Passage report written on Tuesday 12th June 2001 in about 48N 12W - (about 300M WSW of Land's End)

We left Horta in the Azores 9 days ago on Sunday 3rd June and so far we have been having a reasonable trip of it. We started off from Horta with variable but mostly Westerly winds, did a bit of motoring to start with but soon the winds settled down. One of our hopes was to see some whales and dolphins on our departure from the Azores and I am glad to say that these lovely creatures did not disappoint us. On this day schools of common dolphins came to visit us about 5 times, sometimes jumping clear out of the water on their approach and then playing in our bow-wave.

Common Dolphins near the Azores 

Next day at about 1710 Tom spotted our first whale. It blew then dived close ahead of us within 20 yards or so, then surfaced twice on our port quarter within 50-60 yards. Consulting our whale crib-sheet (provided by WDCS - see Pilot Whales page for a link to their website) we reckoned that this was probably a Long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas). Later on that evening another whale surfaced and the blew behind us, then dived and repeated this performance 5-7 times around the boat within about 50 yards. This one we reckoned (with a somewhat greater measure of probability) was a Minke (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) and despite fading light it stayed around for long enough for all 3 cameras on board to get a glimpse including Simon's new digital camera. 

Minke Whale in fading light

Next day Tom spotted our 3rd large whale close ahead. This one dived directly and then surfaced and blew a couple of times further away on our starboard bow. By this time Tom was getting rather worried by our close encounters (for the 1st and 3rd he was on watch, spotted them first when they were very much close under our bow) and started to think that they had some strange attraction for him. I believe that the whales became aware of our presence and took avoiding action just as Tom was untieing the wheel and of course their action of diving was a much swifter form of evasive action than ours' could be. However I also was keen that we should not hurt any whales by inadvertently bumping into them and so later on I resolved to activate the Ultra-Sonic Whale Alerting Device (USWAD for short). Being intelligent creatures with good underwater hearing it seemed likely that if they detected an man-made noise approaching them on the surface they might make the necessary effort to avoid possible injury. This obviously depends on how deep a sleep the whale might be in, but if it was just dozing a bit (and not keeping a 360 degree 24 hour look-out as indeed the IRCPS require it to do!) the USWAD transmissions might be just enough to bring ourselves to its notice and for it to take the necessary action.

By about Day 5 (UK Election Day 7th June) I had become sufficiently concerned that Herb's routing advice for "Honary" might not be wholeheartedly relevant to us and so I checked in with Herb and he has continued to give us excellent weather information and routing advice. I had previously thought that we might manage as 2 years ago just by listening to him, but the boats doing this route at this time AND talking to him seem to be sufficiently few that the addition of "Ramprasad" to his list might benefit a number of other silent listeners as well as ourselves. Certainly Herb seems to be quite happy to talk to us with the proviso that I talk to him every night and confirm our safe arrival when that occurs. Certainly it seems a little odd that one needs to speak to someone thousands of miles away to get accurate and useful weather information when we are on the doorstep of civilized Europe but that's just the way it is. Herb provides a really great service when one is still outside the effective range of most domestic shipping weather forecast services (ie navtex and broadcast radio).

By this stage (Day 5) we had had a variety of winds - Westerlys, WNWlys, then Southerlys, SSElys, then SSWlys then Westerlys and we had had a couple of good days runs of around 140 miles and a couple of less impressive ones of 117 and 102. By this stage we had gone a bit over 500 miles ENE of the Azores and Herb had been telling us to continue East (towards Northern Spain) to continue with Westerlys rather than go NE and get headwinds. The crew had been getting a little uneasy about the possible final destination by this stage, so it was with some relief that the windshift to NE came to us as Herb had predicted and so we could turn North (and actually NNW) to get through the area of headwinds in as little time as possible. This took a couple of days but by Sunday (day 8) a SEly established itself and we were getting good days runs of over 140 miles again. On many days schools of Common dolphins had come to see us and play around the boat and in our bow-wave. It really is a great delight to see these lovely creatures swim around the boat in the clear Atlantic water. But we were in for an even greater pleasure when on the evening of day 10 about 250 miles WSW of Land's End we were visited by a large pod of 15-20 pilot whales. See Pilot Whales page for photos. The larger members of the group were up to 4 - 5 metres long - they all had and frequently showed the distinctly globular head of a pilot whale when they surfaced for breath, and several of them took to doing a little bow-riding but perhaps without quite the energy shown by the Common dolphins. None of them showed their tail fins so it was difficult to guess their total length but as they dived their backs showed a distinctive inverted-V ridge aft of their dorsal fins and they were certainly of a considerably more massive build than the larger dolphins which I have seen. The WDCS European whales & dolphins ID sheet shows the Long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas -typical adult length 3.8 - 6 metres) but not the Short-finned pilot whale which these may have been.

Arrived here in Falmouth last night Friday 15th June - around 3am (GMT) after a wet morning and a much better afternoon.

Do link to any of the following pages or link to any page shown on the left :-

Home Page  Pilot Whales  Visit to Pico  StMartin-Azores  Ramprasad I  12 Year Project   Return to UK