Selene 49 "Hakuna Matata" crosses the Atlantic

By Kevin Katzke

Laura and I have successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean in our magnificent 49-foot Selene ocean trawler "Hakuna Matata". Hakuna Matata is the first Selene 49 ocean trawler to cross the Atlantic Ocean on her own bottom.

We had to feed "Hercules" our 330 HP QSL9 Cummins engine 3848 liters of diesel to do the crossing. The crossing was made so easy for Laura and I by this truly trusty sea-going trawler with her 2.54 A/B ratio, her cruising stern and deep cruising keel and large airfoil rudder making her stable and safe in all the various seaways we encountered on our crossing.

To the best of our knowledge, Hakuna Matata is the first Selene to cross the Atlantic on her own bottom. The crossing took 8 days from the Cape Verde Islands to Ilha Fernando de Noronha on the Brazillian coast.

We made the crossing with only the two of us aboard—no crew, unassisted and as a single boat. The crossing was made from Mindelo, Sao Vincente the Cape Verde islands to Brazil which took us 8 days. Laura and I with no crew have sailed our magnificent boat all the way from Holland to Helgoland then down the English channel, across the bay of Biscay, then down the west coast of Europe: Spain and Portugal then across to Morocco then across to the Canary islands down to Senegal and Gambia, then back up to the Cape Verde islands and then across the Atlantic Ocean.


Following are a few extracts from my daily logs of the crossing.

Day 1

All good here on the good ship Hakuna Matata The weather has been following seas and 20 knot winds all night, sea state has calmed to about 1.5 meter following seas and light 17 knot winds from first light. Hakuna Matata had a slow first 24 hours due to the excessive weight we are lugging around in fuel and water (5300 liters in fuel and 1500 liters in water) We should start getting lighter as we burn off fuel and use water. Today I will transfer the 380kg of fuel from the auxiliary fuel tank which is situated in the aft Lazarette to the main starboard and port tanks. This weight aft is causing HM to squat a bit, so this is a priority today to transfer the weight.

This morning I had to clean up the starboard deck of at least 50 dead flying fish who had met their end on our deck. What a shame! I’ve heard they make good eating which I will test out for breakfast tomorrow.

Day 2

Laura kept us very well fed on our passage!

We are happy to report a wonderful 24 hour run, with not even a hint of a problem. Sea state and winds exactly as predicted by our weather router, Bob. So far so good. It seems the further south we go the better the conditions are getting. We are a bit worried about the unpredictability of the ITCZ (Inter-tropical Convergence Zone) as it seems to be moving very quickly. We will handle it when we get there.

Laura and I have had lots of sleep, we have eaten well and are really enjoying the TV series “revenge." Hakuna Matata is getting back onto step as she gets lighter. We have used quite a bit of water on a good couple of showers and have burned 585kg of diesel (779 liters) so we are averaging 2 liters per mile. Pretty good for a trawler! Looking forward to the next 24 hours as we get closer to the sun. Position 11:43N 26:55W Distance covered in 24 hours 181nm.

Day 3

We have started making plans for our passing from "landlubbers” to "shellbacks” when we cross the equator. This is our first equator crossing, so we will now be "real" sailors when we do this. We passed our first test as "real sailors" when we rounded the Cape of Good Hope, now its equator time. We want to make very sure we appease Neptune so Laura is busy making a Neptune crown out of tin foil, which she will wear on the crossing. Then she will drag me across the equator hanging onto a line from the back of Hakuna Matata to cleanse me of all my sins. Then she will toast and present 4 tots of aquavit to the 4 wind gods, North, South, East, and West.

There were no flying fish on the deck this morning so no fishy breakfast, but my time will come. Laura is cringing and says I'm on my own. We have not yet put out a line to catch a tuna or a Dorado as our deep freeze and fridge are still overflowing.

We have had an awesome 24 hour run with 11 knots of wind and calm following seas of less than a meter in height and long wave periods of 10 to 12 seconds. We even had a barbecue on the flybridge last night! What a treat that was!

Our distance covered in the last 24 hours is 181 nm our position is 8:52N 27:55W

A sycamore seed landed on our foredeck--apparently carried far out to sea by the wind and kept aloft until it landed on Hakuna Matata!

An amazing thing happened at 10:00Z this morning. A type of sycamore seed landed on our foredeck! Laura and I both saw it landing and we looked at each other in awe. It just shows the wonders once again of this incredible planet we have the privilege of living on and sharing and experiencing. I thank God every day for this privilege I have been given to witness his glory first hand and daily and to appreciate the design and the complexity and the beauty of this amazing planet, never mind the vastness of the universe that is still expanding—it's incredible!

This seed is such a clear demonstration of how these islands in the middle of the oceans get life to start on them and how this life has evolved over millions of years. Probably out of thousands of seeds that get taken aloft by jet streams and up drifting, maybe one in many thousand land on an island, and then in a place where it can start a life—amazing! This seed was lucky that it did not land up in the ocean but on Hakuna Matata. I am keeping this seed safe, and I will plant it one day at home.

All is good here on board. We had a great 24 hour run with lots of rest, good movies, good books and good food.

Day 4

We encountered several floating "islands" of Sargasso weed. I checked the sea strainers regularly for blockages, but we did not have any issue.

We are loving this crossing thus far. I have never in all my life felt so relaxed or felt such inner peace of being as I have the past 4 days. There is no better teacher in my opinion than crossing an ocean for instilling in one the most important fact about life that most people have forgotten thousands of years ago which is to live in the present, or the now, or just being.

We have been dodging squalls all morning. They move from east to west pretty rapidly, so they are not too difficult to avoid so far, but I must confess catching the showers just outside the squalls are very welcoming to both Laura and me, as well as Hakuna Matata as she can finally rid herself of African red sand.

We have been passing through lots of floating Sargasso weed islands so I have been checking the raw water engine cooling pump strainer for blockages. So far so good. Here again is a demonstration of my subject of yesterday. These islands are used by sea-going creatures as "life rafts" to hitch a ride to another part of the planet to start new life. (See pictures attached of baby crabs).

These tiny crabs were living in the Sargasso weed that we pulled up.

Distance covered in the past 24 hours is 179nm. Position is 6:07N 28:51W. Seas are flat with long northeast swells and 2 knots of wind from the east. We passed our halfway mark at about 06:00Z this morning. Start of day 5 already! Ran the Cummins at 75% power this morning for 15 minutes to get rid of any buildup of soot in the cylinders due to the long period of low power setting.

Day 5

Wow! How things change at sea! Hakuna has been taking a bit of a beating for the past 24 hours and its occupants have had an uncomfortable ride as well. The winds picked up shortly after my last report at 12:30Z to 25 knots SSE and the swells veered to direct on our bow at 2 meters with short periods. There was a lot of pitching, as you can imagine, so we slowed down, only covering 148nm this past 24 hours.

We also had to deal with an incredible number of squalls for the first 12 hours. I have never seen anything like this before, but then I suppose I have never been in the ITCZ before. We were surrounded by hundreds of cells—as far as our 48nm radar could see. The cells eventually converge into large cells as they join forces. It was incredible to witness, and is something I will never forget. It was like being on another planet.

The squalls in the ITCZ dropped incredible amounts of rain and squalls extended as far as our 48nm radar could see!

We are out of the seriously active ITCZ by the looks of things. We have clear skies with 1.5-meter swells on our port bow quarter and 14 knots of wind from the south-south east. I predict going will still be slow over the next 24 but not as slow as before. We are glad to be out of that 100% humidity and 35-degree (centigrade) heat. It was almost unbearable. Position is 3:49N 29:41W

Day 6

We got a pretty good soaking over the previous 24 hours in the ITCZ for sure. I kept wondering if there was a huge dam above the clouds because surely the clouds could not carry so much water.

The sky over the past 24 hours has been mainly clear skies with a wisps of cumulus clouds forming every now and again and then dissipating. We had this amazing clear and clean sky last night and Laura and I both lay on our backs on the flybridge deck admiring the millions of stars. We were seeing red ones, blue ones, and bright white ones with the occasional "shooting star" space debris burning up in the ionosphere. Unbelievable. We only realized how late it was when the full moon showed up after midnight.

We decided to give Peter and Paul rocks a wide berth after some research and advice from other cruisers on the net. We wanted to go there and see the place and maybe get a few pictures of the rocks in the middle of the Atlantic. However, going there appears to be too risky.

Apparently, the pelagic fish stock for around 50 nm surrounding the rocks is abundant because of the rise of the Atlantic floor crust there. The result is at any given time of the year, the Brazilian long-liner fleet fish the waters 24/7 with a fleet of 6 or more boats at any given time.

They put out long lines with hundreds of hooks with bait on them. On one end of the 10-mile line, a fancy floating buoy is attached that will set off a signal when the line gets heavy with fish. On the other end of the line, they attach a GPS homing device, which allows them to drop lots of line into the ocean without hanging around and then retrieve them when they are full of fish. Seems like a very expensive outlay to catch fish, but it must be lucrative.

It's not a good place for Hakuna Matata to be because of the potential for prop snags from miles of seriously thick fishing line waiting for us.

We are now officially "shellbacks" as we crossed the equator at 02:55 GMT.

Again a slow-going 24 hours, with head seas and wind that our weather router predicted. We have 333 nm to go to get to Fernando and 91nm to the equator. We will definitely adjust our speed to make sure of a daylight arrival at Fernando. This is one of our strictest sailing rules that we will not deviate from. Distance covered over the past 24 hours is 151NM

We officially became shellbacks as of 2:55GMT this morning. We captured our moment on camera and we appeased the 4 wind gods as well as Neptune giving them all a stiff shot of Brazilian cane spirits off the flybridge

Day 7

We had a great 24 hour ride with the head sea swell duration stretching out to 15+ seconds, making for a gently rising and falling of our bow. We had two rain showers last night. Then, at midnight the skies opened up to this amazing star filled sky with the waning moon light reflecting off the gentle swells. What a sight!

We were very pleased to be so lucky as to have started our trip to coincide with a waxing moon, making maximum use of its light on this trip.

We had a heart-stopping moment yesterday afternoon. I went down to peep into the engine room for my hourly inspection. I was horrified to see the engine room turned into a steam room! On closer inspection, I saw a jet of water spraying all over the engine and the electronics. The fresh water pump's outlet hose from the pump in the engine room had burst and was emptying the fresh water tank into the engine room.

I shouted to Laura who turned off the pressure pump switch on the breaker panel. Shooo! What a mess to clean up! Anyway, I replaced the pipe, and it's all good.

One can feel the excitement in the air, as we have one more night at sea and expect to drop anchor in the bay at Fernando late tomorrow afternoon. Our course over the ground is 211M and our speed over the ground is 7 knots. Current distance to go is 180nm. Wind: east at 16 knots. Temperature: 30.5 C. Pressure: 1013 mb. Sky: scattered Cumulus. Seas: East, 1 meter but confused. Period: 4 seconds.

Day 8

We had a bit of a bumpy ride the past 24 hours with the confused seas and then the occasional big guy slapping Hakuna Matata on her port beam, giving her a good shudder and flinging object across the galley. Still, it was a great 24 hours' run. We are well rested and well fed.

Laura baked the yummiest rolls yesterday. We have mixed feelings about making landfall. We have enjoyed the crossing so much with the shutting out of the world for 8 days and living in our own world. We will miss it. But, on the other hand we are soooooo excited to see and explore "the new world." The continent of South America is one of the few places in the world we have never been.

Making landfall at Ilha Fernando de Noronha was a wonderful achievement and a great testimony to the sea-keeping ability of our beautiful Selene 49.

We have 35 nm to run! Yipeeeee! A good sleep tonight without any odd hours of work.

Land ahoy! We dropped anchor 2 hours later in the calm bay at Fernando de Noronha with me smiling from cheek to cheek. We are thrilled with our achievement and filled with great joy and satisfaction in making such a fantastic choice in the purchase of a Selene trawler. We were also thankful for our good weather window.

If anyone out there would like to know more detail about our trip or our magnificent Selene 49 "Hakuna Matata", please feel free to email me at kevin@yachtHM.com or you can contact me on my Facebook search for Kevin Katzke where you can find all my stories on Hakuna Matata since we have owned her.

 
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