ChristineKling
Veteran Member
We're currently anchored off St. Anne in Martinique in the Caribbean. We've covered more than 5,000 miles since we left Greece around Nov. 1, so it feels good to just take it easy and enjoy the lovely Caribbean weather. And as on board cook, I'm also enjoying the Brie and baguette lifestyle.
The crossing from the Canary Islands on our 78-foot aluminum boat with no active stabilizers, only paravanes, was rolly, but not not that much worse than it would have been going downwind in the trades on a sailboat. Wayne and I did almost all of our watches at the skybridge helm, which probably did make the roll a bit worse, but the views were best up there. Amazingly one night, I had a flying fish land next to my helm chair on the fly bridge. He was quite the high flyer.
We did our engine room checks about every 2 hours, and the Gardner performed flawlessly. The only breakage we had was a stainless shackle at the top of the port paravane pole. We didn't loose the fish because we had the second retrieval line, but we did have 11 meters of Dyneema trailing aft for a bit and it wasn't until we had brought it aboard that I thought about it getting into the prop. Fortunately, the pole held it outboard and Dyneema floats. Wayne was able to tie a bowline loop in the line and with the help of the boathook, he got it looped over the top of the A-frame boom and we were back to two paravanes in the water. Our worst problem was the Sargasso weed snagging and fouling the lines.
Here are the stats from the trip:
Total Passage Distance, Las Palmas Gran Canarias to St. Anne Martinique: 2718 nm / 3128 miles / 5034 km
Total Elapsed Crossing Time: 13 days 23 hours
Average wind speed & direction: 19kts @ 160 degrees to boat (almost behind)
Average seas: 0.8M surface waves + 3M Swell @ 165 degrees to boat
Overall Average boat SoG Speed over Ground: 8.1 kts/hr / 9.3 MPH / 15 Km/Hr
Average NM per 24 hour day: 195 nm
Total Diesel Fuel consumed: 5072 L / 1340 USG / 1116 Imp. Gals
Fuel Consumption @ 8.1 kts: 1.87 L/NM 0.49 USG/NM 2.03 NM/USG
Gardner engine average RPM on passage: 1448 RPM
Average Exhaust Gas Temperature EGT: 335 C / 635 F
If you would like to know more and see some photos and videos, here's a link to the blog post.
https://mobius.world/taxing-mbius-update-jan-1-15-2023/