Day 1 – Take 2

Natalia Cohen By

So… We’re off…again.

We left Santa Barbara harbour as the sun was setting on our home for the last week.
Although unscheduled, it’s been a good stopover with new insights and unexpected opportunities. The first 18 hours we had mild wind and calm sea conditions as we hugged the shoreline and retraced our steps from a week ago. Pelicans glided past us and it was great to have visual stimulation and a speed gauge by watching the coast.
Everyone was well dosed up with sea sickness pills and patches, except me, so fingers crossed the first week will be more pleasurable than last time for my girls!

Oar

Apart from a couple of hours when the wind direction and current meant we were struggling to make any progress (so we put out our anchor to avoid drifting backwards), all went smoothly.
That was until the night fell and whilst moving through the inky water, we found our speed suddenly plummet from 1.7 knots to 0.3! From nowhere we found ourselves in a ‘sea’ of kelp. The seaweed was long and thick and as it wrapped around our rudder and snaked up on our oars it was like a giant octopus/sea creature reaching out to cover Doris. The weight of the stuff was incredible and it was like trying to row in quick sand, where you feel as every move is getting you deeper intertwined. Patience and persistence got us through our small adventure for Day 1 and served to remind us that we have so much more to experience and to be prepared for anything that may come our way over the coming months… x

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8 Comments

  1. good .luck lfull steam ahead rain in London cold

  2. Meg says:

    Brilliant photo ladies!! Love xxx

  3. Simon TY says:

    You seem to be making unbelievable progress. Dots powering ahead. Two things I would love: a scale on the map, to get some idea of the distances. And reset the Miles Travelled clock. Seaweed, people pay good money for that. And Kelp is good if you run out of loo paper

    • I copy and paste the position coordinates from “Where’s Doris” into the search box in Google earth which then plots the position. I then save it and use the ruler to display the distances in a selection of measurements. Google earth can save the route and you can check distances covered and remaining at any time.

  4. Karl says:

    Great progress so far. You should reach past your previous most west progress by tonight. Nice course and speed!

    And now with your restart, you will have a faster time record!

    Hoping for smooth and westerly breezes,
    kbe

  5. Tor says:

    Yay, off again and I’m so glad you have a bird book now. Love and strength for you all xx

  6. El says:

    We are all behind you girls!! Now we just need that wind behind you too and you’re laughing! Love you to bits Natty Noodles xxx

  7. Karl says:

    New PR for # of miles made good! 33.2 Nm. I hope that means decent conditions and better to come ahead.

    Please let us know the wind and surface conditions.

    Your leaving behind an important landmark and dividing line for weather and animal species for us west coasters. You are just about to get off the continental shelf again and next stop may be the plastic garbage patches. Hopefully not as bad as the kelp patches for your westerly progress. Nice course and speed on your last GPS point!

    Steady on,
    kbe

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