Voyage Journal

It has been very difficult to distinguish the days during the last week; with the wind light, everyday bright and hot and every night sparkling above and below us the only thing to distinguish one day from the next is who is cooking… and even then Darragh cooked three days and three 5 star meals in a row.

Another way to see that we are making progress is when you write an entry in the trip log the latitude was always slightly less and it was on the 8th day of our trip that the figure hit 0 and strange things began to happen…

Around lunch time on said day we were ordered to furl away the sails and stop the engine… soon after issuing these orders Conor and Derek seemed to disappear leaving Coyote, Darragh and myself in the cockpit. Next thing you know Neptunes’ side kick appears out of nowhere; this guy is dress in a cowboy hat, has straw hair as black a night, a big knife and a very bad attitude. He orders us to the bow of the ship and who is there to meet us?? Neptune himself with his blue cloak and thick white beard and hair (that seemed to fall off every now and again), decorated with a crown and a trident of fire!! this guy wasn’t very nice either but he did keep his side kick from running us through!

Instead the three of us who hadn’t sailed over the equator before took it in turn to stand on the edge of the ship strapped in a harness connected to the spinnaker pole while the angry side kick read a list of sea faring sins we were guilty of from a scroll. For each sin we got a putrid concoction of days old, festering in the sun left overs thrown at us usually in the face! This stuff was vile! I cannot begin to describe the gag inducing smell. But once the last sin was read and the last handful of evil thrown we were ordered into the sea where we were dunked and made our sacrifice to the ever merciful Neptune!

Neptunes mercy only goes so far as Darragh found out. With his mouth gaping wide open as he passed the harness back to the henchman Neptune appeared out of nowhere and emptied some of the vileness on to Darragh and I am afraid to report it went in his mouth and up his nose inducing quite and array of primeval sounds and expressions. The ceremony also saw Coyote get a short full of cocktail and he made a bunch of wild noises of his own.

…and with that Neptune and evil henchman were gone, leaving only a smelly deck to wash, three smelly newly initiated crew members and a beard on the deck!

Now all we can hope is that Neptune smiles down on us with mercy and grace as our fuel runs low, the wind stay light and Coyote keeps setting fire to his cooking.

2041 Crew

Well, good news everyone…. we have left Abu Dhabi!!!

We have been in the open sea since Monday afternoon. Thanks to the force 5 (that’s what it says in the log; I am sure it was more) we made it out of the Straits of Hormuz in less than 24 hours. The sea on the first night was really big; I had to go to the bow to sort out the chute for the chain locker and about four waves crashed over me. Then on the helm we all took a wave or five while trying to control the heavy beast! It was hard steering but excellent fun and a great work out.

Since reaching the Straits of Hormuz the wind has died off and we have spent most of our time motor sailing with the wind behind us. This is much easier than the first nights beam reach sprint but not quite as exciting…. however we have all been able to sleep well and it is a lot easier to cook.

At the moment it is the fifth night on our voyage to Salalah and we have covered 685 miles taking us across the Gulf of Oman, past Muscat, round the head land of Ras Al Hadd into the Arabian sea and past Masirah Island where we are currently in the Gulf of Masirah. While not on watch it is a great opportunity to catch up on sleep, read up on biodiesel (did you know the diesel engine was originally designed to run on bio fuel??) or hone your angry birds skills! Unless you are on mother watch of course; then you get to cook and clean up after the guys.

While passing through the straits we were surrounded by the islands and mountains of Oman but since then it has pretty much been blue sky’s and blue sea. Although we have seen a few dolphins, tons of flying fish (three of which landed on our deck one night), caught a barracuda (that Conor insisted wasn’t edible due to ciguatera… shame i clumped him on the head first) and every night has been clear, starry and full mooned.

So far so good…

Adam

’2041′ in Abu Dhabi prior to her recent departure. She continues to push forward to spread her positive message towards change.
Photo: Eamonn Blaney

It was the fourth of February after flying all night from London to Abu Dhabi when, after a giant detour in the taxi, I passed security at Al Bandar and immediately saw a the words “Voyage for Cleaner Energy” on the side of a yacht that dwarfed everything else in the marina… I was in the right place at least. I was welcomed on board by Captain Fogerty and given a quick tour where I learned where my cabin was and how to use a sustainable alcohol stove to make myself a brew. We spent the first afternoon getting to know one another talking about adventures, family and most importantly the aim of 2041. Come the evening we thought we’d exchange the tea for a beer while we waited for the third crew member but the next day being the prophets birthday meant the beer taps were closed. Later that evening Ben arrived from France and at 196 cm’s he has to stoop even in a ship like this. We had some tea, mango for Ben and good old Irish for Conor and got to know each other for the evening… the next day the hard work was to begin. Blood, sweat and more sweat! For almost two weeks now we have scuttled around 2041 cleaning every surface and repairing everything necessary. As you can imagine after sitting in the middle east for over a year she was very dusty and sandy inside and out. The whole first day was spent scrubbing the dust from the deck and rinsing the dust from the ropes and many days have been spent polishing the rust out of her stainless steel surfaces… we still find the odd surface that got away… but now she is looking bright and the solar panels, now free from dust, are producing enough charge to run our fridge, play music and watch the odd tear jerker in the evening. Aladdin’s cave One day while eating breakfast Conor suggested we empty the fore peak see what’s there and reorder everything back in…. it sounded like a good suggestion at the time, and I am sure it will prove most useful, but when Ben was still passing things out through the hatch to me a couple of hours later space on the deck was extremely limited. Amongst the treasures were five sails (including two made from recycled coke bottles and one fitted with solar panels), an electric outboard with hefty battery, two spare anchors with chain and warps and more rope than Spiderman could use in two lifetimes. Full MOT please With her exterior looking so clean and shiny in the bright Abu Dhabi sun it was time to start fixing and maintaining. Conor took a couple of days to get the engine running, he can still be found stuck in the engine hole with a tooth brush cleaning away, and has also attacked the hull rust inside and out. Ben has serviced all the winches, bar one particularly awkward column, rejuvenated all the blocks and saved numerous items like elastic ties, fenders and binoculars. I have spent time fixing a dingy that still sinks, and a leaking and under greased windlass… that still doesn’t work… Despite days full of hard work, or maybe because of them, we are forming a good team. We are taking it in turns to cook and have had some really interesting meals, and cups of tea. With the rugby six nations on at the moment we are bonding over England winning and Ireland losing. The occasional conversation regarding pirates always goes down well too. The bottom line is that the ship is getting in shape and we are focused (even more so after a surprise visit from Sir Robert Swan) on getting 2041 to Brazil for the world summit in June. - Adam, 2041 Crew Member

It seems a long time ago since we left Cardiff in Wales, I also think, when we left, we tried not to think about the distance in front of us.  It was a long up wind trip. Mother Nature was testing our own sustainability on board 2041, slogging away every mile, and to be honest there wasn’t a single memorable day sailing, and that’s over two months, we were far from our days of averaging over 200 miles a day in the Atlantic, as we eked out meeker 120 miles day zig zagging back and forth across our preferred course. But we persevered and reached our destination, using the power of nature, wind, solar and Bio. Four adults living on a 67 foot boat, sailing more than 6500 miles over a two month period, with minimal impact on our surrounding environment.

Our Journey was pretty much broken up into just over 1000 mile stints, bar the first and our last pirate infested leg of 2500 miles. We sailed a short hop from Cardiff to Plymouth in England, then Plymouth to Gibraltar, Gibraltar to Malta, Malta to Suez, Suez to Djibouti, and finally Djibouti to Dubai. The huge culture difference is represented by the miles, as we departed from a Christian western culture, and slowly diluted it, until we passed the heart of Islam, being Mecca in Saudi Arabia, just in from the coast of the Red Sea, and found ourselves deep in Eastern Muslim Culture, although, our final destination Dubai, might be considered a western influenced Emirate. And now, brave “2041” sits in the heart of the oil producing world, proudly announcing her message of “the Voyage for Cleaner Energy”. She is poised for the next leg, the “Far east” and the fastest growing economies in the world. Where we hope, to help and educate the people with regard to the mistakes we have made in the west, where energy and power consumption rose rapidly with intensive industry growth, with little or no regard to the environment.  It would be great to see these future super powers not having to back pedal, like we find ourselves doing.

There is hope, and as the bizarre mammal’s we are, we find ourselves deciding the future for all life on our planet. In amongst all this gloom and negativity of our destructive nature, there are positives, we thrive on hope, and the need to have a better life. We will learn, that this does not necessarily mean financially, but environmentally. We all need to globally unite and focus our energy on the job we have been given, to make this planet a safe, sustainable environment, and ultimately a better place to live. We have been given the key to be the protectors of our planet, entrusted with the survival of all living things, and we need to step up to this challenge and cannot shy away from this responsibility.

All on board feel that this journey on “2041”, being sustainable on our small environment on the yacht, can set an example of how, when the journey seems long and difficult, that with human spirit and hope, we can overcome our “bad habits” and step up to our jobs as protectors, and make individual decisions that can make an impact, and globally, if we unite with our individual decisions to reduce, recycle and reuse, we will make a difference.

The Captain

It started off here another hot day in sunny Dubai. We spent the morning tidying up the boat as we were to have guests down later for a tour. They were a group of teachers from the American University here in Dubai and also friends of our sponsor. After a quick tour of 2041, we were all invited to go out and watch the racing. A good friend was the 18th man on Artemis, which is the highly sought after position for a spectator or sponsor to be able to go out and race in one of the boats of the Louis Vuitton trophy. We were all excited as this was the first time we would be able to see the racing up close instead of the big screen in the pavilion. So we all piled onto his boat and motored out to the race course. It was a nice change of pace to be able sit back and enjoy a cold drink while someone else ran the boat. It was an exciting afternoon of racing and Artemis even won its match for that day. After getting back into port and congratulating our friend for his win, the crew and myself headed back to the boat and cooked up a good dinner and then it was off to mingle with the racers as they come in from their day at sea.

Jake