Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

Leg 3, Blog 15, July 12, 2025

Following the trade winds is supposed to be a beautiful thing. The trade winds or easterlies are permanent east-to-west prevailing winds that flow in the earth’s equatorial region. The trade winds blow mainly from the northeast in the northern hemisphere and from the southeast in the southern hemisphere. Trade winds have been used by sailors to cross the world’s oceans for centuries and at present, we are availing ourselves of this oceanic superhighway.

Am I the only blue water sailor that does not love the trade winds? I am so sorry to be a disappointment. Trade winds are the currency, the means, the be-it, the end-all, the nirvana of oceanic crossings. Everybody loves the trade winds from time immemorial. Everybody that is, except me.

It wasn’t always this way. Trade winds and I used to be friends not so long ago. Blog Time Machine, please take us back to July 2022 when I raced across this very North Atlantic Ocean from New York City to Derry Ireland on the Clipper Round The World Race. We harnessed the trades and made such good time to Derry (along with the 10 other Clipper 70’s) that the race officials extended the course another three days to the Upper Hebrides in Scotland. Never in my life had I this much fun helming this 70 foot behemoth in constant 20 – 30 knot warm, howling, trade winds. Even when it was pouring rain in the middle of the night, I remember thinking to myself that there have been few times in my life when I was happier.

Click on the Above compilation of pictures from my previous trade wind experience crossing the North Atlantic with Clipper Round The World Race in 2022. This is new to me putting this type of collection in this blog format so I hope it works.

Above: Blasting through the North Atlantic trade winds in 2022.

FAST FORWARD TO PRESENT

I am so confused. How could I have had the time of my life riding these same trade winds on this same ocean three short years ago, but be so miserable today? I will tell you the reason and perhaps one of you out there with more experience than I can help me overcome this problem through therapy or medication.

TO SLEEP PERCHANCE TO DREAM

Borrowing this phrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet should give you a wee insight as to what exactly I am experiencing. For some reason that Randall and I do not understand, Mōli is sailing like a wild bucking bronco making it near impossible to get our precious sleep on our off-shift. We understand that it is more challenging to sleep well while sailing downwind, primarily due to the constant motion and noise of the boat.

The winds are not unusually high nor is the surge unusually fierce. Be it the churn of the ocean, the direction of the waves or perhaps our angle of sail (directly downwind with two headsails) but something is causing poor Mōli to jump, squirm, shake, rattle and roll to the point where both Randall and I are sleep deprived sailing zombies.

Sleep is a precious commodity on a journey like ours. We maintain watches that are four hours on and four hours off. This means that we (or at least I) lay down to get our “night’s” rest three times per day. For me, getting to sleep is a somewhat laborious project. I essentially hypnotize myself with various counting games to get my mind to calm down and ready to enter the realm of sleep. Doing this at home one time per day is not a big deal and I do not think anything of it. Doing it three times per day, with two of them being in full daylight takes real work.

Normally the gentle churn and rhythm of the ocean makes me feel like I am getting rocked to sleep in my mother’s arms – warm and lovely. But as of late, it is feeling more like being dragged underwater after getting hit by a tall wave while swimming off the beach. I can take the literal ups and downs and side-to-side pulls of the boat as she plows through cross swell. But what we are experiencing feels very different.

Imagine yourself lying down in your bed. It begins to rotate 30 degrees to the left and 30 degrees to the right. On top of that, your bed tilts forward and then backward in 20 degree increments. All the while you have forward momentum that ebbs and wanes with a combination of wind and wave energy. Imagine your bed on a roller coaster going up and down the tracks and into the banked turns. That is similar to what we are feeling.

Amazingly, that in itself does not make it impossible to sleep. What does make it impossible are the two to three G-forces that we experience when the boat hits the bottom of the wave trough and we are compressed into our pillow and mattresses or when the boat shoots over the peak of the wave and begins its arc of decline at which point we are temporarily weightless and airborne.

At this point you might as well take a peak at our sleeping accommodations.

Above: Here is Randall during a slightly calmer moment. His sleep patterns seem to have two very important advantages over mine. First he gets to sleep really quickly and easily. Second, he does not seem to require the volume of sleep that I do (he often repairs the boat during his “off hours”). That said, Randall also reports being exhausted from our current down-wind trade wind route.

This above picture is during the night when temperatures dropped to about 70 (with a damp wind blowing). Suffice to say while we are afforded the luxury of a lee cloth, it is not like we are in a fighter jet fully strapped in and harnessed. Even Randall gets thrown about in all directions.

Above: Here I am getting into my bunk which is located in the V-berth which is the forward most compartment of the boat. I hop in and then pull up and tie my lee-cloth so that I am not thrown out of my bunk in the middle of a good dream..

Above: While my lee-cloth prevents me from being thrown out of my bunk, it does nothing to prevent me from being tossed about from WITHIN my bunk. To solve part of that problem, I take out all of my stuff-sacks and distribute them on either side of me (along with the spare blue cushion). I find myself constantly rearranging this assortment of “pads” to match the force that Mōli is experiencing at the moment. As you can see, I am not strapped in, so there is really nothing available to prevent me from being tossed up and down. You can also see that this is during my daytime sleep. The boat is about 80+ degrees inside, even with ventilation – so therefore the shorts.

Ok…you’ve seen enough. Get out of my bedroom! I will see you later as we approach Cape Verde.

Happy Birthday to brother Abraham doing G-d’s work to identify missing POW’s from the Korean War. Sorry I can’t be with you in Hawaii.

Happy Birthday to Nephew David. I know you are turning 30?? and finshing law school in Boulder. Proud of you dude!

Happy Birthday to Oliver Mohr. Just back from Greece and Turkey and just about to head out to Boston College for freshman year. Dang. Have fun (but study!)