Kiwi crossing Atlantic

Captain Sanja, Dutch Jelle, and Dutchess Eva left Mindelo and set sail for Martinique about one hour ago. Co-owner and officially acknowledged weakling Philipp stayed on land and is on his way to his Mama. The boat is tested, inspected, cleared in and out and equiped with everything it needs to nourish its crew and to withstand even the most awkward situations at sea. Sea state and weather conditions are notoriously harmless, and maybe even pleasant at times, during this time of the year in the area in question. It is only the mental strength of the crew that will be challenged, otherwise no further excitements are expected during the approximately 18 days at sea. Potential updates via sattelite phone will be relayed by me on this blog. Good luck Kiwi!

Christmas

Since some weeks now, we have enjoyed fly fish landings on our deck (and further to our frying pan). A unlucky squid ended its life on the pilot house window just before Christmas.

This picture could be taken in Svalbard (if the person in the picture would be wearing a survival suit). Sao Nicolau is one of the windward islands on Cabo Verde.

Jelle and Eva flew to Sao Vincente to crew Sanja on Atlantic crossing. Christmas was well spend daysailing around Sao Vincente and St Lucia, learning the boat to the new crew and enjoying some really courgeous anchorages.  The highlight was the amazing snorkeling around uninhabited St Lucia, with spottings of all kinds of fearytail greatures such as morey eels, rays, sharks and turtles!

 

 

 

 

Philipp greets a surviving ham at Christmas eve. The Christmas dinner in Kiwi was a fusion of Bavarian potato salad, carlig hummus and dutch cookies.

...and here is some mind flow written during the crossing

African sunset

First tuna!

Birthdaybabe with her cake

It is big

Ocean crossing is close to space travel, it takes long time, the sea is huge and devastatingly desolated. Even if you know it, it surprises you how large distances are, how much water there is and how little anything else. You are very dependent on being capable of helping your self. Nothing important best not break now. If the rigg fails, what do we do? You take a good care of the rigg! And the engine, and the electric system, and each other.

Watch keeping

Philipp sleeps from seven in the evening until one at night. I sleep from one to seven. In addition, there is a bit of sleeping going on during the day and a lot of it during the watches too. Sailing is getting easier and easier with the trade winds. The watch has to do minor adjustments: one reef in or out, five degrees port or startport, up or down with the baby sail. Checking the course, checking how the wind rudder is doing, checking if there are any other ships to worry about.. and there are no other ships. It's just us here.

Salt

The deck, reeling, sails, ropes are all covered with a thick salt crust. You can not see through the windows anymore. The front deck is a danger zone for getting splashed by the Atlantic ocean at any time. We wear some cloth outside, inside the boat we try to be naked, not to make all interior salty and thus damp. Rain would be great to rinse us a bit. At the Sahara latitudes, no hope for that. I've never seen sunsets like here: sun desapearing all yeallow passing through completely colorless sky. The atmosphere is dry.

A roller coaster

Kiwi is 11 tons of metal. For the ocean that is nothing. We are tossed around, she heels and rolls constantly in the ah so irregular swell. Trade winds mean a lot of sailing with the headsails only. Without the mainsail we are much less stable. Doing the dishes, making the meals, using the toilet, even sleeping, requires quite some acrobatics and muscle work and patience. It can make you go mad, it keeps you fit, it makes you really really tired.

Talking of getting grazy

We have a training hour in the mornings including violent dancing to funk. We scream and sing as loud as you only can do in the middle of the ocean. We hear voices mixed sounds of water passing by the hull: we hear children crying, talking, cats miauwing, Kiwi herself has a low and satisfied hum. Thinks she's happy sailing.

Capo Verde

It's hard to believe, but somehow we've made it to Cap Verde in Africa : ). Tired but happy, after seven-day crossing from the Canaries, here are first impressions from Palmera on Sal.

La Palma

The meters of elevation hiked in La Palma eventually pay off as aeroplane views of the clouds. The elevation profiles of innocent strolls become impressive, with easily a kilometer up and down. Luckily temperatures mercifully drop with elevation and make it somehow doable!

The famous star sky of La Palma - the islands is a hot spot for both hobby astronomers and huge science telescopes. This picture is taken at Refugio de los Roques - a open hut up high up at the mountain ridge.

Canarian pine and the impressive wall of mountain chain of Caldera de Taburiente

Teide of Tenerife in sun rise. It's a lot of night down here: darkness falls before 7 pm and it's dark until seven in the morning. While hiking (or sailing) one needs to adjust the rythm of day and night to these hours. Something what with the help of the sun and no artificial light is surprisingly easy.

One of the cooler goats.

Another Santa Cruz (de La Palma)

The long process of leaving Tenerife is finally completed. Kiwi made her way to the naboring island of La Palma after almost a month on Tenerife. There was too much interesting hiking, snorkeling and surfing to do, we simply saw no reason to sail on. The day we finally set sail in Santa Cruz de la Tenerife, we ended up lowering them again after ten miles and staying for couple of more days in a dream anchorage of all times: Ensenada de Antequera. Finally a lonely anchorage on an (almost) uninhabited beach, surrounded by scenic volcanic cliffs. We could swim ashore and spend hours in snorkeling with cuttlefish, puffer fish, parrot fish, trumpet fish and other marine freaks. All struggle of the trip and bad moods were forgotten - this is what we had sailed for! All evenings spend in the swimming pool in Skattøra to learn to swim were also all paid of : ).

The strong disliking Philipp has developed for overnight passages and crossings with big waves, drove us to the solution of sending him home for Christmas. Sanja will cross the Atlantic crewed by Jelle and Eva (or Duke and the Dutchess, as we call them) , while Philipp will gather strengths in Europe and reunites with Kiwi in Caribbean.

Tenerife ... the island of dreams

In addition to the minor readjustments in the crew, preparations for the Atlantic crossing are full on. Kiwi has finally a manual bilge pump (!), the water tanks are being washed and filled with famously delicious La Palma water, the lazy jacks are renewed, Sanja makes a daily trip to the masthead and some serious sound design work is being done to make Kiwi's kitchen as silent as possible. The passage to Cape Verde will start after the heavy southerly weather has passed. Here are couple of pics from Tenerife, La Palma will follow!

Tenerife is perfect for downhill hikers like us. Island is 3700 meters high, you can spend days walking down the hill : )

Tenerife is like cheese -  picture from lava tube cave Cueva de Samara

Grazy nice valley of Barranco Seco

Cruising sucks (special blog entry for our friends stuck in various offices and darkness and coldness of the Nordic winter)

- It's hard to sleep in a moving boat

- The sofas in the boat are real uncomfortable

- You never have time to arrive anywhere before it's time to move on

- Philipp is seasick

- We are stuck together in small space for a year and get on each others nerves

- There is never a plan for more than 24 hours ahead, and if there is a plan, it will certainly chance

- Life is constant cleaning (there is no place for mess in a boat)

- Marinas cost a lot of money, leaving your boat anchored might be the last time you see it

- Fellow cruisers are mostly 30 years older than us, have money and mostly feel like they need to advise us

- There is always something to fix on the boat, sea and salt break and corrode everything 

- The world is full of people we don't know

Tenerife

Mountain of El Teide and siskokset kuin ilvekset (sisters like a pair of lynx)

...everybody knows where Tenerife is so no point to put out a map here. The crossing from Porto Santo was pleasant, we had good winds too and quite some thunder in the air to keep us alert and awake. Thanks for Vit for breaking all records in watch keeping (especially in early hours) and for good companies during the crossing.

Concurrent with Kiwi, Laura and Helvi (mum) landed on the island to visit us for a week. At this point, Philipp was kicked out from the boat for some hiking on the nabouring island La Gomera. The mother - daughter quality time was spend by exploring the surprisingly varied landscapes of Tenerife on small hikes and extensive road triping. Renting a car is something other cruisers seem to do at every harbor. We are normally too cheap for such luxury. On Tenerife with huge elevation differences it totally made sense.

It turns out that Tenerife offers a lot of grazy amazing possibilities for hiking too. After our dear guests flew home today, we decided to use the freedom of not having to hurry anywere, and planned another week of exploring the island before moving on.

Suitcase full of presents from Finland!

Laura and mum tried beach life at the city beach of Santa Cruz (the sand is brought from Sahara, there is no yellow sand on this vulcanic island)

The great pine forests of Tenerife -picture taken at 2000 m altitude looking down to the cloud tops . The vulcano peak of Teide left of the sun

...and here are some pics from our stay in Lisbon (hiding from hurricane Natalie)

Collecting rocks at Ursa beach West of Lisbon . Gerald became our most frequent quest by visiting Kiwi already the second time.

Anchoring in Lisbon and waiting for storms and calms to pass were very social. There was barbeque or drinks to join in one of the boats every evening. We also got to know some exotic cruisers in our age (a typical cruiser is well retired [nothing wrong with that : )]), which was refresing. In the picture we are anchoring longside (!) with s/y Princess Mia with Martin who helped us to weld Kiwi's anchor chain. The chain had started to be rather symbolic in places. We also made the chain longer to be able to easier anchor in deep (20 m) anchorages.

Drying soaked shoes at the Westernmost point of mainland Europe.  Capo da Roca that is. The best thing to do while outwaiting a storm is to go biking, right?

Our closest nabour in the anchorage in Tejo River was an abandoned submarine

Sailing in Lisbon river

Nerdy or not, but Lisbon aquarium was visited by the Kiwians three times (!) during the last weeks. The picture feautures Philipp's new power animal The Moon Fish. This rock like freek fish has been observed in real life several times since we arrived to Iberia. Talking about power animals; Sigrid: Gerald says thar hermit crabs are not living in solitude and that they eat extrements.

Porto Santo (Madeira)

In the darkness of last night we arrived, all unplanned, to Porto Santo, a baby brother of Madeira. We decided to come here for refueling, recovering and waiting for winds. After patient waiting of suitable winds for two weeks in Lisbon, we finally started crossing towards the Canary islands last Thursday. After two days of wind, the calms hit us resulting in fair amount of motoring (pooring and hurts the ears). It's amazing how the sea actually can be completely dead calm with almost no waves 300 miles offshore! We also learned that anchoring in sewage water (which we did in Lisbon) can be stubid and result in stomach sicknesses wich while far offshore can be problematic. While Sanja was skippering the bucket, Philipp and our visiting yach master Vit navigated us to this lonely island. Funny but all of us sleep better in a moving boat these days, than in a calm marina, therefore the trip continues to Teneriff already tomorrow.

The red spot, thats is Kiwi

Once more Nazaré

Finally yesterday by dawn we departed Nazare with heavy hearts and a stomach feeling of somehow not quite being ready to go. Here are couple of pictures from the so far best stop for us. Nazare was good for us perhaps because we stayed for several weeks, did a lot of work on Kiwi and got to know some really friendly people staying at the boat yard. Also Nazare boat yard is a funky mixture of surfers, stranded cruisers and local fisherman, has an interesting run down appearance, doesnt perhaps invite shiny fiber glass, but rather rusty steel boats and other vessels with real stories and charm.

Our epic night sailing from Nazare to Cascais (Lisbon) deserves another post, another day : )

Philipp stretching muscles between sandblastings with fantastic Le Bloom game we got as a present from our French friends, Kiwi in her tent in the back ground

So if we thought our dinghy is heavy... a traditional boat from the area from the times before breakwater

Famous Nazare waves, on a calm day

The Sisters, ruling the boatyard

Boatyard .(telakalla)

Holding the safety line for the sand diver insde Kiwi-wrap

Beautiful blasted steel on the starport, old paint on the port

Going through the annual maintenance of Kiwi in a foreign country turns out to be truly a very interesting part of our voyage. Simply hanging out on a Portuguese boatyard with local fisherman and fellow stranded sailors would be. Getting equipment and supplies organized is an adventure of its own : ). 

Nazare was chosen as location for lifting up Kiwi because of the cheap price of the crane. By coincidence, there happens to be a guy living in one of the boats, who we could rent equipment for sandblasting with an affordable price. We took the decision to blast everything under waterline down to steel. Anyone who knows about steel and corrosion understands that this is a rather courageous and very delicate operation were success is dependent on

-right timing (there should be as little time as possible between blasting and painting)

-right humidity (prior painting the steel must be clean and dry)

- good quality of the sand, primer, workforce (more important than what you do with a steel hull is 

how well you do it)

How successful the operation will be, remains to be seen with time. If nothing else, we have learned a lot! I myself have spent some weeks on boatyards in Finland and Norway every single year of my life. This year’s boatyard session is really special for following reasons:

-        -Boat maintenance work makes so much more sense when the boat is sailed daily and not only for holidays

-        -Temperatures constantly above 15 degrees and lack of rain makes everything sooo much easier. (It is actually possible to follow the instructions on a paint jar.)

-        -Having all the time needed for the job makes a big difference. Some (ex-)sailors seem to have stayed on this boatyard for several years. If we need one more day to Finnish, it doesn’t really matter anything.

 Nazare happens to be a very beautiful village at the coast. The unexpected and sad news of Philipp’s father passing away last week shadows our stay. We find ourselves missing our families and friends especially much in this random corner of the world.