Proteus Archives - Sail Element

The S/V Proteus compared to…

Occasionally, we are asked by people who hear that we live on a sailboat…

“Gosh, that sounds really small…!”

“So… how big is it?”

“Can you stand up?”

I can rattle off all the data, but since most people in the world have never been on any sailboat – let alone one specifically 42ft 6inches long – the specific size remains acutely nebulous. But, as a thought experiment, it is kind of fun to think: “Well, how big is it, really!?”

Let’s (completely arbitrarily) compare the S/V Proteus to…

…a whale shark.

The average weight of an adult whale shark is around 20,500lbs (or 9300kg). And the whale shark is one pretty serious creature. If you’re a shark aficionado and want to compare sharks, that’s almost three times the size of the average Great White Shark. If you’d rather stick to the whale side of the whale shark, you’re looking at a weight similar to some of the larger male killer whales (orcas) on record. That pales in comparison to the mass of a typical blue whale that average in the 400,000lbs (181,000kg) range.

So, Proteus weighs about a 20th of the weight of a blue whale. (Good grief, that’s huge.)

…a typical American school bus.

You know, the full-length yellow ones? The regular yellow/orange school bus that pick up kids all across the United States averages around 42ft. Some are longer (up to 45ft) and some states require their school buses to be no more than 41ft. But, in general the typical school bus measures just about the same length as Proteus.

Strangely enough, many of the school buses I saw online had a similar curb weight (empty) to Proteus, as well. Where the two comparisons diverge is the fact that a school bus is merely 100 inches (2.5m) or so: the Hunter Passage 42 is just under twice that width.

…a Honda Element.

Yes, the much critiqued original boxy SUV is almost exactly the same length (depending on the model year) as the beam of S/V Proteus at 14 feet (or 4.26m). And everyone knows what the infamous Element looks like, right? Coincidentally, I used to drive one of these strange people-carriers, and we have had more than a few adventures together all over the eastern United States.

If a Honda Element is too tough to wrap your head around, the S/V Proteus is wider than a highway lane in the USA and UK M-roads (measuring 12 feet, or 3.65m). So you couldn’t very well get her down a road without blocking traffic or having a big “WIDE LOAD” across the back. However, you could lay an elephant down inside: the average African elephant is 14ft.

…a Boeing 747.

Who hasn’t been impressed by the uber-massive Boeing 747’s sitting at the gate!? Well, the only real similarity between a 747 and S/V Proteus is the height of the tail off the ground. Our mast is very close to the same height at about 61 feet (18.6m). Granted, that might be reaching a bit, so instead, let’s compare it to something a little more feasible: a six-story building.

That’s pretty tall, but a six-story building is kinda boring! How about the uprights of an NFL regulation American football goal? Actually, Proteus‘ mast is taller by almost 13 feet (3.9m). It is also taller than the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum, but it is exactly the height of each of the heads (head only: not the rest of the mountain) of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and is only 4 feet shorter than the Sphinx in Giza. And it is exactly the same height as a regulation cricket pitch is long. (Whatever that is…)

…the fastest Olympic swimmer.

Actually, the Proteus‘ cruising speed is just under double the speed of Michael Phelps’ world-record setting 100m freestyle. Indeed. Michael Phelps averaged 4.4 miles per hour. We do pretty well to average 7 knots (8 mph) under full sail and efficiency. If the bottom is really clean, we can get close to 8.5 or more. Though we have pushed it up to 9 or 10 knots in a blow, we don’t like to break things.

And our maximum speed ever recorded was a *blazing* 12 knots over ground… but that was with a massive tidal stream abeam of The Needles at the Isle of Wight. Yeah, laugh if you want…

Okay, so, double the fastest human swimmer in the world, but is there anything that makes a good 7 or 8 knots on a regular basis? Not the human running speed: believe it or not, Usain Bolt busted out 24 knots, which is faster than most power yachts are able to sustain! Incidentally, Usain Bolt is 6ft 4in, which is about the minimum cabin ceiling height.

The closest I could come to 7 or 8 knots was the casual swimming speed of the average dolphin. (They can do much more than this!) It is a bit of a mystery exactly why dolphins love to play with boats, but maybe it is because they see the boats as just big casual dolphins…?

…an apartment in London.

According to the Telegraph, the average apartment in London is about 46 square meters these days. That’s a few feet shy of 500 square feet. Actually, that seems pretty small compared to what I’ve seen – and our own apartment in London – but that’s about the usable size of Proteus‘ interior. It doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but it was one of our deciding factors for moving aboard a boat. The apartment where we lived in central London was not quite 30 square meters: that’s just 320 square feet!

Pack all your stuff, a usable bed, a kitchen, the bathroom, and a place to sit, and you’re having trouble getting around! The Proteus has doubled our living space, given us three rooms, two bathrooms, and a bathtub! And we get a freakin’ awesome backyard… aka: anywhere on Earth.

Stay tuned…

Decisions to change plans…

By: Noah D.

I’m sitting here in Sines, Portugal. It is just after 10am. All the hatches are open and there’s a gentle north-ish breeze. A few minutes ago, two small RIB’s hummed by outside with their crews decked out and loaded up with spearfishing equipment. We spent yesterday afternoon hanging out at a beach bar: it is like something straight out of a spy movie. I don’t think I’ve seen a cloud in about three days. We finally made it to this part of the world.

That being said, not everything happens the way you think. Sometimes it turns out for the absolute best. And by “best” I mean “better than I could have ever planned.”

We will be turning left…

Instead of crossing the Atlantic this summer, we’re going to do the right thing – our insurance company definitely agrees – and stay on this side. We are running up against hurricane season and, rather than cross dodging tropical waves in varying stages of tropical depression/storm development, we might as well put a few more thousand miles under Proteus‘ keel. And that’s where things are going to get interesting…

We, being USA citizens and such, cannot stay in Europe indefinitely. Visas are serious things… even more so for professional travelers. So, we’ll be hanging out in some of the more obscure and (definitely) more exotic sailing locations of the Mediterranean. (A quick search to find out which countries are “non-Schengen” will give you a hint at our itinerary for the summer.)

Will it be hot? Freakin’ hot.

Will it be fun? Probably. And frustrating at times, I’m sure. But, mostly just completely different from our first 9 months aboard. We’ve been sailing in the high-latitudes – we JUST crossed below 40º for the first time! – so our learning curve is starting to reverse itself: “What? The tide difference is less than 2 meters!?” or “So, there are going to be other visiting boats in the marina??” not to mention “What do you mean, I have to put my anchor down in the marina and back into the quay…?” Most of all, I think we’re still getting over sitting on the midnight-to-4am watch without five layers and foul weather gear (and usually a wool blanket over all that)…

See what I mean? This is breaking into a new realm of sailing for us. But it will also be ushering in a new realm of living. We have been “moving the boat” since we left Ipswich. Now we are going to be taking it slow, considering time in terms of weeks rather than days. We will actually spend time in the places we are visiting. I’m ready to have a non-rhythm to my life. Furthermore, we will be stretching our budget to its absolute limits: by doing this, we will be forced to wring a budget meant for two or three more months into six… or seven… or eight.

2015_05.16-4797 — Proteus in Sines, Portugal.

In late-October or November we will be back in this part of the world (i.e.: Iberian Peninsula) preparing to head south for the Canary Islands and Cape Verdes. I think these couple thousand extra miles have come at just the right time.

Since I began traveling years ago I have lived by the mantra, “Whatever happens, it’s going to be good.” I think this is a great time to say it again…

Images of Spain…

We spent ten days in Spain…

Images from Gijon, Ribadeo, Viveiro… all Spain.

The departure of l’Hermione…

On journeys like this, one always tends to happen upon things…

There’s a heap of the usual information on the L’Hermione tall ship website (http://www.hermione2015.com/) but she’s out and about right now… so follow her AIS ping on MarineTraffic.

And, for that matter, follow us, too!

“What we need is here…”

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
~Wendell Berry

Ile-d’Yeu, France

Down blind alleyways, or the place at which the sky and the sea switch…

By: Noah D.

Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to go down dark alleyways? You don’t know what could be lurking behind the next corner!?

So much of cruising like this is made up of coming to terms with the unknown. I don’t care what website you look at for the weather, rarely do they agree and they are often accurate only to +/-5kts of windspeed. “Local conditions may differ.” Indeed.

The closest thing to clairvoyance is the Reed’s Almanac. I will rue the day we get out of its blue and gold reach: a day that is fast approaching with every south-facing passage. Without intending to sound like an advertisement, the Reeds Almanac is the best £64 I’ve spent in a long time… the random little ports and the off-path anchorages are hardly a mystery. Couple Reed’s with updated Navionics and, dang, no place is off limits to Proteus.

Or, rather, we know if the place is off limits to Proteus.

The Raz du Sein (pronounced; “Raah duh Seh”) is one more of those places in the Biscay that imbue it with is alarming reputation. For those who have no knowledge of the Atlantic Coast of France, perhaps it is better that you don’t – especially my friends and family that have misgivings about me sailing 7000 miles – but there is more freaky stuff around here than the Bermuda Triangle. One place, in particular, is the Raz, a tiny strait between the Ile-de-Sein and a promontory on the mainland. The Raz is a boat-eater: one of two, actually, within a few hundred miles of each other off this coast (the other is called the Rochebonne Plateau, a place marked on most charts as “AREA TO BE AVOIDED”).

The lesser of the two scaries is our new friend, The Raz. Less scary, I say, but definitely worthy of respect. The Raz is actually an underwater rock feature in which massive amounts of water bottleneck and run back and forth with each switch of the tide. Occasionally, the tidal current can flow at as much as 6kts to 8kts and throw an extremely confused sea. The ONLY time to cross it safely is the 30 minutes on either side of high or low water: the less-than-one-hour in which the tide is slack. (I should mention, by the way, that it takes about an hour to pass through.) On our first attempt from Brest, the wind was over tide and a swell was running north-south through the gate. Before we got too close, we realized the conditions were horrible and had to turn back east and make for Douarnenez.

For our next attempt, there was practically no storm swell coming in off the deep Atlantic and the wind was blowing across. We timed it within 15 minutes after sailing 18 miles from Douarnenez, made the gateway as if we were flushed down a drain, and parked ourselves at Audierne for a few hours of sleep before continuing south the next morning.

Having now done so many many miles in high latitudes, sailing in Force 5 and Force 6 is becoming somewhat of a norm. Even so, we don’t watch the anemometer hit upper-30’s very often. Squall after squall passed us. At the end of the day, we had a max gust hold at 39kts. It made for an exhilarating downwind run to Belle-Ile. Double reefs in both main and jib while running, Proteus held mid-7’s through the water for most of the day, getting us to Belle-Ile and into the locked basin with minutes to spare.

These are the days that break from any semblance of normalcy the days that – even at sea – are out of the ordinary. Moments when the sky is dark and the sea seems to be illuminating itself from beneath the boat. Moment where 10 foot walls of water approach from behind and gently slide beneath the transom. Moments when birds fly calmly by at eye-level in a perfect V-shape… only this time the wind is sustaining 32kts. Or moments miles out at sea when you can barely make out the top of the sails for all the rain and thick fog: “Is that an engine I hear? Maybe it is the vibration of the hull through the water?” The surreal is only real because it is right there in front of you, but if you were to write it down or interject it into story-time it might seem too fantastic to be true.

The monster of the sea is the sea itself. The stories of beasts in them thar waters, mateee, are cooked because the calm thing you see lapping the warm sand cannot be the same that eats ships without a trace. Of course it must be the Cracken! Of course it must be the Edge of the World! The Raz and its ilk cannot be conquered, only eased by when the monster turns over in his sleep. And upon Mother Earth with all her glorious nesting beasts becoming agitated from time to time, Proteus is making its way quietly along, its presence erased only moments after passing like the dim candle in the hallway held tightly against the draft.

In the middle of St.Patrick’s…

By: Noah D.

Travel will teach you things. It will teach you marvelous things. But it will also teach you to fail. Or, rather, teach you that failing is not the end of the story… let alone something to be feared.

We attempted to cross the Celtic Sea on March 14. We made it around 25 miles before turning back: the sea was not having it. Massive swells pushed us farther and farther off course. Simply tacking would only send us back up the coast. Disappointed, we turned back.

And then St.Patrick’s Day came to pass.

What began as a simple call to get tickets at the Cork Opera House for an evening of Irish music somehow turned into various people calling us back. And then we had seats with our names on them in the grand stand for the parade, which turned into access to the parade itself… followed by a brisk walk through the city to a private room in a pub and sat down beside a famous radio personality… and then the Lord Mayor of Cork. They said, “Sit here.” …and there we sat, a constant stream of people greeting the personalities and us not knowing that we were really nothing special.

We experienced St.Patrick’s Day from the inside. We saw Cork with all its dressings on and from behind the curtain.

It has occurred to me that my date stamps are wrong. It is 2015, after all…

If you seat yourself next to a king, anyone can ask you to get up and move. If a king seats you next to him, only a king can move you. The world is full of people trying to get themselves seated next to a king… or look like they have been seated there. We just got blown in by the sea.

Who knows what disappointment holds? Whatever happens, it is going to be good…

The first miles: Kilmore Quay to Crosshaven…

By: Noah D.

We’ve almost sailed 1,000 miles aboard Proteus. Most of that was coming from Ipswich. And we’ve sailed a little around the east coast of Ireland as far north as Greystones just a few miles outside Dublin.

But now we’re headed home.

Ah, but where is home? As we were driving a rental car from a day trip to downtown Cork the other day, Lynn said that she felt as if she is going back home every time we walk or drive or ride back to Proteus. It is as normal to walk or drive in obscure lands (even after a mere six months aboard) as others might drive through the same subdivision in which they grew up and now have families of their own. We might be in a random marina or boat yard, but those are just the changing scenery – like a scene from “Inception” in which the world is able to be folded back on itself or flicked through with each tumble down the rabbit hole. We land in a place and it immediately becomes “the street where we live” and the dock is the sidewalk to our front door. We step onto Proteus and down the companionway and we are suddenly home.

In a few short weeks, we will likely be in tropical climes and dealing with five or six layers of sunscreen instead of five or six layers of clothes to go out and watch for crab pots. And then that will be our home, all hot and sweaty, our beds draped with mosquito nets.

Without as much as a flutter of wind, we departed Kilmore Quay in the wee hours before dawn on 10 March. The earlier the better because a slight gale was forecasted for the northwest and we wanted to be in Cork before it got messy. There was about 2-3m swell coming from the Atlantic, so motoring was a little hurk-worthy until we got the sail up a few hours later. It doesn’t take much wind to get Proteus moving nicely, but 2-3kts is aggravating.

All in all it was a great first sail down to Crosshaven. We sailed into Cork harbour almost perfectly downwind just as a big rain cloud appeared on the horizon obscuring an otherwise great sunset.

Now, why Crosshaven? Why didn’t we just cross directly from Kilmore Quay down south to France? It is almost exactly the same distance from Cork to Sevenstones or Scilly as it is from Kilmore Quay. The difference is the motion of the ocean and the prevailing winds. Coming 70-80 miles farther west will put the (occasionally significant) Atlantic swell on our quarter rather than on our beam. Also, the winds, if directly from the south, would force us to tack back and forth into and out of the Bristol Channel… and all the crazy tidal currents that entails. Hopefully, from Cork the wind will be more favorable, and, even if it is directly on our nose, we will be able to tack less and/or simply let the wind be our guide and suck us across the English Channel to Brittany.

As always, the weather is extraordinary. I cannot believe how random it is! Just the other day, since we’ve been watching for this upcoming crossing, there was a huge weather system that was going to push 8m seas and 50kts wind into the Celtic Sea on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week… then, I checked it yesterday and it was completely gone, not a stitch of wind increase for the next week. It must be that time of year.

Ireland has been good to us, but, if all goes well, our next update will be from France. Stay tuned…

[UPDATE: We aborted our first attempt crossing to France after the sea state worsened to 3 and 4 meter swells on our beam and a crossing wind on our nose. Beating upwind and heeling into major swell is miserable, slow going: for every step forward, we were taking two steps sideways. We’re still in Crosshaven for another few days waiting on the conditions to improve… I’m okay with that!]

Of course, you know Lynn…

…but our new crew and travel companion is Philip. More on him at a later date. 😉

Proteus is our child…

By: Noah D.

What on earth have we been doing for the past month of silence on this blog?

Everything under the sun. (Well… whenever there is sun.)

I’ve installed the new AIS and VHF splitter (which required running a second GPS receiver, a new NMEA cord to the helm chartplotter – I had to wait on it to come from the USA – and the physical installation of the units in a tiny little space) and I found how much a mess the nervous system of this boat is after 20 years of build-up. (And whoever did it was insane.) I dismantled one toilet entirely to unblock a blockage and partially disassembled the other to install a proper anti-siphon… which proved to me that I have my Dad’s iron stomach. New LED navigation lights are also installed… the old ones stood full of water half the time. However, now the green side has a decidedly blue hue, but they are super bright. Also, we installed all new LED interior lights and red night lights after two fixtures decided to go out completely. Lynn has been up the mast twice: once to retrieve the lazyjack halyard that broke during the Celtic Sea storm… and then again a few days later because I dropped it and it ran 20ft up the mast. And speaking of lazyjacks, we got everything restitched and I rebuilt the track on the side of the boom (that had also been ripped off in the Celtic Sea). The whole cockpit enclosure and dodger has been removed, treated, restitched, and reinstalled… we had a dodger window blow out during a storm. We have two new halyards and a clean bill of health for the rigging after a survey.

What do we have left? Our generator is still not running right. Some of Ireland’s best and brightest mechanics have been working on it and there’s still something amiss. It’ll come around…

Also, we’re going to have the boat lifted out briefly for a bottom spray before our trip south. It is amazing how much crap grows on the bottom of a boat in 6 months… even with good anti-fouling!

Finally, we’ve been out for a little sail up the coast from Kilmore Quay to Arklow. And we’ll be in Greystones before too long to be close to Dublin for final provisioning and picking up our new companions for the Big Trip south.

Expect the updates to come more frequently as we begin our adventure. I hope you’ll stay tuned…

Return to the Quay…

By: Noah D.

At long last, we have returned to Proteus. We were gone exactly one month. To the day. We left to spend Christmas with family; after all, we were unable to go home for Christmas last year due to my university work and Lynn’s job. All was not all quiet in Kilmore Quay, though. Since we left, there were a number of pretty severe storms and “Weather Bombs” including one that peaked at Force 10.

Considering that the only damage was a blown-out vinyl window that was already a little weak with UV-damaged stitching, I think we came out okay. No wonder all the rest of the boats in the harbour are completely stripped down!

Completely unrelated to the storms, there is always something that you come back to that you didn’t expect: thankfully there was no extra water in the bilge, but the Webasto/Airtronic heater didn’t come on. Since the temperature hovers around freezing most nights, this was not something to shrug off! Must fix. Press the button and… no go. Fiddling with it a while, I figured out that the pump had run dry – no fuel in the lines. Lo and behold, it turns out that there is no need to prime these pumps: they will re-prime themselves after turning the system on and off a few times. And by “a few times” I mean… like… a dozen. We were slightly concerned that we would be sleeping under two quilts and a duvet until I got it fixed, but enough Google-ing and you can fix anything! These heaters are really amazing. They’re super smart and it almost seems like they self-diagnose and repair.

But, really, there’s not much else out of place… besides the fact that everything is impossibly messy and cluttered. Such is boat life sometimes…

Otherwise, over the next few weeks, we will be working on various and sundry systems. Needless to say, we’ll be having a canvas repair person out. And the genset needs some work. And we’ve got a new AIS to install and such, so please stay tuned. The count-down to our Big Trip across the Atlantic is less than 40 days away.

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