Sunday, October 25, 2009
OOPPS...... forgot about my blog.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Back Home in St. Thomas
I have made it back to St. Thomas. 22 hours of travel from Europe. Palma de Mallorca to Barcelona, Spain to Atlanta, GA and finally back in St. Thomas, VI. I'm beat and we have guests checking into the villa today. I have put another video up in my gallery from the voyage between the Azores and Palma de Mallorca. You can see all my videos at http://gallery.me.com/threepalmsvilla. Unfortunatley, I had to come back before we completed the voyage. After "stranded" almost 2 weeks in Palma it was time for me to come home. Palma was great and i'm going to post more pictures and videos soon. We had several mechanical problems and everything is fixed now. Irishman with Harold and the rest of the crew have finally left and now heading towards Trieste, Italy instead of Croatia. I had to look on the map but it's actually really close to Croatia. It's right up there by Venice. Not sure why the owner changed his mind, just got a quick email from Harold yesterday. That's it for now. More later.....
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Update From Palma, Mallorca.
Greetings All.
We arrived here in Palma last Tuesday, June 23rd. We have had no or very poor internet here at the Marina, so I apologize about not getting an update out. We had a mechanical problem with our engine exhaust that had to be taken care of and of course it has taken must longer than we thought. We are finally getting ready to leave here on the last leg of our journey. This island of Mallorca off the coast of Spain is beautiful. We rented a couple of cars and toured part of the western coastline. I have posted a few picutres of some our hot spots.
Harold surprised us with tickets to a musical last night. "Come Fly with Me" It was described as "combining the legendary music of Frank Sinatra with the visual spectacle of Cirque du Soliel. It was really great. http://www.comeflywithme.com/eng/show/thetheatre.html.
I should have a video posted tomorrow highlighting our sail from the Azores to Palma.
Our trip from here on to Croatia should only take us about 6 days....
Spencer
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Spencer Update 6/20 ...
Position:
36 degrees 09 minutes North
07 degrees 39 minutes West
Approx. 100 west of The Strait of Gibraltar
Hello All:
All is well here on Irishman...The smells coming out of the galley have us all waiting in anticipation for dinner. It's crazy how fast things can change out here. Less than 48 hours ago we had our foul weather gear on and Tropical storm force winds. Today we are laying out on the deck sun tanning.
We are about 100 miles west of the Strait of Gibraltar. Wind and seas have almost totally died and we are motor sailing at around 9 knots. During our rough conditions on Thursday our engine starting making some strange noises. Kind of like it was struggling. Yesterday it actually did die on us a couple of times. We have figured out that we obtained some very dirty fuel in the Azores. We have filters that trap anything so it won't get into the engine but these filters are becoming clogged much faster than normal causing fuel not to flow to the engine. The rough conditions have probably stirred up all the junk that usually settles to the bottom of the tanks. Hopefully as long as we keep these filters clean we should be fine.
We are eating very well out here with our Italian chef Stefano. Last night was had roasted chicken and potatoes. Lunch today was stuffed portbello mushrooms and a nice salad. Of course Harold and I have plenty of hot sauce on board that we put on almost everything.... usually without insulting the chef.
The ship traffic has increased tremendously as we approach the Strait of Gibraltar. Tonight is going to be a busy night watching the radar and avoiding these hudge cargo ships.
For our Trivia question on 6/17/09, the winner is Michael Roach in Arizona that correctly defined the "Horse Lattitudes". Rob in St. Thomas was disqualified for being way smarter than anybody else I know..... Just kidding ... Rob, you win a T-shirt as well. As for Michael Roach, I think I still have a St. Louis Cardinals World Series Championship shirt in my closet for you!!!
Trivia Question #2:
The northern county of Prekmura in Croatia is famous or kown for what?
That's all for now on Irishman.......
Spencer
Friday, June 19, 2009
Spencer Update 6/18 ... Three Sheets to the Wind!
6:00pm position:
36 deg. 56 min. North,
15 deg. 27 min. west
Is was nice to get some emails out here. Thank you very much.
10:00am
This morning wind and seas started increasing. Mid day we had gusts at around 30 mph and seas at 6 to 8 feet. Last night before dark we had reefed or shortened our mainsail down about 20%. Just now we took down the forwad most sail, the big jib and and put up the smaller "stay sail" so we wouldn't be over powered.
1:45pm
Winds gusting to 36 mph. We're plowijng thru the seas which are building- 8 to 10 feet. It's getting pretty difficult to move around
the boat.
3:00pm
We have reefed the mainsail down to about 50% and dropped the mizzen sail (one in the back). Wind and seas continuing to build.
4:00pm
Winds are up to 42 knots or over 50 mph. We have dropped the forward staysail and are sailing with double reefed mainsail alone.
4:30
It can't get too much worse than this.... We have lightning and winds up to 60 mph. Crazy how it can go from beautiful to tropical storm force winds in less than 24 hours.
5:00 pm
Looks like the worst is over... Everybody is a little wet an cold but in a smaller more exposed boat it could of been muuch worse.
What a crazy day.....
Stefano made some butternut squash soup for dinner with fresh baked bread. We are all a little cold and wet. It was very good. (not quite as good as Victoria's though!)
Then to Victoria on Friday 6/19/09:
It was a crazy day yesterday..... And then on top of all that in the middle of the night our engine died as the winds were heading us and dying. We lost several hours with the engine down and trying to figure things out. Looks like we probably got bad fuel in the Azores and it's clogging up the filters. All is well this morning as I write this (Friday, 6/19/09).
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Horse Latitudes
The term horse latitudes supposedly originates from the days when Spanish sailing vessels transported horses to the West Indies. Ships would often become becalmed in mid-ocean in this latitude, thus severely prolonging the voyage; the resulting water shortages would make it necessary for crews to throw their horses overboard.
On the other hand, the term might be derived from the "dead horse"ritual, a practice in which the seaman would parade a straw-stuffed effigy of a horse around the deck before throwing it overboard. Seamen were often paid partly in advance before a long voyage (see Beating a dead horse),and the "dead horse" was this period of time (usually a month or two). The ceremony was to celebrate having worked off the "dead horse" debt. As European west bound shipping would reach the subtropics at about the time the "dead horse" was worked off, the region became associated with the ceremony.
I've also edited the Hurricane Spencer Tracking Chart ...
