This was a difficult video to make, both technically and emotionally, so excuse the technical aspects please…
Thank you to all who contributed!
The life of Patrick Childress was a life well lived, and this is seen repeatedly in this video. He will be missed by many, but by no one more than me.
Rebecca
How we Got the Money to go Cruising, and how you can get the money to go cruising
This was Rebecca’s most feared Sail to date…the stormy weather going around Cape of Good Hope and Cape Aghullas! And she was right…we experienced every kind of weather on this passage including a huge electrical storm where we still wonder why we were not struck by lightning! Luckily Predictwind gave us great forecasts through the Idirium GO, right on the Raymarine Chartplotter so we knew what weather was coming before it came! Patrick is t one to use an IPad, but having the wind and currents right on the Raymarine Axiom Pro chartplotter…well he couldn’t avoid looking at the weather forecasts when I downloaded them!
One thing we forgot to mention on the video, is that a Predictwind Offshore DID warn us of a stormy night ahead with its CAPE forecast. There was about a 4 hour period on the Cape forecast on Predictwind that there was a pretty big chance for squalls. Oops…forgot to tell the captain…I was psychologically prepped for bad weather, but he wasn’t. But the smart captain that he is…obviously he saw the dark clouds ahead, turned on the radar, and could see it coming, and got down sails ahead of Time! A perfect example of the bad communication at sea that we have sometimes. It’s not just on land girls…and it’s not always the captain! The wind and waves were not so bad, but those lightning strikes were pretty darn impressive!
I am glad to have the Cape of Storms behind us, and all beautiful fair weather sailing up ahead…Ha-Ha who am I fooling!
We also forgot to mention we have an “ion dissipator” at the highest point on our mast. Can that be why we did not get struck by lightning? No idea…Probably not.
A Tour of our Valiant 40. The Bluewater Sailboat. What do we like about it? What would we change?
Preventing a Lightning strike on a sailboat : Lightning Protection
We used PredictWind Offshore for planning the trip when we had internet, and then during the trip using our Iridium GO! to get updates to know when it was time to seek shelter. This was probably our biggest tool for weather Routing using the ocean current models , as well as four wind and wave forecasts from Predictwind to make sure we got it right.
We would not sail any ocean now without the Iridium GO and the Professional version of Predictwind Offshore. I would simply refuse to leave the dock without it!
Here is the latest video with us sailing from Richards Bay, underway through lots of wind and speedy currents on the way to Cape Town. It’s part one of a 2 part series, as we need to seek refuge from an upcoming storm, in East London for a few days.
http://whereisbrickhouse.com/2019/04/05/sailing-the-african-coast-dodging-storms-zanzibar-and-southward/ http://whereisbrickhouse.com/2019/04/09/communication-evolution/
