water inside the tanks as we are sailing makes the tank plates move a little bit with it. This movement is causing the weak welds to crack.

Now fixing this problem is not rocket science at all, but it’s a big operation that will take a few days and requires a fair bit of welding work. I wanted to see if we could get it done here on the island, and were told by the port officials that the only chance to find a welder would be on one of the air force bases.

I started to walk towards the airfield, hoping to hitch a ride along the way since it was quite far. I was happy when the first car that I hailed stopped, and the guy driving it was a long timer on the island who knew most people. He took me straight to the welding people on both the US Air Force and the RAF bases, but none of them were able to offer any assistance. Their equipment is not portable, and they can’t leave work to spend 3-4 days on a private yacht anyway. Plus material availability would likely be a problem.

A fun observation on the way was that the extreme remoteness of this island completely takes away the need for security on the bases. The fences around them are only to keep animals out. All gates are open and unwatched,with only a cattle trap in the way.

So here we are on Ascension, with a plan to sail upwind to St Helena and Capetown, with a boat that sails strong upwind really badly (without the ballast tanks). A shorter trip like this could have worked, but 4000 Nm certainly does not. So the plans will have to be changed. And the place we have downwind that could offer a better possibility to get the tanks fixed is Brazil.

So… Any reader who as advice to offer on where to go in the eastern parts of Brazil, please let me know!

But one day of grieving is enough, so now I will stop, and concentrate on moving forward!

We crossed the equator this morning at 04:14 UTC, at 21° 41.8 minutes West. In keeping with the old naval traditions we had carried out initiation rites for the court of King Neptune the evening before. This included a rope knot test and a courage test of riding the surf behind the boat at full speed. Everybody passed the test and were duly baptized (to the tune of the film music from “Rocky”) in the early morning as we crossed.