The Atlantic Magic

As we head into the darkness of our first night out on the Atlantic Ocean, the waves are rolling behind us. With every one of them, you can feel Kujira’s skinny ass being lifted up before getting an acceleration as we surf down the wave. It is crucial to keep the whale perpendicular to the swell if we want to avoid a very unpleasant feeling of being rolled over. In reality, the waves, despite being around 3 meters, are still too small and not steep enough to present a real danger for us. Yet, with the mizzen out and over sheeted, Kujira is quite difficult to keep under control and Neco, our autopilot, struggles too much to keep him in line. That is why I find myself helming all evening until 1am. Once things have settled down a little, Kim takes over for her night shift. Not everything is negative though. For a start, we make really good progress and for the first and nearly only time we manage to achieve more than 140Nm in 24 hours. We also gain in confidence and experience. Those first 24 hours are a baptism of fire. It could have scared the crap out of us and seriously jeopardised our project but it is quite the contrary. Certainly Kim is seasick and a little afraid, but she was also afraid in the Med by 15 knots of winds and 0.5 meter swell. More importantly, we realise once again how the whale reveals his true power in difficult situations. We feel like we made the right choice to rescue him from his miserable life in captivity in the port of La Grande Motte. The cockpit is cozy and keeps us incredibly dry and oblivious to the howling wind; even with a questionable sail plan, Kujira doesn’t get tossed around too much. In fact, stronger wind usually means an increase in stability, unless we are going dead downwind, but that is a story for later…

We are also using this crossing as a rehearsal for the Atlantic crossing. One of our most critical pieces of equipment I have very little experience with, is our IridiumGo, our satellite Internet for getting weather updates and email. The technology is nearly 40 years old and it is dead obvious that it is another company suffering from the Nokia syndrome: being the absolute leader in a market, therefore not investing, evolving and innovating until it is too late and your company or product is doomed to a slow death.

IridiumGo, the modem is about the size of 500g of butter but at 1200 euros it is far more expensive, even compared to top quality New Zealand butter. It has a screen, not a touch screen, with the resolution of a Nokia. One antenna on the side which needs to be lifted to turn on the device and 2 buttons which functions are still a mystery to me and unlike Nokia, you can not even play snake on it.

Next you need a subscription, 130 euros a month for unlimited data, or rather all the data you can try and hope to use. As a matter of fact, you won’t be watching YouTube, or reading the news or even chatting on WhatsApp. The theoretical data transfer speed is 2.4kb/s…

2.4kb/s

2.4kb/s!!!

To put that in perspective, the old clickity clunky phone line modem from the late 90’s was going at 56kb/s. Asking anyone in the developed world to surf the internet with such a modem would nowadays probably be qualified as torture by the international court of justice in The Hague. So, trying to open a news webpage with the IridiumGo would take between 2 and 5 hours, and that is if nothing else is trying to be uploaded or downloaded at the same time. Therefore, all you can do is use 2 of the 3 apps that have been designed specifically for the IridiumGo, by what must have been a middle school student. One is to receive and send email while the other one is to download grib files, which are primitive weather files. Fortunately, these primitive files can be read by less primitive apps.

Now that you understand what you can or can not do, all that is left, is to get it to work. The modem takes a really long time to connect to the necessary amount of satellites and you can be sure that your connection will be interrupted repeatedly at the most random and annoying time, like during an upload or a download, resulting in the user having to start again from scratch. Even Napster was able to continue a download if interrupted, 25 years ago… All in all, it takes me between 1 and 2 hours to get a weather update and check our mailbox. A great way to keep busy during your watch, not ideal in case of an emergency.

By the way, the other beauty about your 130 euros subscription, is that you can not put it on hold and when you cancel it, it takes immediate effect even if it is only the 2nd day of your monthly plan. Needless to say, you don’t get a refund for the remaining days you are no longer able to use.

On the second day of our passage, the weather improves, the wind becomes more manageable, the waves are no longer as big and Neco agrees to go back to work after signing an agreement that he will be allowed to retire at age 60. The downside is that we slowed down significantly and we still have a nasty low system roaming in the northern Atlantic which is meant to come our way. Ross from Intrepid Kiwi is keeping an eye on us and the situation and tells us that we are still doing fine.

During the 2nd night the wind totally dies and we now have Mr. Perkins and Neco working for us. It is slowly turning into a luxury, if not noisy, cruise. On the 3rd morning, as we are motoring we catch a mackerel which should make for an excellent dinner if Kim finally overcomes her seasickness. Luckily for her, the sea becomes flat and now that we are heading into wind, Kujira is no longer rolling. We can finally settle into a cruising rhythm: you are either on watch or sleeping. If you are doing neither, you are preparing food or eating or cleaning the kitchen. The weather is also very pleasant and there is no need to toss buckets of sea water over your head every hour to cool down. The nights, despite being a little bit too dark due to cloud coverage are enjoyable too.

On our 5th day, the magic happens… The ocean turns into a mirror. There is not a ripple and the deep blue colour of the open ocean makes it look like a pond of liquid mercury. However, this is not the magical part, this is just the setting. The magic is the long Atlantic swell which suddenly transform the ocean into slow dancing dunes. On top of the crest, you can see for miles, in the trough you are surrounded by slopes of water. It feels very similar to sand dunes except that it moves at a speed your eye can catch. It is a very gentle dance and you can hardly feel Kujira going up and down, he is not rolling either or being pushed off course. Such swell can never be experienced in the Med as it doesn’t have the space to build up and in order to be experienced in the open ocean, you need completely windless days while a low has been building up big swell hundreds if not thousands of miles away. We feel incredibly lucky at this moment. While we think that it can not get any better, a pod of dolphins joins, Kim manages to spots turtles and we catch another mackerel for dinner.

Sadly, if you remember the ying/yang theory, you should know that with every ying comes a yang. As we get within reach of the Canaries coastguards VHF, we start hearing about migrant boats trying to make the crossing. Some are adrift, some are abandoned. The one which have been identified are relatively far from our position but every 30 minutes we received a DSC waring on the VHF. It arrives in the form of a beeping sound which gets louder and louder until acknowledged. Whether it is 3pm or 3am, it beeps in the entire boat, reminding us of the less fortunate who risk their life to make a terribly dangerous journey towards the Canaries. There are also very strict international guidelines regarding how one should behave in the vicinity of migrant boats. Trying to help them or even take them on board can put the vessel, the crew and the captain in a very precarious situation. Once on board, if the number is manageable as they are often over a hundred person per boat, the captain becomes legally liable for them. He/she can be held accountable for smuggling people or be forbidden to enter a country, in this case the Canaries Islands. He/she may have no other options but try to bring them back to their home country, assuming they have identification documents of some kind and they are from a country with sea access. Trying to do so could result in a mutiny and endanger the entire crew. Therefore, the guideline is to report any immigrants you see, stay nearby until coastguards arrive but far enough that you don’t risk being boarded. 

On the 6th day, we finally reach La Graciosa, the most northern island of the Canaries, after 123 hours and 606Nm. As we sail with our genoa polled out in the channel between the islands, I jump at the back of the boat and let myself be pulled by Kujira like a giant lure just like Kevin Costner in Waterworld. It is another huge milestone for us, not only have we officially achieved a crossing over 500Nm with Kujira, which we had failed by a few miles south of Sicily, but we have done it double handed. To celebrate, we spend over an hour trying to anchor in a very crowded and relatively small anchorage, arguing and stressed by the lack of options.

Now that we are anchored, we decide to spend 3 nights here. We use that time to climb one of the island’s volcanoes. From the top we can see how dry and deserted the place is. It feels like we have just landed on Mars. There are only a few trees which have been obviously planted recently in the island’s only village, otherwise it is pretty much nothing but rocks and sand. The northern and western coasts are being beaten up by the Atlantic swell and wind and with no river you wonder how and why the first settlers came here. We also have “apero” with a nearby boat. “Apero" being the French word for “let’s get together around sunset to have drinks, some saussison, and try to fix the world or redefine the boundaries of modern world philosophy”.

With only a few days left before my parents arrive on Fuerteventura, the 3rd island from the north, we have to move on to our next stop, Arrecife, on the island of Lanzarote. It isn’t really far but with virtually no wind, we have to motor. Of course, the wind picks up as we get closer making for a short but enjoyable little sail. What is less enjoyable though, is parking the boat. No one to help us, a very tight spot between a finger pontoon and a a flashy Hallberg-Rassy and moreover, not much more than 20 meters between the front of the boat on our pontoon and the one on the opposite pontoon. With a length of 14 meters and a minimum turn radius of over 20 meters, trying to squeeze Kujira in there is a real challenge. I can’t go fast and need to anticipate the drift created by the wind, I can’t turn into the berth as it is too tight meaning that I need to be perfectly perpendicular before I reverse into it meaning that I need to manoeuvre Kujira like MacGyver handling Nitroglycerin on a bouncy backcountry road. It takes us 3 or 4 tries before Kujira finds himself aligned, allowing us to reverse into the berth. It is by far the most challenging parking I have ever done up until now and I believe, beginners luck is the only reason I didn’t damage our solar panels or one of the neighbours boats. It took us so long that by the time I head to the marina office they are just about to close shop. I am given the code to the toilet block and the wifi password and invited to come back the next day to check-in properly while we will check out. With nothing left on the agenda for the day, we decide to go explore the city and investigate this intriguing supermarket with a dinosaur as a brand logo.

The next day has perfect weather for trying out different downwind configurations because let’s face it, we suck at downwind sailing. It is not really our fault but rather of the Med which seemed to have a head wind regardless of the direction your are pointing into and the time of the day. With 15 knots of wind, no swell thanks to the protection of the island and 170 degrees AWA, we try to poll out the Genoa with the pole in front of the standing rigging instead of between the rigging. As a results, we can not completely unfurl the genoa and our speed is pretty disappointing, only 4 to 4.5 knots. At such speed it will take us 30 days to cross the Atlantic..

Rubicon is the destination for the next couple nights, 19Nm south. It is a sort of Disneyland where everything is pretty, clean and all the restaurants are looking bloody inviting but sadly pretty expensive. The mini market in town is mostly selling alcohol and chips which is a bit of a clue as  to what is going on here during the high season. However we are not here for the booze. We are here to meet with the Turkish armada and rent a car to explore the island. 

Lanzarote has been used by the European Space Agency, as a substitute for Mars and the Moon in order to test rovers and other expensive gizmos that are doomed to a tragic slow death in outer space. While we are not planning on going to outer space, the exploration of the island is well worth it with breathtaking views and landscapes. It is very different to its neighbour La Graciosa, with much darker rocks and younger lava flows.

Having one more day and one more night before my parents arrive in Fuerteventura, we decide to be brave and anchor nearby the marina. Anchoring in the Canaries Islands is turning out to be a bit of a challenge, rocky grounds, steep slopes and strong winds are the usual combo. Navily, the trip advisor app of anchoring, is pretending that the ground is sandy. So we drop the anchor, reverse, set up camp and eventually go for a brief swim. There are rocks everywhere. The anchor is kind of in the sand but the chain is criss crossing a minefield of boulders. Not sure what to do as we can not see any proper sandy patch, we decide to leave it as it is and hope for the best. The evening is spent on Luna, a Super Maramu taking part in the ARC, anchored a couple hundreds meters away from us. When we come back, Kujira is moving strangely, instead of nicely riding the swell, it is screaming with every crest, trying to swing its nose upwards but being restricted by the chain which by now, is jammed in the rocks and therefore way too short. It is too late to sort out this mess so I let more chain out, again hope for the best and go to bed.

With 22Nm to go before midday, we need to have an early start, that is if we manage to get away from here. The chain is so jammed that Kim has to go in the water and guide me around the rocks. It takes us a long time but eventually we manage to break free without losing the anchor. Lesson learned, rocks are bad for anchoring.

The winds are once again very light and we have no choice but to motor sail all the way to Rosario. In Rosario it is a port rather than a marina. As we get closer we call on the VHF and ask for a berth for a couple nights. After a couple tries, we are told to proceed inside the port, without any further instructions. I am relieved to see that we have an entire pontoon just for us, however, instead of a marinero welcoming us and helping out with the lines, it is a police officer. He is not really keen to get involved with the manoeuvre and appears puzzled to be thrown a rope. Besides holding it in his hand, he doesn’t do much and Kim has to jump off the boat and tie down Kujira. Luckily the winds are still very light and the whale is dozing off. What happened next is completely unexpected, the police officer tells me that we need to register ourselves at the main port building, which is a few kilometres away but offers to drive me there. We have an awkward 10 minutes chat in the car, in Spanish, before being dropped off. He tells me to give him a call once done.

Inside the office, it becomes obvious that they do not see a heck of a lot of yachties. The procedure is a bit cumbersome but they are friendly. What surprises me is that I am asked to pay per day, not nights, that is for 3 days despite staying only 2 nights. I had never seen that before and have never seen it since. Once done, I call my “Uber” and he drives me back to the boat. The crime rate must be so low that driving tourists seems to be a welcome distraction.

By the time I am back, my parents have arrived and are chatting with Kim. After more than a year since this adventure started and having been incredibly supportive during our search and then refit, they are finally going to be sailing with us. That is, starting in a couple of days. Today, on the schedule is visiting Rosario, which turns out to be a bit of a ghost town, finding where we can rent a car, which turns out to be only at the airport, walking along the waterfront, which turns out to be surprisingly nice and well looked after and finally finding a restaurant for Guy’s birthday, which turns out to be way more complicated than expected as ghosts do not need to eat apparently. In the end, we find a nice and quiet place.

The exploration of Fuerteventura by car is very enjoyable. It is dry yet not as dry as the previous 2 islands and doesn’t make you feel like you are on the moon but in Morocco. While it may sound like we are on holiday, we are actually in full preparation mode for the Atlantic crossing, therefore Kim decides to stay behind and work on an important sewing project, making the cockpit cushions. Next morning, before leaving, we unpack for the first time the drogue and the sea anchor on the pontoon. They are reminiscence from Kujira’s first life, when an Air France pilot bought him brand new and shiny to do an Atlantic circuit. The lines are a wonderfull bag of knots which require three of us to untangle, and one metal swivel which looks untrustworthy. We also take out the emergency steering, which isn’t a little handle like on modern plastic fantastics, but a heavy beefy metal tiller which requires a bit of TLC. We leave shortly after midday and use the opportunity of another light wind day to try out the emergency steering while underway. It works great even though I would not want to have to use it for a long period of time or in bad weather as you have to sit on top of the back cabin to use it, giving you the feeling that you are literally riding the whale instead of driving it.

We find a lovely peaceful anchorage for the night.

Today the wind finally started coming back. Still being on the lee side of the island’s swell, we are well protected and decide to impress the parents by flying our gennaker who pretends to be a spinnaker. I guess in 2022 it is acceptable and it can decide to be whatever it wants to be. As a matter of fact, it does pretty well and allows me to go from 130 degrees apparent wide angle on port side to 150 degrees on starboard side. 6 hours later, we drop anchor in another lovely bay. We decide to go on a mission to shore to find bread and discover a village that feels like the end of the world is near.

For our last sail along Fuerteventura, we have a few items on our agenda. First of all we try our drogue, a little parachute that can be deployed behind the boat to keep it in line and slow it down like a landing space shuttle. The load on it is absolutely unbelievable and once deployed, there is no way you will bring it back on board without stopping. The other feature of a drogue, is its alleged ability to be used as an emergency steering device. By pulling it to one side of the boat or the other with the help of a winch, we manage to slowly, very slowly initiate a turn. I guess mid Atlantic it would be sufficient to prevent us from ending up in Brazil but that is roughly the degree of precision we would have. 

For lunch we stop next to an amazing beach. Huge sand dunes, crystal clear water and for once a  shallow white sandy bottom. Anchoring is a piece of cake. We decide to have lunch before going for a proper swim which turns out to be a poor life decision as the wind suddenly jumps to 22 knots. Swimming now feels less appealing however for the first time in a week we might actually be able to have a good sail. We pack everything up, put all the sails out, trim them, reach a nice steady 6.5 knots speed and the wind dies as quickly and abruptly as it has arrived. Slightly annoyed, we motorsail the rest of the way.

For our final sail before Las Palmas and the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, we have one final jump to make, a 60Nm sail on the open Atlantic Ocean. Expecting to take 14h and not wanting to arrive too late, we decide to leave at 2am. That will also give an opportunity to my parents to have a little taste of night sailing. As we wake up, the moon is long gone and it is almost as dark as the inside of a coconut. We have to go around the southern peninsula of Fuerteventura before being hammered by the strong Atlantic wind. Unfortunately, that is where all the local fisherman in their tiny poorly lit up dinghies are fishing. The first hour is therefore spent playing dodge a fisherman. Not our favourite game which is why we decide to cheat and use our radar. And as soon as we reach the end of the island, the boats are being replaced by a strong and steady north-north easterly wind. Kujira has decided to impress the parents and prove them that he is worthy of taking 3 of the 4 brothers across an ocean. He averages 5.7 knots with a top speed of 8.5 knots. He is steady, comfortable and at ease in his element: the open ocean. As a result we arrive just on time for lunch. 

While it is certainly great for us not to have lunch underway, it also means that we arrived during the lunch break of the marina staff. With no one available to check us in, we are asked to do some really weird and tight reverse parallel parking.. my favourite. But today must have been our lucky day because the wind dies and slowly, little by little, I manage to squeeze Kujira in his park. Only 2 more manoeuvres to go and we will be set for the next 3 weeks. The first one along the fuel dock, once done with the check-in. Not the hardest one except that a gigantic classic yacht has its nose popping so far out that it makes for another awkward glide toward the dock. I feel like Kujira is like one of those ballerina hippopotami from Fantasia. Not very elegant, clumsy but in the end does the job. 

With 500 litres of diesel on starboard side, Kujira leaves the dock heeling to one side, like a British leaving the pub after one too many drinks. And finally, for the last trick of the day, we need to squeeze his fat belly between 2 boats. The obvious issue however is that there is not much more than 3 meters between the 2 boats and we are 4 meters wide. This doesn’t appear to bother the marina staff which are obviously under pressure from the ARC to fit as many yachts as possible inside the marina. So they attach a rope to the front of one of the neighbouring boats and start reversing at full power. Slowly, like a giant stack of dominos, the boats start to slowly move to the side and with a lot of lubricant and patience, Kujira slides in his slot.

While our rally isn’t leaving for another 21 days, the ARC+, a variant which stops in Cap Verde and finishes in Grenada, is in full swing with only 7 days left before departure. People are running left , right and centre, food is being loaded, boats being fixed and much more. We get invited by our neighbour to visit his boat and get a sense of the chaos expecting us: winches dismantled, parts underway with unknown time of arrival, crew to be introduced to the boat, food which need to be secured somewhere, the ARC “Warrant Of Fitness” to be passed and much more.

Las Palmas is a great place to prepare for such an endeavour, with a couple of very large chandleries, the candyland of cruisers, a rigger to make sure your mast won’t come down mid Atlantic, lots of  affordable supermarkets and a market with an extensive selection of fresh fruits and vegetables. The marina is dirt cheap and we pay just over 200 euros for 21 nights. At this rate, you also get the cockroaches and centipedes in the showers, the broken doors and the aftermath of old sailors with lactose intolerance. But with 21 days to spend here, we learn about the good places and for a few more euros, we even get access to a lovely outdoor pool with clean showers, bathrooms and a sauna. But before we get into full preparation mode, we have one more day with my parents, so once again we rent a car to tour a piece of the island. It is surprisingly tall with a pick at 2000 meters which results in steep winding roads but also in much cooler weather at higher altitude. A beautiful hike in the high altitude pine forest, a few little villages and one of the best pizzas we have ever eaten make for a perfect last day with them. They leave early next morning after we promised them to be safe and meet them on the other side of the ocean in 7 weeks time.

The following 3 weeks flew by in a heartbeat. Among the very very long list of jobs that needed to be done, we had: servicing the engine, installing the water maker, building a 2nd manual bilge pump, installing half a dozen missing safety items, adding a gazillion extra spare parts, provisioning not only for 4 persons for one month but also for part of the Caribbean; changing some shackles, pullies and ropes; cleaning the water-tank, doing the inventory of all the food and drugs on board; adjusting the rigging, climbing up the mast, doing a full boat inspection and the list goes on and on. 

At the end of the first week, the anticipation is rising on the pontoon with the imminent departure of the ARC+. One last sundowner, one last party and on Sunday 6th of November, over a hundred boats desperately try to cross the starting line of their 900 Nm first leg with no wind. We watch it from the shore and particularly enjoy the performance of an Amel Super Maramu, the bigger and shinier version of Kujira, which just manages to cross the starting line under sail, pretty much as last before obviously turning on the engine and overtaking quite a few boats. In a fortnight, it will be our turn and it suddenly got a lot more real. We are excited and nervous at the same time but with the ARC+ now gone, the ARC, our rally, can official start. Some old neighbours are still there, such as Voyager 2 which is now half way around the world or Vitamin Sea which is now a few hundred meters away from our berth in Bonaire, and new neighbours move in. Most people are extremely friendly and are either regulars who keep returning or complete newbies like us who want to be taken by the rudder across the pond. 

With the ARC now in full swing, we have the daily sundowner which lets everyone knows that it is time to stop working and time to get hammered to forget how much work you still have to accomplish before the departure. Unfortunately I don’t drink and therefore never forget.  There are also a few parties to look forward to, such as the disco themed dance party or the posh nibbling by the pool of the Royal Yacht Club. We also have the possibility to join a large selection of seminars about sailing, safety, maintenance, weather, stargazing or provisioning. The latter one is done by a British woman who considers that a can of baked beans is a treat for breakfast.. Needless to say I don’t keep too many tips from that one. 

One week before the start, our first crew arrives: Frankyboy. He comes along with Claire, his partner as shore support, who I set to work right away. The job is simple, to remove 2 safety pins in order to be able to replace the safety wire from the stanchions. After an hour, only one wire has been removed and she has injured herself. I decide to relocate her to less manual tasks and put her in front of the computer. There, she is at ease like a clown fish in an anemone. She is also of a tremendous help with the groceries, the cooking, dehydrating of fruit and vegetables and the drinking. 

Frankyboy knows very little about boats or manual work as a matter of fact but he is eager to learn and helps with everything he can. What is great as well, is that they arrived just on time to take part in the opening parade. All the crews walked along the port with flags and marching bands. We discover that day that we are the only kiwi flagged boat and that only one other kiwi seems to be taking part in the rally. British, Germans and Australians are the large majorities.

Next day, our last crew arrives: Dave. With everyone having now arrived, I can start the safety briefings, introduce them to the whale, introduce them to the long lists of rules on board and emergency equipments we hope to never have to use. During one of these briefings, the one about starting the engine, I nearly blow up Mr. Perkins. The newer alternator which has been giving me a headache ever since we bought the boat is attached across from the engine block but not connected by a belt. The vibrations of Mr. Perkins, which can only be compared to a magnitude 7 earthquake, end up loosening the bolts and the alternator ends up falling into the spinning engine block. Out of pure miracle, the damages are minor, except for the alternator. It would have been heartbreaking to fail so close to the departure.

Meanwhile, the rigging has been checked twice. The first time by a bunch of clowns who spent 20 minutes, pretty much only check that the navigation lights were working and provided me with a beautiful certificate lying about all the checks they had done. So I hired a second rigger who spent a few hours going around the boat with me and pointing out everything that needed to be either taken care of or could be improved. Therefore, I took the standing rigging that connects the 2 masts together to the local riggers, the first set of clowns, as it was too loose and needed to be shortened. For one week, everyday, I passed by the shop, asking about my wire, which is absolutely crucial for the boat, but every day I get the same answer:

“Es very beechy today. Tomorrow, maybe, si si”

Every day I can see my wire lying on the floor at the back of the shop. Eventually, on the Friday afternoon, less than 48h before departure and with now bad weather and high winds, I climbed up my masts to reinstall the original wire as the clowns were still telling me on Friday morning: “Maybe tomorrow”.

One week before departure, my insurance broker which had been telling me since September “no problem, we are working on renewing your contract to cover the Atlantic crossing and the Caribbean”, tells me: “Ciao and good luck”.. 

One more item to add to the list of issues urgently needing to be resolved.

On the day before departure, we have the skipper’s briefing. A lot of information is being shared, too much and a copy of it would have been a useful addition. The weather expert also tells us a story on how many years ago, when the ARC probably wasn’t such a big money machine, they would have the departure set on Saturday with Sunday as a back up date in case of bad weather. This had been used in the past but now with the departure being planned on Sunday, they were no longer moving it and therefore the rally committee had decided to send us all to the slaughter house like lambs just for the glory of the ARC organiser. Many of us were concerned about such  a decision as the forecasts were looking pretty hideous for the first 24 hours. We got the confirmation that we might be facing 40 knots of wind during our first 24 hours, which didn’t help to make us feel any more confident. But apparently the show must go on so off we went to do the final preparations.

I finished installing the water maker at 1.30am on the day before the departure, not that we really needed it, but it is nice to know that we shouldn’t die from thirst on the way. I did a last dash for fresh food on Sunday morning and we left Las Palmas marina, as one of the last boats, with apple sand oranges still rolling freely in the galley and the living room. 

And here we are, suddenly part of a fleet of 144 sailboats, monohulls as well as catamarans, about to be sent to big sloppy seas, strong winds and hideous conditions, basically hell, to start a 26 days crossing. We were told to remove the anchor or put a fender around it in case we were to T-bone another boat during the start. Not that a fender would do much against 13 tonnes going at 6 knots, but the rules are the rules and we are dealing with brits so we better follow them or run the risk of being disqualified before even starting.. let’s wait for the last day of the crossing to do this. But that’s a story for another time, for now, we need to survive the first 24 hours of this expedition…