So some of you may have heard of this phenomenon? Under the right conditions, when the sun sets (or rises), just as it disappears over the horizon, there is sometimes seen a green flash of light which lasts a couple of seconds. We are sure we have seen a few of these now and Bequia was a great place to observe it. I have been trying to capture it on camera for a while with not much success, but this time I think I might just have got it. Using our Nikon camera I took a fast sequence of shots as the sun set over the horizon
Sequence of photos taken as sun setZoomed in! Ok its blurred, but can you see green????
So why do we get a green flash? Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the subject …
Green flash occurs because the atmosphere causes the light from the Sun to separate, or refract, into different frequencies. Green flashes are enhanced by mirages, which increase refraction. A green flash is more likely to be seen in stable, clear air, when more of the light from the setting sun reaches the observer without being scattered. One might expect to see a blue flash, since blue light is refracted most of all and the blue component of the sun’s light is therefore the last to disappear below the horizon, but the blue is preferentially scattered out of the line of sight, and the remaining light ends up appearing green.
So there you go, I will keep trying to capture this amazing phenomenon!
So you never know who you are going to meet when you arrive at a new anchorage? We pulled up a few days ago in Anse Mitan, just near Fort de France in Martinique and dropped our anchor right next to a boat called “Sans Souci”, flying the Netherlands flag . We waved to each other in greeting. A little while later, they popped over to see us, and asked us if we would consider being interviewed for their YouTube channel “Boatlife is best”. On their channel, they interview fellow sailors about their lives onboard boats. We said we would love to! So the following day Jessica came over with all her equipment and we did the interview. Jessica had the video edited and online within a couple of days. Very efficient!
Hope you enjoy watching it!
Please consider supporting Jessica by subscribing to her channel and watching some of the other great videos she has produced so far. Some really interesting characters and you get a feel for why people want to be part of the boating life.
Quite a few people have asked us to show them pictures of Azimuth and what she looks like inside. We thought we would go one better and post a little video tour of the boat whilst sat at anchor in beautiful Martinique. Enjoy!
Watch the video tour of Azimuth
For those of you that want a little more detail here are some of the specifications of the boat:
One of my fathers favourite authors was Tolkein, so forgive me as I start my eulogy adapting Bilbo Baggins’ scene where he starts to write his book in The Lord of the Rings.
Now where to begin? Ah yes ….
Concerning my Father
Rob Pearce had been living and working in the Shire of Nottingham for many years.
Quite content to sit in his shed and ignore the growing list of jobs created by my mother.
Radcliffe-on-Trent, being after all, full of strange people beyond count. My fathers shed must have seemed a little oasis of peace and quiet apart from the occasional sound of power tools.
Infact it has been remarked by some that my fathers only real passion was for the fettling of wood. A rather unfair observation … as during his life he had also developed a keen interest in the drinking of ales and the smoking of pipes. But where his heart truly lay was in the love of his wife, his family and his friends.
Today of all days, it is bought home to me it is no bad thing to celebrate a wonderful life!
What a life well lived….
I have so many fond memories of my dad it is hard to know where to begin. He touched my life is so many ways.
We both shared a passion for the outdoors. My childhood memories of our family holidays to the Isle of Mull always featured my Dad and I pouring over the geological memoirs and maps of that glorious Isle and planning our sorties to go and seek out its treasures of sapphires, agates, garnets and other exotic minerals. Its true … sometimes we even found some! But what we mostly got was to share long sun soaked days together walking through magnificent scenery and huge vistas, fighting off swarms of midges, negotiating peat bogs, scrambling along sea shores and romping cliff side paths whilst avoiding the mountain goats. Those are the experiences I hold responsible for my life long passion for the outdoors all inspired by dad.
Dad was such a strong and guiding force in my early years. In everything I did, he was there to encourage me, console me when things didn’t work out and more than anything praise me when things did go well.
We moved into 19 Lorne Grove when I was 6. The house needed a good deal of work, and it did take mum and Dad many years to mould the place to their will. But I can remember those days of helping dad strip tens of layers of old wallpaper and him showing me all the skills and tools I would eventually go on to need myself doing up my own homes and boats. I have him to thank for that practicality. It never stopped through my whole life. Dad always took a keen interest in all of my DIY projects. He lent me tools from his extensive collection (some of which I may not have returned yet … sorry dad), and always wanted to help in any way he could. More recently, he loved to talk about our boat and all the projects I was doing to get her shipshape. His woodworking skills were put to good use crafting us a beautiful teak table, the centre piece of our boat saloon as well as many other items he made for us. Sorry mum … I know that these distractions meant that he didn’t get on with the things on your list!
My dad really took to being a grandfather. He liked to be called Pops and never was a man prouder than he of all his grandchildren. I know he took great joy from watching them grow up and wanted to be a part of their lives. Dad was a godsend for Ailsa and I as we struggled with managing jobs and bringing up a young family. My Dad would come over to our house in West Bridgford, making full use of his free bus pass, of which he was very proud, once or twice a week, and would be there to greet our three boys as they got home from school. He would then proceed to cook up a feast always featuring a mountain of broccoli (the only vegetable that was mutually agreeable to our boys) and a variety of delicious meals which he had concocted based on trail and experimentation. These were burgers, chicken nuggets and his infamous fish cakes. Note though that none of these items would be shop bought from the freezer section. Each was freshly and lovingly prepared from scratch. Even Vincent, arguably the fussiest eater of then all would grudgingly agree that pops could cook a fine meal! And I know the boys loved having him around at the end of the school day.The bonus was that when we got home from work, there was always some food left for Ailsa and I, especially broccoli. Thanks Dad!
Some of you may know that Ailsa and I have a passion for sailing. We bought our first yacht, Edelweiss, in 2014, and we had to sail her from Eastbourne to her new home in Portishead. Our boys have never been quite as enthusiastic about sailing as us, but grudgingly they joined us on that trip. About halfway, Ailsa was called away for an emergency at work. Vinnie seized the moment, and took this as an opportunity to jump ship too. That left just myself, Ethan and Caleb the task of getting Edelweiss the 300 or so miles round to Portishead. I needed some help as I was very new to skippering at that point. My Dad came to the rescue. At a moments notice, he dropped everything, jumped on a train and joined us within a few hours. That was so typical of my Dad, couldn’t do enough to help. We had a great laugh on that trip. We didn’t see much of the boys, they hid in their cabins most of the time, but Dad and I sat in the cockpit together, talked and watched the world go by. He of course loved the birdlife at sea. I know he was quite frustrated by sailing though. He kept suggesting that I should install twin 200 horse power engines on the back of the boat. 5 Knots just didn’t cut it! He stuck at the trip all the way, although I could see he was finding it hard work. We rounded lands end together at dawn and had a really difficult sail in tough conditions up to Padstow. I could see the crew were all struggling, and I was starting to anticipate possible mutiny. We were all relieved to get in to port and get to the chippie before it shut. I was beginning to wonder whether my Dad was really cut out for a life at sea? My doubts were confirmed when Ailsa came down to take over from Dad for the last leg. She arrived in the car at around midnight. My dad literally lept off the boat, ran to the car, told Ailsa to leave it running, got in the drivers seat, a quick goodbye and he was off in a cloud of dust! He never admitted it to me, but I know that he had found that trip hard work. But that was my Dad, he would have done anything to help me whenever I asked.
Dad, I still cant believe that you have gone. Taken before your time. I will never forget you dad, and I know your memory will live on within everyone of you here today whose lives he has touched.
Thanks to Sally Williams from St Mary’s in Radcliffe for putting together this video.
The standing rigging on Azimuth was about 15 years old. This is all the stainless steel wires that hold the mast up and take the strain when she is sailing and heeled hard over. We always had it in the back of our minds that this rigging would probably be need to be replaced before we set off, but that always felt like a long way off and so we put it off! We started talking to boat insurers late last year (2021) about the boat and our planned passage across the Atlantic in 2022. It was a good job we did, as all of them pointed out that the standing rigging was now past its sell by date and needed to be replaced, and by the way they wouldn’t insure us until it was done. That kind of forced our hand then!
Getting the rigging changed is easy on a small boat. You just drop the mast, change the wires and off you go. This is not the case for Azimuth. She’s a big old girl, and the rigging is very heavy duty, some would say over engineered. But then, that’s a good thing right? … until you decide to get the rigging changed, then you realise the cost and the time its going to take!
There are quite a few companies that will change your standing for you. They are all congregated on the south coast of the UK. No good when you need your boat to live on and your son is at college in Bristol. Fortunately, there is a great rigger based in Cardiff Bay, about 20 miles from Portishead by sea, close enough for us to get to relatively easily to have the work done.
The whole process took about 6 weeks, and man it was hard work! My advise when buying a boat is never get one with a painted mast. It took me at least a month to patch the paint. Sanding, undercoat, primer and top coat. 6 coats in all on your hands and knees on a windswept crane dock…. hopefully never again!
I tried to capture the moments in video. This video shows we are no good at filming or editing! Sorry if it makes you feel a bit ill!
Sailing last summer was a wonderful experience! It is hard to describe what it feels like to have the freedom to roam wherever you want without time pressures and free from the other burdens of life. We think we did the Western Isles of Scotland and the West Coast of Ireland justice, and we gained a lot of sailing experience, as well as some of the skills required to live full time onboard a boat away from port. Read about our trip summer here
Azimuth is a great boat, but like every boat, stuff breaks! One of the purposes of taking a long cruise last summer was to test out some of the changes in equipment that we had already made in the previous two years. Similarly, we wanted to find any problems, so that we could fix these over the winter in time for us leaving this summer for blue waters.
Well, there was plenty of stuff that broke! These are some of the major things:
Gas Oven
An oven is something you hope you can rely on. Whilst we were in Scotland, the gas started to play up. Basically we would turn the gas on and light it to be presented with a flame thrower! The gas bottles on Azimuth sit in the anchor locker. This is a pretty inhospitable place, right at the front of the boat, continually soaked by seawater. It turns out that the regulator that sits on top of the gas bottle really does not like this salt water environment. Its been a constant source of problems over the years. This time though was a problem we had not seen before. The regulator basically stopped doing its job, and released the full pressure of the gas to the cooker. Hence the flame thrower effect! Even scarier was lighting the oven. It was a fateful day somewhere on the west coast of Ireland, that we decided having gas on board Azimuth was no longer for us. Ailsa had prepared a wonderful loaf of bread, and went to light the oven to bake it. The oven erupted in to a mass of flame. Shutting the door quickly, flames were shooting out of the sides of the oven door! Luckily we have a solenoid operated by a switch right next to the oven that disables the gas at the bottle, so turning that off saved the day, otherwise things might have got significantly worse.
So it would have been an easy fix to get the oven working again. Just replace the regulator…. We have tons of spares onboard, but the law seems to be that however many spares you have…. you never have the part you need. We hunted for a new regulator all the way down the West coast of Ireland. There was not a single red propane regulator for sale anywhere! Apparently covid had led to a general shortage of things like that. We had plenty of food onboard, but no way to cook it!
Microwave to the rescue. We had to get creative, and download lots of recipes for microwaves. Actually its surprising how much stuff you can cook in a microwave with a bit of experimentation. After a month though of reheating food in tins, its starts to wear a little thin.
The Solution?
We have decided having gas onboard is not for us. Despite the experience of nearly blowing ourselves up several times this summer, there are some other things about gas we don’t like. Gas is a fossil fuel, so we want to do our bit to reduce our environmental impact and stop using it. Getting gas bottles around the world is notoriously difficult. We have read plenty of forums and watched videos from other people sailing the world, and the difficulties that they have sourcing gas. All the fittings for bottles are different from continent to continent, never mind trying to find gas in remote places.
A year ago, we upgraded the electrics on Azimuth, and changed to Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. Life with Lithium batteries is sweet. We have solar and wind power onboard to charge the batteries, and we have enough renewable power to run pretty much all our fridges / freezer and other electronics onboard. We have also installed an inverter. This allows us to run our AC devices from the Lithium battery bank, such as the microwave, Ailsa’s hairdryer (very important, and this is how I justified the cost of the inverter!) and other stuff like laptops, kettle etc. Taking this one step further then, this winter we have removed the gas oven and replaced it with an electric induction hob, and mini electric oven mounted in a custom built housing.
New oven installedOld oven waiting to departOut with the old, in with the new…
So far we are pretty pleased with the new oven. It took some getting used to cooking on an induction hob. However the electric oven is a great success, and much better than the old gas one. Time will tell whether this is a practical alternative to gas onboard, we hope so!
Outboard Engine
We all take our cars for granted these days. Easy to jump in the car to do your shopping, or visit friends. Well having a decent dinghy and an outboard engine is the equivalent of your car when you live on a floating home. Never was this bought home to us than our trip last summer! We had invested in a brand new (to us anyway) dinghy bought from a friend in the marina. That was a vast improvement on our ageing inflatable dinghy. The new dinghy has an aluminium hull that makes it go through the water much better (and potentially faster) than the old one. That given, whilst we were enjoying the new dinghy, we were still stuck with our old 2.5 horse power Tohatsu two stroke outboard. A workhorse for sure that had been fairly reliable with a good deal of maintenance thrown in for good measure. However, 6 weeks in to the trip, and the old workhorse decided it had had enough and no amount of stripping down and rebuilding would coax it back to life! That made our lives a lot harder. Basically we had to row everywhere. Great for fitness, but several times we found ourselves stuck onboard looking at a beach, pub or shop in the far distance from an anchorage in the knowledge that it was too far to row, or the simply too difficult due to weather or tidal streams.
The solution?
Well its obvious isn’t it? Get a new better engine! A visit to the boat show in Southampton last September allowed us to do the research and identify the one we wanted, and we managed to secure the last one in the UK of our chosen one.
Looking forward to trying this out soon. Electric start and everything!
More to come …
This post is just a small flavour of what’s going on at the moment.
We wanted to say a huge thankyou to our friends Lynne and Geoff and particularly Lynne for her gift to us of a very special painting of Azimuth that she has given to us. We went to dinner at their house the other night for the “grand unveiling”!
We are thrilled with the picture. Lynne is a very talented artist and we think she has caught the essence of Azimuth in this scene inspired by the picture appearing of the front page of our website. The picture will have pride of place in the boat and we shall post another picture when it is hung.
Again, many thanks to Lynne for this special present!
Watch the video roundup of our family trip sailing in Croatia in the summer of 2017. We had a weeks cruise out of Dubrovnik with Sunsail, to explore the Islands in the National Park.
