It’s slow right now. We have winds around 5 m/s from north east witch means we can sail toward Trinidad doing about 4 knots or we can try and reach for Martinique hoping to sail at least above 3. I’m being a bit careful right now, we could hoist all our sails and swosh away but since I can’t really rely on furling the genua I don’t want to use it because of the squalls passing every now and then. Same with our main, I don’t want to set it unreefed because it’s a hassle getting it down if a squall hits can easily become a popular youtube clipp called something in the lines of “Hahaha that idiot breaks his mast and then falls over the railing” and I don’t see a point of becoming a youtubeceleb.. So safety first right.. Well we have quite a lot of main up as it is and as the waves rock us it pump the little wind there is out of it in a loud BANG! We have lines to prevent the boom from moving but it doesn’t really matter when the sail throws it self in the wrong direction.

BANG, but it’s not all bad, today we’re 620 miles out from Martinique, it’s Lucia and we’re going to celebrate with Pepparkakor, glögg (sangria with raisins in) and BANG.. sorry, another cupcake since it’s now week number three!
My plan right now BANG! is to sail until we have something like BANG 400 NM left and then start up our trusted iron sail. The one that BANG! drinks diesel and spits out power and pollution. Yup, I’m going to motor-sail the last bit toward paradise, quite fitting as we started our trip with a lot of motor-sailing.

At least then I won’t have a power problem.
Good day to you sir and if I don’t catch you, good afternoon, good evening and good night!

Yup, I am!
The odds of me buying a winning lottery ticket are not worse than me making a joke about getting a fly-fish trough one of the ceiling windows while we keep open to ventilate Trusty. Guess what! It happened. So now I’m buying a lotto ticket.. 🙂

The Atlantic ocean is big! It’s really big.. We’re feeling like we’re getting closer now we’re down to 920 something and we like to pretend so but then I looked at the legs we’ve done before. Sweden to Inverness 500 something, Cork to Coruña 500 something, Porto to Porto Santo 550 something, you get the picture. We’re further out from Martinique than we were when we started the other big legs. But now we’re feeling like we’re getting close. During a normal summer vacation one might think that heading from Stockholm to Gotland is a big trip or Gothenburg to lets say Copenhagen. Now find a map and measure up those distances. Yup, not even close to what we right now are looking at as nearly there.

But to compare today could have been a daysail between Gothenburg and Læsø, the ocean was blue and the wind was not much to be happy for but there are some differences. For example, less traffic, 26.5 in the water, I was wearing swimtrunks all day and finally we’re not getting Tuborg tonight, no red sausage either.. Just another night-watch and six hours of sleep (gently rolled by the waves (yeah right..)), back up for another 3 hours of empty ocean and six hours downtime during the day and repeat. For at least 8-10 more days..
But time is shrinking, today was not much different from 3 days ago when I had the same watch schedule, sure there were some differences, like a fish inside of Trusty, but none that really mattered. I finished reading Thief of Time today (by Terry Pratchett) and I think they’re stealing our used time, giving it to someone who needs it more. Read the book and you’ll understand.

Until next time, smile and wave.. just smile and wave.

Ok not precisely but close. 1028 NM left or something like that.

Much have happened since last time, we’ve started sailing for real again. I could write miles about doing 6-7 knots underneath the stars in the moonlight, the ocean swirling past in a blur but I’m not that poetic so I’ll just tell you it’s great.
We have a problem tough… Seaweed, orange, looks like small bushes and floats around the surface all over the place. In the Sargasso sea (close to Bermuda I think) it’s usual but out here 1000 nautical miles away from land it feels kind of strange. Our problem is that we catch it, on our windsteer paddle and especially on the little propeller (can it be called a propeller even if it doesn’t really propel anything? hmm it propels the line that drives the generator maybe) at the end of the line from our generator. All of a sudden we stop charging even if we’re doing about 6 knots witch is strange. So we look back and the line is not turning anymore. Not that strange because at the end it’s a couple of kilos worth of seaweed completely covering the propeller. Fun.. Nope not if you have to drag up that line, untwist it and clean the mess and then drop it back in a couple of times a day.

Today as we were gybeing our genua furler got stuck and wouldn’t move at all. We tried everything we could figure out and since I’ve been up Trusty’s mast out on the Atlantic once before and probably still have some hidden bruises (12 years ago) on my arms we skipped that part and just secured the sail, hoisted our mainsail with a couple of reefs in it and called it a day. So now I don’t want any big wind changes.. Why? Because I’m not that thrilled of turning up against the wind and waves to reef right now, those things are as big as houses now. Not the small red with white details but rather the ones you find in rougher parts of town.

But hey! We’re doing fine, a little tired because of the wavepatterns but other than that just fine.
Our speed record so far on our GPS witch by the way is filtered quite hard (a must when you’re sailing out at sea with big waves) is now 8.8 knots at that point our generator line becomes airborne and flies in a cloud of spray, if the sun is in the right place it makes it own rainbow.

Rainbows, that is almost what I named this post when I started writing it in my mind at 2:35 local time (utc-2) staring into the moonlit scenery around Trusty. We kind of see them all the time. When we hit a wave surfing in the morning we get a rainbow next to us. When the rainclouds chase us in the afternoon, how do we know they’re rainclouds, rainbows..
It’s’ like we’re cruising in a bad My Little Pony video, sunsets, rainbows and ocean-spray. Sunsets by the way are spectacular in pink, gold and all the pastellish colors in the world, could almost be described as poetic as the moonlight. But hey, you have to get someone artsy out here to properly document it. Or… do the trip yourself and find out 😉

Until next time, Live long and prosper and may the force with you be..

We have popped our Cava, had our cupcake and now it feels so much better. The wind is slowly picking up and we have gybed and are aiming a bit south of Martinique now.

Yesterday we had sailed more than we had left on our GPS so we figured that we were somewhere in the middle. So we took our small Cava bottles and sat down in the sun. I sprayed Cava on Trusty and into the ocean and drank what was left of the small 30ml bottle. It wasn’t too bad but to be honest I’m not really a white wine person..

We saw a boat too yesterday, it was big, had a red spinnaker and competed in the ARC, they called us up on the VHF and they were happy about getting some wind too.

The moon is full right now and when the clouds part it’s almost as bright as daylight, we can sit outside and read or make shadowfigures in the moonlight witch make the nightwatches a bit easier. There have been nights without moonlight and with a heavy cloud coverage, those nights you’re in complete darkness, it’s like standing in room without windows.

But hey we’re getting closer! In (hopefully) less than two weeks we’re sipping rum in Martinique eating baguettes and trying to speak french..

About three hours after I posted it stopped raining, the wind stopped as well so we spent the rest of the day drifting. As the sun came up and it grew a bit warmer some of us red and half slept inside the cabin and some of us used our small gardena bottle to shower. You can get quite clean and feel a lot fresher only using 5 dl of water. A good thing when we don’t have that big water tanks on Trusty.

Apparently we’re afloat in the middle of the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) fleet, not that we’ve seen anything except for some flying fish (btw we picked up a big one on our deck, pictures coming) and some small birds that zooms around between the waves. The ARC must be more upset than we are right now, they are racing across the Atlantic, they probably go trough 20 sail changes a day trying to sail in the right direction and reef down when the hard winds pass and shake loose their reefs as the wind dies. As long as we’re sailing in the western 180 degrees on the compass we’re quite fine here on Trusty. We need our energy to complain about things, not trying to squeeze 0,3 knots more of the none existing wind. We just change the size of our genua using a furling system depending on the wind strength and let Aries (our self steer) sort the direction out.
The first thing that we can run out of is gas for the stove and about that time i guess it’s our patience that will run out, after that we’re going to be low on candy (going to happen quite close to the gas and patience) and after that water, diesel and last of all corned beef tin-cans tough it might be a tie with the chopped tomatoetin-cans.. So we’re going to have to rely on Portwine, corned-beef and dry bread-crackers to survive on if something happens. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that shall we?

The best feeling right now when it comes to the sailing part of the trip is when the winds feel it’s ok to cooperate, then the rocking slows down, Trusty stiffens up under the sail-pressure and you start to hear the sound of tiny bubbles around her. That occurs between 4,8-5,5 knots and all of a sudden we’re doing 6 knots down wind, picking up speed as we surf along with the waves. It’s a great feeling speeding trough the night with the bioluminessent alge kicking up light patches around and in our wake.
We are almost halfway there and then it’s an other cupcake and we bought some small cava bottles so we have one bottle each to celebrate with (to be popped and consumed when one goes on free watch for six hours) but we haven’t decided if we should celebrate halfway across from the canaries or when we’re in the middle of the ocean. The big bottle of proper Champagne is going to be our anchor drink for when we’re safely moored in a bay next to some palm threes.

My bunk is in the bow section of the hull and that has it’s ups and downs, both literary and figuratively speaking. Waves can make my life fun while trying to sleep, I’ve only slapped my face in the celling once and that was on Biscay but my legs are often experiencing zero gravity as we dive into a valley after passing a big wave. Figuratively it’s good to be away from the kitchen, all the cutlery, cups and pots can make a bit of a noise when we rock and roll all over the place. On the other hand the bow wave is quite loud sometimes and that can be a downside. Most of the time we sleep with earplugs to cut out the sound, at least mentally.We try to wrap towels around plates, cups and pots to stop them from making noise but after a couple of days of Atlantic waves it’s back to the percussion solo in our galley.

Well time to get up into the cockpit and look at an empty horizon for tree hours.

Today it’s raining, not that fun when you’re in a not too big of a boat crossing the ocean. Usually the person on watch can sit out in the cockpit and come in sometimes to look at our small AIS computer but now you don’t want to be outside in the rain so you spend most of your time inside and look out at the horizon once every 20 minute or so.
Crossing the Atlantic during trade-wind season (not that we actually have felt the power of the all mighty trade-winds that much) is not a hard thing to do when it comes to sailing. That’s the easy part, just hoist a couple of cloths above your boat and you’re moving. The real challenge is the waiting game. We’re on day 12 now and we’re not even halfway there, it’s the time factor that’s the hard part, the part where you actually sail the same distance you had coming down to the canaries in one go.

So now we wait and try to make our days go by as fast as possible and there are a couple of ways to shorten the time.
1. Sleep a lot, and then I mean sleep every hour you’re not on watch and/or eating. Works for a while but you tend to get a bit of a headache of to much sleep and not enough water.
2. Read a book. Rather read 20 and than kind of gives you a headache too when your brain has to process the amount of words you fill it with.
3. Games!! Works if the other two are not doing listnumbers one or two. Plus the boredom of knowing all the answers to all the questions in your trivia game because you’ve played it too much.
4. Fun small things to celebrate, like that you saw a wave that looked just like the one in yaws or that that cloud looks strikingly as the ones in Perfect Storm. Brighten up your time with a soda-can, cupcake or a piece of candy.

Yesterday in the evening the wind changed direction and died down and our VMG (speed towards the Caribbean (velocity made good)) dropped way below what’s even remotely funny so we had a party. No alcohol, we just got high on sugar from a soda can each and blasted party music on high volume while we jumped around in the cockpit looking at the dark clouds in the sunset. We had a good time before tucking in for the night (two at a time leaving one lonely person stargazing) and all of a sudden it had become today. Today it’s raining, it’s not that fun, it reminds me of Scotland and we should be listening to steelbands now not a squeeky wersion of Amazing Grace.

But smile, we’re only 1575 miles out from Martinique right now 🙂

Ok, todays post was going to be massive one about all the mileage we’ve done and how the trade-winds just keep pushing us toward the white sand, palm trees, rum, calypso, soca, reggae, Carib and fresh fruits. Yup, yesterday was a great day, the way trade-wind sailing were supposed to be. 5-6 knots with the wind in our back, sun between small puffy clouds and we even sat down with a beer each enjoying the good feeling.

The day turned into night and we still did ok, I was getting my hopes up, we could be there in 24 days total maybe, my mind was telling me. Then came dawn and with it a couple of rainclouds, the rain battered the wind away and for a while we just drifted around again. Are we going to have to make a sacrifice again?
Let’s hope that Kraken or what ever restless soul underneath us is satisfied by the two small Flying-fishes that came to rest on our deck during the night. After returning them to the sea the wind kind of is picking up again, let’s hope it stays this time.

Well we’re still alive and Trusty is doing a fine job getting us there. Still no Icebergs and well nothing much to see at all actually, only a Japanese fishing vessel out here fishing at a dept of a couple of thousand meters.
Until I post again, live slow, sail fast!! Or as we say on Trusty right now, sail slow, no power for your mp3player 😉

The GPS just told me we only had 2000 NM left witch is kind of bad.. We should have passed that 2 days ago but hey thats life.
Our last entry was kind of a downer but that’s life sometimes but it’s getting better. Yesterday after I posted we had a cupcake to celebrate being out at sea for a whole week, that lifted our spirits. A cupcake bought at the local supermarket, full of E-numbers, bad sugar and fats and colorants but it was AMAZING!! Ones culinary preferences always tend to get a bit simpler out at sea, corned-beef, spam and tincan-ravioli is almost haute cusine right now.

Today we rigged our sail back into trade-wind mode (two spinnaker poles spreading them out wide) and now we’re aiming closer to Brazil than Cap Verde at least, now all we need is 35 degrees more to the north with our course and we’ll hit the sweet spot.

Oooh while writing this it went down to 1999…
I’ll catch you guys in a couple of days and then I hope I have some good news!

I thought of making a good post today but then I woke up this morning with no wind and felt not that motivated at all. We’ll since I had something in mind I can try and see how it turns out. This is our week with some inspiration of Bare Naked Ladies – One Week..

It’s been One week since we left Mogan, set our sails up and sailed into the sunset. Six days since the awful night when we drifted around puking our guts out. Four days since that big cruise-ship, made us feel like a small rubber ducky. Two days since we sprung a leak, nothing bad but I destroyed half our candy.
Yesterday we all felt quite low and it’s still two weeks ’til we even get close… Two weeks until we even get close…

Ok so now for the explaining. After being a quite dry little ship Trusty all of a sudden wanted to start leaking again. I say again because she used to, at least until this winter. Now we’ve been sailing her with no water inside for quite a while (since July 20 to be more exact) and all of a sudden we had water in our bilges. Of course the bag that contained one of our secret candy stashes where in one of the watery compartments… Well we just pumped it all out and now we have to pump a little water out of our home every day. Like it used to be when boats were boats and men were men, I mean the good old days.

We’ll now it’s time to look outside and check for any close boats. By the way, we were passed by a big catamaran called 1 + 1 witch is a quite funny name for a boat with two hulls (19 m long 9 m wide in total that thing must have been huge). It swooshed past us doing 10-11 knots and they’ll be in the Caribbean in two weeks tops.. Bugger… We’ll at least I was the only one that didn’t puke, Martina want it to be stated to the record that it was the first tie EVER she was seasick.

It’s still quite a sail to get over the Atlantic but the distance is slowly ticking down. We’ve been out on the sea since Saturday around 16 and are now getting used to never having a steady surface to put anything down. Just living and moving around in Trusty is quite a workout and cooking, going to the bathroom and reading take a bit of an effort too.

So what have we been up to then? Yesterday night a big cruise-ship (MSC Poesia) past us after sundown and it looked amazing with all the lights in the dark. We could see it lighting up the clouds at 25 NM out and it didn’t move in the waves, just tore away at 19 knots while we bobbed like a small little rubber ducky!
Anything else? Not much, the ocean shifts color with the sun. clouds and wind-strength and the sky (when we spot it between gray clouds) is as blue as ever.
Not to shabby place to be until your realize that you have 17-20 more days ahead of you.
But I wouldn’t trade it for the x-mass food season that you live with working in the restaurant business this time of year. /The rubberduckie crew.