Mrs. Arpex

Cutucando onça

Gale force

Extrato do Diário pessoal

Ocean Pacífico
Posição: 40.54'S / 090.45'W
Data: 24/12/2003

Acordamos com o vento forte bombando. A frente fria que esperávamos finalmente entrou com força. Ventos de 30-35 nós fazem a velejada ficar interessante. Durante a tarde apareceram CB's que descarregam vento e chuva com força extraordinária. Em minha vigília da tarde um CB decarrega rajadas acima de 55 nós. É incrível! Tirei algumas fotos durante a tempestade, mas duvído que representem bem a força descomunal dos elementos. É para ver e experimentar isto que vim até aqui. Ao menos volto para casa satisfeito com isto. Nestas circunstâncias a solidez e o peso do barco se tornam positivos porque nos sentimos seguros, e a vida na cabine prossegue normalmente.

Durante a vigília porém o frio pelo vento e a água é forte. Vários overriders nos encharcam regularmente e por vezes enchem o cockpit. Uma preocupação é manter o barco sempre fechado, pois se um overrider encher o cockpit e esvaziar para dentro do barco, podemos afundar em poucos minutos.

No final do dia percebo um shroud quebrado à barlavento. Com o tempo o arame vai se desfazendo e temos que fazer um gibe para retirar a pressão deste lado do mastro.

Agora vamos direto para Norte e Oeste! Estamos voltando. Fico com a moral arrasada.

Gale for Christmas

From the Ship's Log Boook:

Wednesday, 24th. December 2003 - 26th. day on sea
Passage from Easter Island to Chile

Position 40.54'S / 090.45'W
Log: 1527nm
Wind: S/30-35kts
Sea Temp: 13deg.

All day: near gale - gale force winds. Seas troughing to 8m, several overriders
12:00: Line squalls produce winds >50 kts
20:00 During deck check, lower fore st'bd shroud damage identified. Genoa taken in + main opened to relieve pressure on shroud.
Main #3
Genoa 1/5
Jib

Travessia do Atlântico Norte

Got time on a lazy sunday? Watch how the french do it.

Wilson Simonal with Sara Vaughn

Nice recording from 1970, TV Tupi.

Sailing into the Roaring Forties - SEPT

As we left Easter Island, we set a course almost true south. One needs to venture into the high southern latitudes to reach the favorable West winds, that take one back to the South American continent.

As latitude increases, the temperature drops and the wind gets denser. Cold air is heavier than warm air, and that makes a huge difference when sailing. Reefing for the night became a routine. Temperatures during night-watches would drop to about 5 Degrees C..

We rigged the staysail and used only a small part on the genoa on the roller furler. Despite the overall weak wind pattern due to El Ninho, we now encountered cold winds of around 30 knots with certain regularity.

It was awsome to see the Great Pacific Rollers comming in. Big massive wavetrains, which would reach 5-6 meters were common. We did meet higher waves than this too, though.

We spent long time on deck studying the clouds waves, barometer. Temperatures of air and water were consulted. We did not dispose of modern, sophisticated equipment for weather forecast, weatehrfax, internet or such. Therefore we relied on observing and recording. Routing Maps gave us statistical storm figures, which proved accurate. I had great pleasure learning all these things. I was still waiting for a real storm though.

One needs to be careful with what one whishes - It may become real.

Traditional brazilian sailboats

Brazilian workboats: They all have a very rugged construction in common.

Saveiro

Working sailboats are almost extinct these days. But a good number of small sailboats still earns its keeper's living, by going out to sea every day. They catch fish and carry cargo. In the Northeast Jagadas are still common. And the state of Maranhão has many small sailing boats on the sea and rivers.

Saveiros are in between the common brazilian imaginary figures. Often described on paintings and in songs. This painting is by an artist called Silvio Costa.

Most saveiros are now used for turist transport.

A traditional working saveiro, sailing on the coast of Rio de Janeiro in the 1940'ies. I took the picture form an image bank.

Saveiros - "É doce morrer no mar" de Dorival Caymmi

The traditional saveiros, working sailboats of the State of Bahia, were used abundatly making trade on Brazil's coasline, often sailing up the large rivers. They went into brazilian collective imaginary through the beatyfull songs of the musical geniuses from Bahia, like Dorival Caymmi. Dorival has sung amany songs about the sea and the men that live and die from the sea.

The video is a beautyfull documentary of the "Puxada de Arrastão". The community brings the big net in. Fish was abundant, and whoever helped to pull the net in could get a share of fish. Even passers by, as long as they pulled the rope into the rigth direction, to the benefit of all comunity.

Os saveiros entraram para o imaginário brasileiro com as músicas dos mestres da Bahia, como Dorival Caymmi. Suas canções sobre os homens e a vida do mar, conquistaram o Brasil em uma época que se formava a unidade e o orgulho da nação. A época próxima à primeira conquista do campeonato mundial de futebol.

Carinhoso - João Gilberto

João Gilberto, the musical genious that created the Bossa Nova rhythm together with Tom Jobim in the 1950'ies. A beautyfull song by Pixuinguinha.

In his own words:

"You must not injure silence, for it is sacred."

João Gilberto's silence is never broken. Gently and simply he places his voice atop the fragile silence. The silence holds.

From his site:

João Gilberto's voice is weightless, its depth infinite; it is haunting, haunted, insular. He hears as we do not, hears things we do not. Not only things outside our awareness (the construction equipment on the next street, the air conditioner in the studio)--but the possibility of sounds we cannot imagine. And he teaches us the sound of stillness."

Chocolate

Orquídea com um delicioso aroma de chocolate.

Fregatta

Também chamadas de tesouras, pelo formato do rabo. Aqui a ave está de rabo fechado, mas geralmente tem duas pontas como uma tesoura.

Arpex construction

Yes, I do try to actually work on the construction. Allthough I rarely manage, since we keep takling about the next steps and discuss options. Here I am screwing on a bulkhead. I think it is Nr. 6.

Every time I do learn a lot. Today, I learned about the difficulties of the strongback alignment. We finally managed to obtain a true, straigt and even line and strongback. On this, we have installed a few bulkheads today.

They will all be mounted, the soilid wood markings will be made. Then all bulkheads will be taken off again, to cut the inside panels off the plywood.

The plywood is pine. It will not be glued with epoxi, but with a water-proof glue called Cascofen. The side panels will be Virola plywood, which is compatible with epoxi.

Note the straight line in the middle. The bulkheads are screwed to the transversal blocks.

Cronograma do Arpex

I have allways considered thorough planning a fundamental part of the construction process. Unfortunately reality has challenged my timeline planning until now. It is hard to admit it. But we are trying to put things back on track. Strongback alignment and sorting out the construction method, which was not quite well sorted out in the plans, has taken a long time.

Preparei um cronograma detalhado para todas as etapas de construção do barco. O cronograma está segmentado em 6 eventos. Infelizmente a realidade insiste em desmentir o meu planejamento.

Fizemos hoje um check, nas etapas iniciais. Deveríamos estar no Evento Nr. 1 que seria a viragem do casco principal, depois de 4 semanas. Porém, ainda estamos montando as cavernas no picadeiro. Um planejamento minucioso e realista é fundamenal. Mas há de se admitir que as coisas podem andar diferentes.

Em nosso caso o alinhamento do picadeiro tem tomado mais tempo que o planejado. Porém, o alinhamento é fundamental para se obter um casco fiel às linhas desenhadas. E nesse ponto estamos indo bem. Conto com uma curva ascendente de aprendizado, e que a velocidade de construção agora ande em nosso favor.

Diariamente

Tradicional Bahia

Tradicional embarcação da Bahia. Bela construção, não? Veja o mastro.

Refazenda

Sentindo falta de música.

Claro!

You've been missing some music to go with, don't you?

Me too.

Dux

Sailing on the all carbon CM 60 DUX, on the Ilhabela Sailing week. She is the same model as used on the 1999 VOR. The spi set allright, despite the not so favourable picture. Moments later we were sailing at 18knots. If you click on the picture you'll notice the brief moment of tension. Competitive sailing,... but not really. Dux had the blue band usually garanteed, but a penalised rating made wins tough to achieve. Only in strong winds. Which are not quite so common.

Semana de Vela na Ilhabela, velejando no DUX. Um belíssimo veleiro feito todo em carbono.

Catamaran no Maranhão

Note how the cat travelles relatively easily through the steep breaking waves. I have posted pictures of the cat before on this blog.
This is a view down towards the port of Alcantara. I took this picture when I travelled by car to São Luiz, in the State of Maranhão, with my brother. A long and interesting trip. We crossed the river from São Luiz to the ancient town of Alcantara with exactly the same catamaran as seen in the video. Just we didn't have all these people with us.

Canoes from the Amazon

A double exposure composition with a canoe from the Amazon an a traditional workboat in construction.

Arpex saturday

A dummy, built to get the interior dymensions a bit better into perspective.

Why would someone draw the toilet arrangement right in the middle of the cabin???I have no idea. But not having these things sorted out, causes many problems. Details take lots of time.

We are still discussing details of the construction. I'm not too happy about that.

Dedo de Deus

We spent the Easter Holiday in Teresópolis, in the mountains, 1 hour from Rio. Click on the image and you might distinguish the Bay of Guanabara, and even the mountains of Rio. The interesting peak is called "Dedo de Deus", the "Finger of God". It is a beautyfull scenery, and a phantastic drive through the rainforest.

Aquarela - By Toquinho

Breakfast in South America

Breakfast is the first meal of the day, eaten in the morning. The word derives from the idea of breaking the involuntary fast of sleep

Heavy weather sailing

South Pacific

Wind and Low Pressure Systems

The weather systems in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere are dominated by the Antartic continent. The cold temperatures forms a belt of weather fronts that constantely circle around Antartica.

The surface wind regime has the greatest influence on the climate of the continent. The winds are mostly caused by the radiative cooling of the ice sheet. Cold, very dense air, under the influence of gravity, drains downwards, off the ice-dome, towards the coast. The flow of wind moves slowly at first away from high elevation, accelerating as it moves towards the ocean. These katabatic winds reach a mean speed of up to 40 km per hour.

The cold air then flows northwards away from Antarctica and interacts with warmer air from the ocean and helps form intense low pressure systems or polar cyclones that ride the Southern Ocean. The strong circumpolar westerly winds that blow unimpeded around the mid-latitudes are known to sailers as the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties.

It's also these low pressure systems and polar cyclones that bring unseasonal icy winds, storms and snow to southern Australia.

Low pressure systems, which bring bad weather to the coast of Antarctica, generally come into existence over the Southern Ocean. These lows can add considerable influence to the coastal katabatic winds, producing some of the strongest winds on the planet. Hurricane-force winds (more than 120 km per hour) are common, with maximum gusts of more than 250 km/hr. Blizzards are usually associated with a deep cyclonic depression (or low pressure system) hundreds of kilometres off the coast.

Gales and blizzards are most frequent and severe during winter.

From website: southernexposure - http://www.abc.net.au/storm/exposure/print.htm

From my personal Log Book.

Indonesia

Arpex Ring frames

I'll be with Luiz Fernando in Itaipú tomorrow, to see the construction progress. He needed to reconfigure the strongback. But said that he will have some of the bulkhead templates intalled by tomorrow. So we might get to see some more of Arpex'es face by tomorrow.

During the construction of the Carioca - Arpex model, I already envisioned two strong ring frames that would compose the cabin module of the boat. They will be built and inserted once the hull is constructed over bulkhead templates. They will then give the structure over which the lateral extrusions (leepod) will be built.

And, of course, the ringframes will be the supporting structure for the akas. We have not yet settled the issue of how they will be attached. Luiz Fernando is pleading for a cone-morse attachment, while I still prefer lashings.

Into the Roaring Forties

Into the Roaring Forties!

Anchoring & Corrosions

Portrait of Mrs. Arpex (68cm x 63cm)

During our stay on Easter Island we had several problems with anchoring. Three more severe. On one occasion the ship was nearly lost. I was not on board during this ordeal. On two occasions the anchor broke loose, when the wind freshened up, with me on board with only one more crew.

One was on the first day and one short before departure. The second was more critical. The Captain was on land. The wind freshened up to about 18-20 knots. We started to drift towards menacing rocks, on the south coast of Hanga Roa. Getting the engine started was a lengthy and complex operation.

As soon as I identified that the anchor was not holding, I commanded the second crew to the wheel and went downbelow to begin the sequence to start the engine. After a few nervous minutes the engine came to life, and we were able to hold position. But we still had about 70 meters of heavy chain, and two heavy anchors, dangling underneath, in deep water. Therefore, motoring back to harbour was not recommended. I asked the crew to hold position while I handled the anchor winch. It was hard work.

The rusy chain left bad stains on the jacket of my foul weather gear. I was never able to get rid of the stains. They are still there, as a reminder. And they later inspired me to the production of my series of paintings using iron oxide corrosion on sail canvas. I called the first series "Correntes", which means "Chains" and also "Currents". And later I added the a series of portraits called "Pressão", which means "Pressure".

View of the "Dois Irmãos" Mountains as seen from the Arpoador point. (210cm x 90cm)

El Ninho

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO; commonly referred to as simply El Niño) is a global coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon. The Pacific ocean signatures, El Niño and La Niña are important temperature fluctuations in surface waters of the tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean. The name El Niño, from the Spanish for "the little boy", refers to the Christ child, because the phenomenon is usually noticed around Christmas time in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America. La Niña, similarly, means "the little girl". Their effect on climate in the southern hemisphere is profound. These effects were first described in 1923.

Pascua - Easter Island departure

Goose Neck Barnacle

I decided to continue with the voyage on the last leg, that should take us to Isla Juan Fernandes and back to Chile. I was looking forward to Juan Fernandes, which is another remote island, which only receives a small amount of visitors. The island is mainly known for having been the home to the sailor Alexander Selkirk for four years, which later inspired the novel Robinson Crusoe. The islands lie about 350 miles form the Chilean Coast.

My stay on the island had been phantastic. I had met great people, learned many interesting stories and tales, had adventures and lots of fun. It was an experience I wouldn't want to miss, depite all hardships.

So, I joined the crew on the day of departure. The Captain finally communicated us that Laura, the Canadian girl, would not continue with us. He gave us a long speach, saying that Laura had broken his confidence, that she was not reliable etc.. Despite not being a surprise, the crew had mixed feelings towards the news. Laura had shown a lack of integration with the crew. But one more, now 3, missing crew members would considerabely increase our watch effort. And, afterall, despite differences, we were a crew. And in my point of view we should stick together. I felt sorry.

After giving us this news, the Captain left for a tour on the Island with Laura, to arrange her departure. We were all quite surprised when he returned - with Laura. They had talked things over... and suddenly both had changed their minds. I found that strange. But there was nothing I could do about it anyway.

So we left Easter Island with mixed feelings once again. The crew was devided, and we had a long sail before us, through difficult conditions. During diving in Anakena I had once again inspected the bottom of the hull. The long necked goose barnackles I had found growing on the bottom already in Galapagos, had multiplied and grown to about 5-8cm. They were slowing us down considerably. We were having a El Ninho season, with a feeble wind pattern throughout the cruise. My alert to the Captain was in vain. Our average speed had been staggering 2,5-3 knots until now! We had a long sail in front of us...

In a gentle breeze we were heading South, towards the roaring forties. I sincerely hoped they would roar.

First double hull

Now make your own theories about tri's...

Incubating

These nasty buggers are still holding on... But I carried the bare hull to work...

I whish I had this lovely couple to treat me. Old acquaintances of my "civil-service" time as a paramedic, in Germany. But I actually can't complain.

Sailing Narwal

This is the "Narwal", my brothers boat. A 39ft. cruiser-racer. Nice boat for sailing around the islands of Ilha Grande. Which is where this picture was taken. They released me in the dingi for some foto shots. Standing in the diminuitive inflatable dingi to get a better angle was difficult. The result was nice, though.

Carioca Model

This picture was taken during the construction of the Carioca moodel.
Scale is 1x10.
1 cm of model = 10 cm real.
The model measures 92cm.

Galapagos

Our stay in Galapagos was great. After 11 days on sea with an unknown captain and crew it was releaving to be alone for a short while, to hike and eat fruit. Stretch legs. We learned about the history and geography of the islands, dived and relaxed.

Upon leaving, we prepared the water bunkering operation. It involved buying water and transporting it in several loads, by dingi, to the boat. The captain managed to make a big mess out of the payment. The crew had to pay for it, and the whole buiness seemed somehow manipulated between the Waterman and the captain. It made the crew suspicious, and we had a first argument between crew and captain. This was not a good start.

Seals are abundant on all islands of Galapagos. They are a great threat to dingis. They love hopping in and sunbathe. Try getting them off...

The Blue Footed Boobies did not enjoy our company.

The big turtles of Galapagos.

Tuna fishing is a business - still. Stock of seacucumber is declining rapidely due to Japanese and Corean fishers. And Peruvian, of course.

Roraima Tepui

Catamarãs do Maranhão

Os catamarãs vieram ao Brasil com o Seu Manuel, que veio de Portugal num catamarã que ele construiu. Ta'aroa - se não me engano. Os pescadores quando viram gostaram, e então Seu Manuel ficou aqui, construindo catamarã e sua prole.

O tipo adequa-se perfeitamente à perigosa navegação da região. Altas marés, ondas altas e picadas são comums na travessia do rio para Alcântara.

Foi neste barco que fiz minha primeira velejada num catamarã de porte grande. Foi muito divertido. O movimento e velocidade do barco eram ótimos! O capitão me deixou timonear por alguns minutos. O barco era usado para transporte de turistas na temporada, e para pescar em outras épocas. Uma plataforma perfeita para pescaria.

This was the first cat I sailed on. In São Luiz, Maranhão, North of Brazil. On a river mouth with dangerous navegation. High tides, sadbanks, currents and a steep chop make it a challenging trip.

But the boat handled perfectly with nice movement and good speed. I got the opportunity to steer for a few minutes. It was nice, with a pleasant feeling on the tiller. Not common on catamarans.

Zauberflote

It was good to have this in my extensive CD collection while sailing. Time and calm to enjoy were clear ahead.

Prologue

Lima was a stopover on my way to Equador. I had plenty of miles from my regular flights as business consultor. I booked a Varig flight from Rio, via São Paulo to Lima. After a two day's stay, for a short reconessaince tour, I continued to Equador via Quito, Gayaquil and, finally, Salinas. I would book the return flight depending on date and place of arrival.

During the short stay in Lima I had time to make a visit to some ancient ruins. Old Inca temples from 17 hundreds were built over ruins of more remote civilisations of around 200 a.C.. I thought it should be interesting to see this before venturing to Easter Island. Pyramids and the ever present dust reminded me of Egipt.

In the evening I decided to see a Peruvian movie. "La paloma de papel" proved to be a tragic story around the Peruvian guerrilha war. I came to learn how deep scars this confrontation must have left in the society of Peru. It is a reality completely unknown to us brazilians. Well,... we have our own wars to care about, I guess.

Orongo

Holy stage of the birdman ritual.