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