We helped Trusty’s proper skipper Lasse (my dad) start his vacation by going up Götaälv up to Vänersborg. One and a half day of motoring up river, not that far away from motoring over the Atlantic and back if I may say. Being back on the water felt a bit strange, one realizes that one miss Trusty, sure I love having a fast computer, stable fast internet and such but as soon as I step on deck life gets less complicated. No job plications, no deciding what to do next, just thinking about the next waypoint..

Damn we really need to get going on all those moving pictures that needs editing and all those pictures not resizing and uploading themselves. Well.. Back to reality. Catch you soon!

Giving you a small teaser while we clean and wash and learn how to edit moving pictures. We’ve a bit tired after landing in Sweden and have to mentally build up some energy to sum up the Trip.

Here are some pictures for you all to look at while we get our stuff together.

After a rough, sail the last 48 hours with a gale trying to get our mood down we’re now safe in Stenungsund. We’ll give you a big update with pictures and how the last trip from the Azores to Sweden turned out. Tomorrow we’ll sleep in and relax.

We’re spending a night in Falmouth, just to stock up on diesel, water and such. All ok and you’ll get a big post with all that’s happened when we get to Sweden. We’re planning on being there sometime around the 26th..

Catch you all!

We’re quite slow but we’re having a good time out here on the big ocean. Yesterday we did an avrage of 2 knots and that would put us in Sweden late october but the wind is picking up a bit.

Catch you later!

Now we’re leaving Horta for Sweden. Let’s hope that our weather will be good. We’ll try and keep in touch on the blog as much as we have the energy too.

Next stop Sweden!

I’ve talked about comparing the two crossings from west to east and here we go. Last time I crossed from west to east we had a set date we needed to be in Sweden. Because of that we left early, in April witch is a bit too early. Heading north, we sailed into a tropical wave (developing tropical storm) and had some serious winds. Not having a reliable way of knowing weather and keeping in contact with shore, we had to try to play by ear. Sure, we could get weather faxes in a bad resolution but they were not anything as good as the grib-files I can download now. We had another problem as well, salt. We didn’t realize that we’d accumulated as much salt as we had in our mattresses and pillows. As the temperature dropped, it got more and more damp inside and thus making it even more uncomfortable. Hitting bad weather early meant that we had a faster transition from warm Caribbean to cold North Atlantic and combined with the salt situation it took quite a toll on us. We ended up a bit more north then than we did this time around getting more wind. About two weeks out a tropical storm started to chase us; Ana the same name that the first one that hit the US mainland earlier in May. For a couple of days it looked like Ana would hit us with some serious weather but she didn’t. Being only two we had a lot less continuous sleep and where constantly a bit sluggish from sleep deprivation.

With the weather we’ve had this crossing it’s been a completely different experience. The big storm ended before we even left St. Martin and we’ve stayed south of any big weather patterns. Only down side is that we had to motor quite a bit to get here but I’d rather do that than just drift around in storms. The sat-phone has made communication much easier and we’ve kept contact with not just shore but other sailors that we’ve met during the crossing. Being able to know somewhat to expect all the time is a good feeling. Another good thing that I’ve felt was good was the ais, knowing that there was at least one cargo ship somewhere close all the time made the crossing much more relaxed than the last one. Knowing where they’re heading and how close they will pass is even better. I must say, taking the guesswork out of the small dots on the horizon (that will grow and become mountains of steel) is a good improvement. Conclusions then? Technology helps but they make you depend more on the problems of electricity in boats. It’s sure worth dealing with these problems and I’d gladly do that all again just to have the possibility of a good weather forecast mid ocean and being able to tell my family that I’m fine. That in mind tough I feel that the last time was more exotic, more of a real effort in a strange way. This was a leisure cruise that lasted 26 days and that in itself is a feat but comparing it to the first time it wasn’t something one brags about over a beer with other sailors. Crossing in this way sure was a better crossing but was it a better adventure?

Action photo from the big sea!

Our butterfly setup.

Aries doing some hard work.

Mid Atlantic dawn.

Woooo, lots of sails. Not perfect main but it works.

Motoring. Yup..

How to save diesel 101..

Small update before the next big post. Did a car-rental today and took a trip around Faial and looked at some landscape. Here comes a bunch of pictures for you. Both the crossing and from our trip in the car.

Road to nowhere..

Pico in the background…

Yeah, one of those..

Bad picture of amazing beach..

Yeah, it’s the same island, different textures 😉

COW… Yeah Cow!

Mmm, more cows!

Horta, one of those white dot’s is Trusty.

Yeah, THE Lighthouse..

That one, from the ocean.

Pico and my new friend, there are a few cows here…

Yeah, landscape and stuff.

I’ve heard that there is a relative between one’s sanity and the number of exclamation marks that end a sentence. I can surely see that point as we’re tied up in the marina at a small pontoon after a good last day. Dropping under a hundred yesterday made me realize that most sane people don’t do this. Why anyone would put themselves in a small boat and bobb across a big ocean risking storms, collisions, freak waves and/or icebergs, not to mention the risk of being stranded without fresh-water miles from civilization is beyond comprehension. Sure this is not the first time I’ve done that and it will probably not be the last time (hell, we even have one more long one before getting home), some people would claim I’m not sane any way but that’s up to them. I honestly don’t know why, sure I want to travel and see places and sailing is a good way of getting there. Seeing land after over three weeks of ocean kind of messes with your mind. First of all, how the hell did they find these small islands, it’s not like the Canaries where you almost can see them from Africa on a good day or the Caribbean. We’re talking about a couple of small volcano remnants about 800 miles from anything. Second, why did they start living there?

Sure, the Wikipedia page might tell me the truth but one start to realize that most of these places were found and settled by lunatics. Crazy people doing crazy stuff. Damn, now I’m going to find me that shower, become a new man and grab me a beer.

Now the game begins, we have wind pushing us in the right direction, we have enough diesel to take us to Horta and we have only about 200 NM left!
Yesterday we had dolphins playing around Trusty all day (almost) and made good mileage so overall it was not the worst day on this crossing. Now we have the waves from behind and it’s a rocky ride. Not that fun but hey at least we’re getting somewhere!

Time to start sharpening the razor, digging out my land clothes and get ready to become human again. When we reach Horta we’re going to meet up some of the boats we’ve talked to over the radio and that’ll be fun. After that, it’s Trusty fixing time and we’ll fix all that didn’t work during our crossing.

A catamaran we’ve been keeping in touch with actually bought 30L of diesel from another yacht yesterday, I don’t want to ask what they paid for it.

N 37 56
W 033 10