Not on a Friday

The document have finally arrived. Not a day too early. One thing very important to know about Spain is that you need a hell of a lot of patience when you're dealing with bureaucracies and administrative institutions. The fact that you will have to wait for things/deliveries/letters/emails/people much longer than scheduled, is something you just have to get used to and put into your calculations from day one otherwise it is very easy to go completely crazy over here. But Spain is, on the other hand, good in so many other ways so it might even out.

Anyways, the important boat document is now here and we are ready to go. Or at least I am but Alex refuses to leave today as it is a Friday and apparently it means bad luck to leave for a sailing passage on a Friday. Everyday you learn something new about the people around you. I never seen a superstitious side in my man before today. Very interesting. Or maybe just all sailors are living by this superstition. Who knows?

"In some cultures, Friday is considered unlucky. This is particularly so in maritime circles; perhaps the most enduring sailing superstition is that it is unlucky to begin a voyage on a Friday" - cut out from Wikipedia.

/Taru

Departures

The two days after NYE are the days when hundreds of boats leave Las Palmas for the long Atlantic crossing. On the 1st of January it was Swedish Marta, Magnus and their 14 months old son Fox's time to departure for new adventures across the ocean with their boat Mazarin, a Bianca 27. We wish this little family all luck and we're hoping to see them again in some weeks when it's our time to land on the other side. /T&A

P.S: Can you see that they also have the Sailomat windvane?  Good stuff!

NYE 2010

We went to make the food shopping for NYE yesterday and Alex studied me while I was picking up things for the soup that I was planning to concoct. Langoustine, spider crab, fresh salmon fillet, swordfish, prawns, clams etc.. and he said with a sceptic look: "Are you really going to spoil these beautiful fishes and seafood into a soup?" Soupe de poissons for him and for many other French people is a (sometimes) clear soup containing a couple of (or many) different types of bony fishes, garlic croutons, cheese, wine, tomatoes and spices and most of the times not much more ingredients into it, although it is very tasty. So he almost got upset when realizing that I was actually going to spoil and destroy such delicious things into a watery mix. That was only until he tasted my soup though. He had a spoon, then another and he went from a long delighted mmmmm to an ecstatic aaaah and kept on like that for a good fifteen minutes or so and I think he refilled the plate at least two times before he fell down in the cockpit couch with a satisfied grin. A proper food orgasm was delivered and he admitted that it was something of the best he had ever eaten. My soup, FYI, is made of a base made of shallots, garlic, persil, mushrooms, oil and white wine. Gently mixed with a couple of different spices, liquid cream , lemon juice and added are several types of seafood and fish. It is a true masterpiece and I still haven't encountered anyone who doesn't love it. Saffron can occasionally be added but this specific version I prefer without. 

We enjoyed the dinner just the two of us and after the dessert we left into town and found ourselves a perfect spot by the beach just before they shot off the fireworks at 12:00. Prepared with a delicious rose champagne, which we got from our friends Thierry and Nat when leaving Barcelona for two months ago, and the 12 traditional Spanish grapes (which are supposed to bring luck when you eat twelve of them just after midnight) and we wished each other and ourselves the best of luck for the future and the upcoming year under the sparkling sky full of colorful flashes and explosions. Afterwards we had a walk back home - a walk which took over two hours along the beachside as we got lost by the narrow cobbled streets. A beautiful night was spent and we crashed in bed around 3 am, tired, happy and excited for what the new decennium will have in store for us. All was perfect, only some of our dear people from home were missing and thank god I drank enough champagne that I barely felt the ache from my new shoes after all that walking. Feels good to know that I will not be in need of wearing high heels for, at least, the next four weeks or so. /Taru

Burning skies

The sky is on fire. We're just about to have dinner with a light wind, some luminescent plankton and a purple-pinkish shimmer around our boat as the only peaceful company tonight. See you tomorrow in Gran Canaria. /T

Updates

When hearing and reading about other peoples Atlantic crossing this year, we are glad that we'll have a late approach for it. The tradewinds were late to establish this year and many of the people we've been in touch with or read about in their blogs, have suffered from seasickness due to poor winds and the rolling of large seas and many seem to have experienced their crossing as a very uncomfortable one. Our original plan was to cross the ocean in early December but as of many unfinished boat projects, we're about one month late to the original schedule. Good like that, and the new plan for the ocean crossing is set to begin after New Year. There are still a couple of things we need to complete on the boat and also a couple of packages to receive and we're scheduling ourselves for a departure towards Martinique on the 10th of January. Let's then all hope for the best and pray for the tradewinds to be working it like they should - and a landfall is wished to be made about 3 weeks thereafter - where we'll be good in time for meeting up a couple of friends on the Caribbean side. Cannot wait for getting started with the crossing, but also we're glad to have made the decision to await for a perfect time to get it all started instead of stressing us through this first part of the tour. By the way, Marina Rubicon where we're staying at the moment has been an excellent stop for us. Peaceful, clean, fresh, great service and good facilities. The price a bit high (23 Euros/night) but over all an excellent marina. We're just about to leave for Gran Canaria and Las Palmas this afternoon where we'll make a quick stop before heading to the Southern parts of that very same island. 

New Year is now due to be celebrated in Gran Canaria, we have no plans whatsoever on how to spend NYE, but I'm sure we'll figure something fun out tomorrow when we arrive. Christmas and New Years celebrations have not been high up on our priority list for this year. But at least we have the fridge full of Champagne for a new years toast. /Taru

Photo from the Atlantic beach of Rabat, Morocco.

Surf in Lanzarote

I have always known how important surfing was to Alex for about 15 years ago or so. When he was a surf teacher in Biarritz on the French Atlantic coast and when he was traveling the world from Mexico to South Africa to Angola and Bali, Portugal and the coasts of Morocco in search for the best waves, but I had never seen it myself as yet - and as it was such a distant image for me. As I never seen it IRL, I had also hard to picture him as the surfer he obviously once was - even though I've seen some old photos of it. He's been mumbling about getting that board in the water once we get to warmer waters like the Pacific or such, while I at the same time have felt his worries for being a bit too old and rusty, and with time I have also somehow thought that yeah, he probably is a bit too old and rusty to get it going on the big rolls. But so today I finally got to see him working that board for real for the first time in my life and while sitting some hundred meters away, prepared with my tele-objective, I could slowly start to realize the deep importance the surfing have had on him - and obviously still does in a nostalgic, deep way and I felt such strength of seeing him excellently maneuvering the board after such long time. Obviously a lot more stiff than I can imagine him in his 20's, but still he had the flow. 

For some odd reason I even started to cry for fucks sake, when I saw him taking off on a two meters left. Two meters (6,5 foot) is really nothing when it comes to serious surfing but it did made me proud to see my handsome man making some action after such long time. Is that the second you know that you never loved anyone higher - when you're almost 30 and you begin to cry when watching the love of your life doing something he really loves from the bottom of his heart or is that just a sign of that human beings (me) gets more pathetic with age? Seriously. Either way I had an amazing time watching the show and Alex was obviously really happy to have found himself some good waves again. Can't wait to learn this sport myself and I'm glad I have the perfect teacher for it.

Also I definitely need to get a good waterproof camera/video cam so that I can shoot better pics and videos of Alex (and maybe even me) surfing on our tour around the world. This is something we cannot miss out on I'm telling you.

Safety equipment part 1

What was that fashionable bracelet I had on the last picture, you might ask. So I'll tell you: It is actually not a thing with a fashionable purpose, more with a surviving one. This wrist transmitter from Navicom is connected to our radio which is connected to our GPS/Chart plotter and in case any of us would fall overboard, this will transmit a distress signal to the radio and GPS. This armband is for us a necessity during night watches, as it will awake the person sleeping if the one of us two on night watch would fall out of the boat. Obviously we will in every way possible avoid falling overboard in the first place (life vest attached to lifelines) - but would it somehow happen - this armband will immediately send out a high sounding distress alarm awakening every living person onboard and at the same time indicate on our chartplotter exactly where the person fell out and we will have a higher chance of finding the person in the water. One of those security things we find invaluable for our trip on the seven seas. /T

Lanzarote!

We had a peaceful Christmas night on the sea with 20-25 knots of wind coming from the NW, right on the beam. 240 nm was quickly done in 39 hours. This is how it looked when arriving to the islands this morning- It is so hot over here, one could almost mistake these islands to be Caribbean ones. Sorry for the bitchy-early-morning-look on my face but that's how it goes when trying to avoid getting too much sun in the eyes while balancing with a bony ass trying not to fall over board and at the same time dying for getting back into the cockpit to enjoy Christmas breakfast with my baby.

Anyway, now we're finally here! I'll speak to you later. /T

Day 2 crossing Morocco-Canaries

Hi there,

First I want to inform you that our SPOT tracker has stopped working for some odd reason and you should not freak out if you can't find ourprogress on the Spotwalla website. That machine have driven us crazyalready so we're thinking of getting rid of it for good. The thoughtof throwing it in the water is oh so tempting. Maybe I'll wait untilwe get into deeper waters so I know it will be gone down as far aspossible.

We are now around 120 NM from Rabat and we're on our 24th hour of sailing towards the Canaries.

The wind was light and made for a comfortable evening ride last night. We were wonderfully accompanied by a couple of dolphin families on two different occasions and I recorded a video with the amazing creatures which I will put up here for you to view once we're on land again. I would say that dolphins nowadays are as common to us as maybe ducks orcats are to most landlubbers, but nonetheless they still take our breath away when the graciously dance around our boat. Yesterday we also had the chance to witness them making another type of play that we haven't seen before, one where they jump straight up from the water and land hard on their sides one after another - whatever that trick is called. I have a bit of that show on the video as well. Shortly after the first dolphin appearance, we caught our first fish, or only fish so far, a 4-5 kilo bluefin tuna as shown on picture which we first enjoyed grilled in the night after sunset and today as a sushi lunch. Tasted like heaven, just like it always does when preparing fresh fish straight off the boat. The night sailing went pretty smoothly, we shifted watches after each two hour and around 9.30 am we were both upfor breakfast in the early morning rise. Our Sailomat windpilot works really good and we're glad to not have to use the electric autopilot as much as it's sucking down the batteries fast. Also we're glad thatthe wind has been pretty stable around 15-22 knots so that we do not have to run the engine at all. Now around 500 miles more to go and if we keep on like this we'll probably land on one of the islands on Saturday lunch or so. Ciao. /T