Grenada Chocolate

Happy birthday in the middle of the ocean!

April 17th, 2012

Because communication from the ship is limited – the crew can only send about one email per day – some messages arrive with a title delay… Like todays post, which was written by Mott on his birthday and it seems he had a very nice one on the boat, including a whale that came very nearby, jumping several times and spraying its water in the air, a magnificent site he writes…

I especially loved the post of Mott’s blog today so I decided to make a short compilation of his experiences so far, to follow the highlights of the 23 days on the sea so far;

week 1:

‘We are going 7.7 knots right now, pretty gentle seas, although the boat is going up and down as I learn to type with this movement. The sky is full of stars and some planets and that is giving us enough light to walk around the deck with no other light.
Lovely crew on board, which is very comforting.’

‘I crawled into the chocolate cool room in the hold yesterday afternoon to make sure everything is perfectly dry and nothing is shifting around with the constant pitch of the boat. All was fine.’

‘Well, we were going quite fast for the first two days and covered over 200 miles. “Now the wind has died and we are crawling along at 2 and 3 knots. The sea is very calm and beautiful, very quiet on-board. To our right, we can now see several islands in the distance, the first land we see since we left Grenada, St. Kitts, Nevis, others.’

‘The Tres Hombres is such a beautiful and sexy boat that even the bilge water is pretty, smells good, no oil. Each morning we pump out all the bilges and water almost fit to drink comes out, well maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but it really does smell good!

‘Captain Jorne runs a great ship. We are all sharing cooking duty since we do not have an offical cook. This is working quite well and we have international diveristy of menus! A great vibe on-board, everyone working together as we plunge across the sea.’

‘Captain Jorne told me about a Dutch expression that means: when shipping apples, eat apples. In our case we keep nibbling on chocolate. I crawled into the chocolate room this afternoon and removed 6 chocolate bars, which will last us about 24 hrs. At this rate we have enough eating chocolate to last us several weeks without having to dip into our chocolate cargo for delivery to our European importer. Of course, we also have a lot of Smilo cocoa powder on board which we, especially me, drink quite a bit. I also made a Smilo cake yesterday which was quite popular.’


week 2:

‘Now we are in quite a duldrum out here in the Atlantic ocean. For the past day or so we have been moving at 1 or 2 knots only, the sails flopping back and forth making a rather unpleasant sound and the ocean swells throwing the ship left to write with almost no forward motion.’

‘Nevertheless, the crew stays positive and mellow, we continue to eat good meals and maintain the ship. I crawled into the chocolate storage to check on everything and removed 5 chocolate bars, the new daily ration of eating chocolate for the crew. Everyone loves the chocolate onboard so much that the daily ration tends to disappear quickly. Lately, we have all been eating Nib-a-Licious. I continue to drink lots of Smilo just like I do when I am a land lubber.’

‘Finally, we got back our speed, did between 7 and 8 knots all day today. It was a beautiful sailing day with nice seas and super blue water.

Captain Jorne declared it a clean the ship day so that kept us busy, with some sail handling here and there during the day and tonight, as the wind shifts. Tonight we got our first squall which required taking down the highest staysail in the dark but it was just a minor one and not so much wind and rain. We put the staysail back up a little while ago. Just like on my Hobie Cat voyages to Carriacou from Grenada, these little squalls are mainly annoying because of the way they take away our wind for a while until they pass. When this ship loses its wind here in the big ocean, the swells of the sea rock us hard left to right with little forward motion to stabilize us, not too pleasant. When the wind freshens up a bit, it all improves.

I’m going back on deck now to finish my watch at midnight, then I get to sleep for 4 hrs and then another 4 hr watch which ends in bilge pumping (bilge water so clean you can almost drink it on this gorgeous ship with no engine)’

 

‘Each day the temperature of the air and sea has been dropping as we go north. The chocolate is now being cooled almost enough from the water temperature with the a/c hardly needing to run. Everyone dressed warmer, no more bare feet for me, especially in the night. We are continuing to go as north as we can to catch better winds from the west to sail east to the Azores.’

 

‘We are now in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and we have lost all our wind. For the past day or so we have almost no speed at all and are sitting still, with a rocking motion in the ocean swell. As we have no engine, there is nothing we can do about it except wait for wind. The next couple of days are predicted to be the same. So we do maintenance work on the ship and try to stay as healthy as possible and avoid madness. These experiences which are hard psychologically become part of the statement the Tres Hombres and Grenada Chocolate are making. Sustainable, sail-powered transport is quite possible and simply takes a shift in mentality and lots of patience. It will certainly feel great to be moving forward toward the Azores  one of these days!’

 

week 3:

‘This morning we caught a nice big Dorado fish which we baked into a lovely lunch. Nothing like fresh fish, eating it and how good it felt inside made me realize that I miss all the fresh fish from Grenada, a real treat it was today. Mostly I find I feel best out here in the constantly pitching sea eating almost exclusively brown rice and no bread and no sugar at all. I had to even give up Smilo drinking temporarily! The sugars and simple starches get really acidic in my belly which was a terrible feeling. We still have ripe oranges on-board from Grenada too which feel ok and supply our much needed vit C.Whole crew and 24,000 chocolate bars seem to be in good spirits as we plunge forward through the frothy sea.’
 ’Today is day 3 of continual torrential rain. It is also getting colder. Everyone onboard in their heavy sailing rain gear, looking a bit like astronauts. Wind is ok, though, as we follow this depression more or less the right direction toward the Azores Islands. The extreme uncomfortableness on-board now certainly makes me appreciate and miss all the warm sunny, dry days earlier in this crossing.’
‘Several time on this voyage we have seen the odd dolphin jumping near the boat. usually, just one or two people get a quick glance at them. Today, though, several of us were near the bow of the boat when several dolphins jumped up together and we all exclaimed out loud and gathered to watch. It seemed to affect them and they continued playing with us. Because of the time of day, more of the crew gathered and one person put on her harness and went out on the bow sprit and lowered herself down the chain so she was hanging on quite close to the water, The dolphins seemed to enjoy the extra attention, the closer audience and performed more and stayed with us a longer time. Definitely hams they are!’
‘We sometimes have nice little lectures after lunch given usually by our charming and knowledgeable captain, about the history of sailing vessels for example and about how the wind propels us across the ocean. Today, I was the guest lecturer about how the ship’s electric system works and what to do if there are problems.We brought many heads of cabbage from Grenada on the journey because it is the one “green” that lasts a pretty long time. However, after a week or so it became clear that many of them were going to spoil before we could eat them. So, Charlie had the great idea of making sauerkraut and knew how to do it. The bucket of it that he made has aged about 10 days now and we brought it up from the hold today and it tasted great and is very healthy for all of us!’
‘ This beautiful ship, The Tres Hombres, is equipped with a gorgeous large compass in a nice, hand-crafted wooden box with a little door in the front. The compass box is right in front of the helm so the helms person, as he/she steers the boat sees and maintain our course, knows what direction we are goimg, or rather pointing. Inside the box there is the light bulb that illuminates the compass for nights and quite a bit of empty space as well, making it the ideal stash spot. It turns out, I realized today, that when people are steering they love to munch on a bit of Grenada Chocolate to give them the energy and inspiring taste to get them through their time at the wheel. This is ensured by stashing a piece of the Atlantic Ocean´s finest dark chocolate in the compass box.’
‘This chocolate delivery vessel I have been crossing the ocean on for the past 22 days is very fast. The only vessel I have sailed that is faster is my little 4 meter Hobie Cat on which I deliver chocolate from Grenada to Carriacou, a 20 mile journey I make in as little as 2 hrs in 15 knots of wind. That is even faster that this chocolate-delivery vessel, The Tres Hombres.But, the Hobie only holds 90 bars of chocolate and is only really practical for one day journeys. The chocolate ship I am writing from now, The Tres Hombres, is now holding more than 24,000 chocolate bars and will next journey across the ocean to Europe, next year, hold twice as many. It is really fast, too. The past 24 hours we sailed about 170 miles, averaging over 7 knots. Going 8 and 9 knots at times.’

‘it was such a nice day, lovely wind, perfect bumpy little waves, sunshine and beautiful cool temperature. It is traditional on this ship to relax on sundays, take a break from maintenance work, and apart from steering the ship and making meals, we just chill out. Not too much music I hear on-board, but today Teao was playing some around the helm, and I found the Pink Floyd particularly suitable for the sea and fun to hear. Nice conversations as usual.

After lunch, at our daily muster (meeting with whole crew and captain), we had a little party. In general, this is a completely dry boat (sailors on this ship generally do not drink alcohol at all at sea, and pretty much drink at port as the main activity) except when our captain administers some. The whole crew, 12 of us, shared one double bottle of white wine I brought on-board from Grenada in the event that my birthday came while we were at sea. Then, as I had planned, we went around and each told a joke. It was good fun, started by Captain Jorne dressed up like the god of the sea Neptune parading his amphagory in dramatic fashion. Then a Smilo cake which Anne made with candles and the traditional song.

The day ended with a beautiful sunset and a magnificent rainbow across the whole windward side, to starboard.

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So far the highlights of the first 3 weeks they have been sailing on the Tres Hombres to deliver the Grenada Chocolate to Europe -

This was a compilation of Motts posts on his blog, written directly on the ocean. To read the full stories of Mott check out his own blog; mottontresshombres 

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