April 5, day 1.
Finally we all met! 8 in the morning, customs formalities. 45 dollars for check-in, 16 of them – tickets to Nelson’s dockyard national park. Breakfast at Andy’s Hot Spot, last messages to the family, selfie, Facebook post – and hello Monika! Refill the diesel tank and jerrycans, refill the water tank and plastic bottles, last cold Carib beer, cast off the lines, good bye, Antigua, good bye, Caribbean! See you next winter!
First couple of hours we were motoring to charge the batteries and to go out to the open Ocean. Then set sails, and hello, Atlantic! Wind 17 knots, 60 AWA, comfortable heeling, boat speed 6-7 knots. Going north.
Decided to cook pilaf for the dinner. Sergey’s first time cooking pilaf had a great success. Sunset dinner, a bit of rum. My shift is at the sunrise, so despite an interesting talking I went to sleep. We’ll have enough time to talk during this 6000 miles 🙂 Out.
April 6, day 2.
Sleepy morning watch, yellow sunrise. The sun goes out earlier – we are moving North.
After the sunrise reefed genoa a little, and it was a right decision. Between the clouds we have 18kn AWS, under the clouds – gusts up to 30. But we are reefed, we are not in a hurry, the boat is doing 4,5 to 9,5 knots, the only job to do is to adjust autopilot course.
The wind is veering to E, we are changing the course according to it. No need to look at GPS – nothing around, our main goal is comfortable sailing to the direction the wind and waves allow us to go.
Received first weather forecast via satellite from our shore based team. Happy to hear the news from the Mainland.
Tried to catch the fish, caught a lot of sargassum.
Opened a box of French red wine. Found some Spanish cheese. It summoned the dolphins, 10 of them. They stayed with us for 15 minutes so we could take some photos. Nice! Everybody is happy.
Noodles soup with sausages for dinner, killing all the food that can die without a fridge. Put on sailor’s vests, made a selfie. After dinner – some wine and music and everybody goes to sleep except for me, because my watch is the first tonight. Skies are clear, water is shining and life is good!
April 7, day 3.
Cloudy and windy morning. Gusts up to 35 knots, reefed more. Took out some water from the forward cabin, there is a leak somewhere on the deck, couple of buckets of water every morning. Took out the eggs and vegetables from the bilges – too wet. Checked them and put to the lockers.
At noon the wind calmed down to 15, unreefed a bit. Veering to SE, we are turning NE, going comfortable 80 AWA. We don’t want to go closer to wind not to beat into the waves. Anyway we are not in a hurry 🙂 Doing 120 miles a day is suitable for everybody. The main thing is to enjoy 🙂
Receiving weather forecasts from our shore team. Sometimes they look like “don’t go to Bermuda, it’s quite shitty there.” Ok, we are not going there 🙂
Mashed batat with sausages for lunch/dinner. Red French wine. Sailing tales again. No fish and no sargassum caught today.
I had a dream that I am sailing on the same boat with the same crew. Nothing changes even in the night 🙂 And our Skip is dreaming about the land. When I was waking him up for the watch he asked still sleeping: “Did we leave the anchorage?” “Yes, more than 300 miles ago,” I answered 🙂
Reading Peres-Reverte “Secret longitude” (Not sure that this is the proper English name of the book and cannot google, haha). Goes good in the middle of the ocean.
April 8, day 4.
Easter! (Orthodox)
Everybody was looking forward to celebrate, but fell asleep at 10am 🙂 Couldn’t miss the opportunity to make my suntan more even 🙂
Spent half an hour playing with the course – the wind under the cloud suddenly veered, but at the same time made it possible to avoid next two clouds. And then again we go 80 AWA, 15-20 kn AWS, good!
Afternoon started the preparation. Tried to color the eggs traditional way, using onion skins. The onions were purple, the eggs were brown originally, so we didn’t succeed, but at least we tried 🙂 And of course it was Skip who won the eggs fight. Sergey cooked veggies casserole with meat (tinned ham in our case), tasted better than we expected!
During the Easter party the wind and waves height dropped, we added more sails, watched another beautiful sunset, turned on the music from the childhood, sang some songs and after dark went to sleep. Only Skip left because his watch was first, Sergey’s – second, and mine – third, sunrise watch.
April 9, day 5.
Two hours of Moon and stars – and East we tend to lightens, and melting gold of the sunrise overflows the hills of the clouds framing the horizon. Moving northeast- the dusk is at 5-10, the sunrise – 5-45 Caribbean time. Skip wakes up at 7 without the alarm – at 7 we have a call with the Mainland via satellite. And I can go sleep more.
I wake up in couple of hours, smelling food and coffee – good reason to rise and shine 🙂 Perfect morning, fluffy clouds, blue skies, steady wind. All the day going a little more east, a little more west, but average 35 degrees, which is very good. 120 relaxed miles a day, and everybody is happy again. Good not to be in a hurry!
Every day we receive the forecasts from the shore team. Try to interpret it, sometimes laugh, but understand, that we do everything right.
Fifth day, and everybody begins to read. Skip is reading Ilf and Petrov, Sergey – Jack London, I am still with Peres Reverte.
Afternoon the action starts. Today plan – classic Ukrainian borscht! Even with lard and garlic! Dehydrated veggies are a good thing for a long trip – we have carrots and beetroot. Eating borscht, drinking some rum and wine, of course (the supplies of alcohol onboard are limited, bad planning, haha). Turned on some light music – Mamas & Papas and Sinatra, and the Ocean calms down, my favorite 12knots AWS, comfortable heeling, 60 AWA, full sails and gentle waves.
Saw a big cargo. Looked as if it is going straight to us. Called them by VHF, asked not to drown us small 🙂 They answered no way, we see you, altering course to starboard.
Discussing hatches went to the bow to check maybe-leaking hatch. Discovered, that the forward water tank is not closed and the lid is missing. Fifth day! Goofs :))) Took the lid from the aft tank, sealed the aft tank with a piece of cloth:))
Sergey marinated the fly fish with onion. Will try in couple of days.
Half of my watch was chatting with Skip. First watch is dangerous for those who are off, because it is impossible to stop chatting 🙂
April 10, day 6.
Scrambled eggs with cracklings for breakfast. Sergey tried to go to sleep after the morning watch, but came back when he smelled the food.
130 miles a day, not bad! Began to line out the track on the paper chart, it’s more interesting. Playing the real sailors 🙂
Half a day spent sewing the spray hood with Skip. The spray hood needs new velcro. With good music (Jack Johnson, thanks to Fabio for a lot of new music in my collection) this meditation with a needle was very nice. Sailors sometimes have fun strange ways :))
Tried to make a video about my Caribbean winter. Switched on MacBook, copied all the videos from different sources, started to montage – video from the phone became green. Strange. Ok, will sort in out later. Instead tried new iTunes. It was long ago when I was transferring anything from my MacBook last time. The process changed a lot! Just drag-and-drop, no more struggling with synchronization! Happily copied some new music and books to my iPad, hooray! Started Thor Heyerdahl’s “Aku-aku”.
Wind 12-15 kn, 60 AWA, 45 COG, full sails, almost no heeling, almost no waves – another champagne sailing day. The weather forecasts from the mainland are different: one (male) says that the wind will increase and we’ll have some rain, three others (female) – that the weather will be the same. Prefer to trust girls 🙂
For lunch/dinner killed yesterday’s borscht (successfully) and pineapple (no success because it died from the natural reasons before our attempt).
Huge sun dropped from the cloud and hidden behind the horizon at 18-10. Soon we’ll move the watch schedule.
Skip mocks at us – he turned on the old Russian rock music, too nostalgic, impossible to go sleep 🙂 Took some effort to escape – my watch is the hardest one, from 23 to 3. Asked Sergey not to heel the boat and not to spoil the weather and went to bed.
Woke up an hour before my watch because of the heeling and crazy speed 🙂 Went out, helped Sergey to reef, went back to bed, couldn’t sleep more. And all my watch it was reef in, reef out, ease main sheet, trim main sheet… No time to be sleepy 🙂
Last hour was observing the stars. Orange Mars, Saturn to the left, super bright Jupiter, and Scorpion tale between them. Arcturus, Altair, both Ursas… the sky is so different from what we’ve seen when we were sailing from Canaries to Brazil! Learning the skies again. At the end saw two shooting stars, one of them was yellow and slowly crossed half the sky!
It’s getting colder. When we departed from Antigua I didn’t need sleeping bag, couple of days ago I started to sleep under it, now I want to be inside of the bag 🙂 Out.
April 11, day 7.
My morning exercise: reef in, reef out. It was a cloud with gusts up to 38 kn under its edge and 15 kn after. 1,5 hour of having fun with sails. No time for breakfast!
Took salt water shower while the water temperature is at least 24C (which for me is already cold after Caribbean 27C). The sun is still warming up (sometimes too much), so it’s easy to dry after SPA procedures 🙂
Sergey cooks deruny (a kind of potato pancakes), because Potatoes Must Die. With cracklings and onion and cabbage salad, yummy!
The wind is 15-20 kn beamrich, it allows us to go straight to Azores. The forecasts tell that it will be calm in couple of days, will try to avoid it.
Sad day – we ran out of wine. Only rum left, but warm rum with warm coke is terrible. Hello sober days, I missed you!
After dinner discussed poetry. A week without land affects us badly :)))
At the sunset (18-05 Caribbean tonight) Skip was smoking pipe, fluffy clouds at the horizon were golden, and I was going to sleep 🙂 The moon wanes very fast, visible only on the morning watch. Soon will disappear for several days. The forecast for tomorrow is same 15-20 kn SSE. Out.