March 2020

In our last blog we were preparing to leave Martinique, and head further north up the island chain. We left St Pierre, and made the long sail 80 miles north to Iles des Saintes, where we dropped anchor in the beautiful Terre de Haut.

This small group of islands are part of the French island of Guadeloupe, so we were only too happy to continue our love affair with fresh baguettes and pain au chocolat each day. The tiny island had plenty for us to see and do, and my land loving legs were delighted to have the opportunity to do lots of walks and exploring. Fort Napoleon sits up one of the hills on the island, and we walked up there for an explore. The old fort is really impressive, and has a great little museum inside, with exhibits on island life, and the history of the building. Other highlights included renting some golf buggies with 8 other cruisers, and exploring the entire island, and a long, hot hike up the largest hill, Shameaux, for the best views of the anchorage. Perhaps the most entertaining part of our stay here was the daily fight for mooring balls, which were in high demand. Each day new boats would circle the anchorage waiting for a departing boat, and then a hunger games style battle would ensue until one boat managed to secure their lines. For the boats remaining, this provided some entertainment over our breakfast each day. 

After a week or so in the Saintes, it was time to move on, and we sailed up to Guadeloupe, and our first stop in Pigeon Island. This pretty anchorage is a marine reserve, and is well known for some of the best snorkelling in the Eastern Caribbean. We spent a brilliant couple of days swimming with turtles, and snorkelling the coral reefs, however the bay was a little too rolly for a comfortable nights sleep, so we upped anchor, and sailed to Deshaies, in the north of the island. 

Deshaies was a great spot, and is well known as the setting for the BBC TV series Death in Paradise. They have a number of free mooring balls, so we managed to find one close to shore, and settled in for a few days. We had decided to sign up to complete our Open Water PADI scuba dive course, so for the next week or so, we alternated our days between diving, and exploring Guadeloupe. Our dive course was done over three mornings with the wonderful Eric from Sub tropical Diving, with 2 dives each morning, every second day. We were treated to an outstanding array of marine wildlife, and each dive we saw something new – we were totally hooked!

When we weren’t diving, we hired a car, and went to see the many beautiful sights on the island of Guadeloupe. We visited the waterfalls at Carbet, swam in the very cold pool at the bottom of Saut D’Acomat falls, and found the hot springs at Bouillante, where the islands geothermal plant spills the natural hot water into the bay. Another reason we enjoyed our time in Deshaies so much was that we were in great company – several other boats we’d met along the way were also there, so we spent plenty of time socialising, and enjoyed some excellent pizza during our stay!

After we passed the PADI course, we booked in with our dive shop to do another dive, back at Pigeon Island. Some of our cruising buddies also signed up so it was really fun to do our first qualified dive with friends, where we saw turtles, eels, baracuda, pufferfish, and a whole host of other colourful sea life. 

Eventually, the “itchy feet” set in, and we decided to move on up to Antigua. Our first port of call was to Jolly Harbour on the east coast, where we found the most incredible supermarket! First things first, we stocked up the boat with all manner of treats and goodies!

We quickly fell in love with Antigua – the water is crystal clear and the most amazing blues. As Antigua is not part of the volcanic chain, the beaches are soft white sand, and beautifully clean. We had friends arriving into the Island for the Caribbean 600 race, so after we had checked in and re-provisioned, we sailed around to Falmouth Harbour, where most of the yachts for the race where based. Falmouth and English Harbours are wishing walking distance of each other, and tucked away between the two is the beautiful Nelsons Dockyard. The old dockyard was built in Admiral Nelsons time during the 1700s, and for a small fee, you an explore the old sail loft, visit the little museum, and wander around the old fort. We hiked up the very scenic Middle Ground trail between the two harbours, and we thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon and evening at the 600 opening party with friends, and wished them all good luck for the race. With slightly sore heads the following morning, we pulled up the anchor, and sailed around the east coast of Antigua, to Green Island. This large lagoon faces the Atlantic Ocean, but is protected by a huge reef, which provides a stunning view each morning, with the added bonus of a peaceful nights sleep! We spent a wonderful 5 days there with our buddies on Adrenaline. There isn’t much going on out there, and it’s the perfect place to unwind with some kitesurfing, beach BBQs and lots of snorkelling! 

However, after a few days of peace and quiet, I was longing for a big of land life, so we sailed back to Falmouth Harbour. Here, we did the stunning hike along the cliff up to Shirley Heights, and treated ourselves to lunch and an afternoon by the pool at the Boom Restaurant.

We greeted a few pals as they finished the Caribbean 600 race, and indulged in a delicious pizza with a good friend from home, before heading back to Jolly Harbour, where we were leaving Ealu for a few days while we flew to Miami for the Bacardi Cup in the Melges 24. 

We took advantage of having a marina berth and ticked off a few boat jobs including a rig check, and a full clean and polish. With Ealu gleaming in the sun, we took off for Miami, and as always, we had an absolute blast with Team Barbarians. This event was particularly great for us, as there were so many of our friends from home there, and we made sure to spend time catching up on all the news from home, and spending time with people we hadn’t seen for nearly a year. I felt a bit deflated when it was time to leave, and we had to fly back to the boat while every one else was heading for home, and the homesickness kicked in for a couple of days. 

When we arrived back to Antigua, the realties of the ongoing Coronavirus were becoming apparent, so we decided to wait a few days before we left the island, to see how things played out. While we were here, we sailed up to the absolutely stunning island of Barbuda, 20 miles off the north coast of Antigua, and anchored off the prettiest beach I’ve ever seen! 17 miles long, with a very slight pink colour in the sand, it looked like something from a postcard. We were delighted to drop the anchor next to our buddies on Music and Life of Reilly, and it looked like the perfect place to catch up on sleep and recover from the last few days of travelling and racing in Miami. 

We had a very leisurely time in Barbuda, and the first couple of days were spent reading, walking for miles on the gorgeous beach, and swimming in the bluest water we’ve see in the Caribbean! We helped friends to recover their anchor after the chain broke a few days previously, and caught up with a few small admin tasks. We also booked a tour to the other end of the island to climb the caves at Two Foot bay, and to visit the Frigate Bird Colony. Our guide Chris showed us around the island – Barbuda was hit very hard by Hurricane Irma in 2017, and is still recovering. The tiny island is very flat, so what ever wasn’t damaged by the high winds was inevitably destroyed by the storm surge that followed. The short hike up to the caves was excellent, we started on the white sand beach, and climbed up through the cave, eventually emerging on the top of the small cliffs, know as the “highlands”. The views across the Atlantic coast were great, and we took lots of excellent photos! 

After a morning exploring the caves, we drove on to the tiny harbour in Codrington (the islands only town) to meet our guide “Straight”, who would take us by boat to see the Frigate bird colony. The colony on Barbuda is the largest in the world, and these strange looking birds take up residence in the lagoon each mating season. We were lucky enough to visit when there were loads of tiny baby birds in their nests, so although the visit was short, we were really glad to have been able to make the trip. After a tasty lunch in Uncle Roddy’s we went back to the boat to prepare for our sail back to Antigua in the morning. 

By this stage, it had become apparent that the Coronavirus wasn’t going anywhere soon, and we needed to rethink our plans for the coming weeks. After much deliberation, and with some islands closing their borders, we decided that the safest thing would be to cancel our plans to visit Monserrat and Kitts and Nevis for the time being. We had to weigh up where would be the best place to stay, in the event that we got stuck somewhere for a few weeks should travel bans come into effect, and Antigua seemed like our best option. For now, we’ve committed to spending the next couple of weeks here to see how things evolve, and will keep our plans very flexible for the coming weeks. 

We’re thinking of everyone at home, and sending all the good vibes and positive thoughts to family and friends everywhere – stay safe, and we’ll see you soon. 

Until next time…..

R&M xx

8th January 2020 – Barbados – The Grenadines – St Vincent

It took a day or two to recover from the crossing, and there was no better place for our recovery than Barbados. After our arrival in Port St Charles, we spent a morning turning the boat from an ocean going vessel back into something a bit more liveable, and enjoyed a lovely couple of days swimming, snorkelling, eating delicious Bajan food, and catching up on the world in general. Judith arrived on our third day and we’d planned to all meet in Bridgetown on the boat. We sailed an hour south, only to be recalled by customs over a clerical error, so after our false start, Dad went to Bridgetown with the local taxi man, and Marty and I sailed Ealu to Bridgetown the following morning. Highlights from Barbados were the Mount Gay Rum Tour (highly recommended!), the Barbados Yacht Club, who couldn’t have been more welcoming, and the Bajan people, who were unbelievably friendly. 

From Barbados, we’d planned an overnight sail from Port St Charles to Bequia, to start our cruise around the Grenadines. After a lovely “last supper” at the yacht club, we left Barbados around 7pm to start the 90 mile crossing. We left into light following winds and a flattish sea – all good. However, a few miles offshore, the seas built into an absolutely heinous cross swell, and we were thrown around all over the place. The breeze was up and down, and there was plenty of shipping traffic, so it wasn’t the most peaceful of passages. We saw some miserable squalls of 35 knots and lashing rain, followed by flat calms, which in the nasty swell were just as uncomfortable as the squalls. I think we were all relieved as morning arrived and we could see St Vincent, and Bequia growing larger on the horizon. We arrived into Port Elizabeth, Bequia just after breakfast time, ready for a good sleep and some food!

After a really lovely couple of days in Bequia, we headed south to Mayreu, with a brief pause at Canoun for lunch. En route, we caught a small Jackfish, which Jude expertly cleaned and cooked up for dinner on our arrival at Saltwhistle Bay. Saltwhistle is a really pretty anchorage, surrounded by sandy beaches and palm trees, with brightly coloured shacks and fishing boats along the beach, with a great bar for our sun downers! 

Marty enjoyed some excellent kite surfing with a bunch of other kiting cruisers on the windward beach – this was slightly overshadowed by a very unpleasant woman from the nearby resort, who really didn’t like kite surfers using the beach near her resort, but aside from that, it was a really lovely stop, with hundreds of pelicans splashing around. 

From Mayreu, we made the short passage over to Tobago Cays – with out a doubt one of the most stunning places we’ve been. The small collection of islands is un-inhabited, and is a protected nature reserve, with turtles swimming among the moorings, and a beautiful reef for snorkelling. We seemed to have found our selves there during the “Christmas Winds”, and it was a steady 25 knots for a few days, but we didn’t let that stop us. We snorkelled on the Horseshoe Reef and saw all manner of wildlife, climbed the hill on Petite Bateau, and walked up Baradel to look for some Iguanas. We’d heard that if you shine a light into the water at night, you might see rays swimming by the boat, so we gave it a go and we weren’t disappointed – we watched 7 or 8 rays swimming under the boat, chasing the smaller fish, it was really very cool. 

Next up was Union Island – we anchored up in the beautiful Chatham Bay to spend a night. Unfortunately, while absolutely stunning, the wind funnelled over the hills here, and sent huge gusts down across the anchorage. Affectionately referred to (we later heard) as “willywaws”, these gusts had the boats in the anchorage swinging wildly in all directions, and made the whole boat shake – not ideal for a restful nights sleep. No one needed much convincing to move on around to Clifton on the other side of the island, so we set off in search of a quieter spot. Clifton was an absolute hive of activity, with its colourful little high street, and shops, bars and restaurants at every turn. We ate delicious burgers in “The Local”, and found a brilliant little supermarket to re-stock some of our provisions. The Yacht Club in Clifton was a really nice spot, where we could enjoy real showers (still cold, but with proper running water!) and a very tasty rum punch. 

Having got our fix of civilisation, we then headed off down Carriacou, to the very beautiful Anse le Roche on the north of the island. This tiny little bay was totally secluded, with only one other boat in the anchorage. The beach was absolutely pristine and unspoilt, and we did some amazing snorkelling around the rocks. The only minor hiccup here was that as we were all departing the boat to go for a swim, our anchor started to slip – a frantic swim back to the boat and lifting the anchor revealed that we’d snared a giant conch shell (complete with its own live-in octopus), so after we’d cleared our catch from the anchor, we re-set and all was well.

We moved on an hour south in the morning down to Sandy Island – a tiny little sliver of sand and palm trees off the coast of the main island – it really did look like all the postcards and brochures you’ve ever seen for the Caribbean! Another marine reserve, this island was also teeming with sealife, and we saw turtles, pelicans, and all manner of fish on the reefs at the end of the island. 

By now, we were over half way through Dad and Jude’s stay with us, and it was time to start working our way back up towards St Vincent. We decided to call in again at Chatham Bay, to try out the legendary beach BBQ by Vanessa and Secky. We were treated to an absolutely delicious meal of lobster, chicken, ribs, rice, salads, potatoes and plantain fritters, along with their tasty but deadly rum punch.

We’d planned to be in Bequia for Christmas, as we knew there would be plenty of other cruisers around, so from Chatham Bay, we undertook a long up wind slog back to Port Elizabeth against the tide. Our initial passage plan of 4 hours went out the window, and some 7 hours later we dropped anchor back in a very busy Bequia. A quick trip to Jacks Bar for their rosemary salt fries and a well earned beer, and we were all ready for bed! 

Christmas in the Caribbean was a very weird experience – the Christmas music sounds so out of place among the palm trees and sunshine. On Christmas Eve, I felt very homesick and felt very far away from our families and friends enjoying the festivities at home. That evening we met some other cruisers on the floating “Bar 1”, and we all went out for pizza and beers which took the edge of the homesickness. 

We definitely felt quite smug that our Christmas morning swim was probably much warmer than every one at home, and we spent Christmas morning calling home, and making pancakes for breakfast. For lunch, the cruisers in the area had organised a “pot luck” lunch – one of the local restaurants kindly lent their BBQ, and every one brought along a dish to share. There were about 80 people there, and it was a really great way to meet other people and enjoy Christmas the Caribbean way. 

After Christmas, we made our way up St Vincent, and it was time to say good bye to Dad and Jude, who were flying home. We set up in Blue Lagoon marina to wave them off. It felt very weird saying good bye, Dad had been with us for nearly 7 weeks now including a week in Tenerife, the Atlantic crossing and the three weeks with Jude in the Grenadines, so the boat suddenly felt very empty. 

After we said our goodbyes, Marty and I sailed on north, passing Wallilabou, where most of the Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed, and stopping into the the very scenic Cumberland Bay. This will be our final stop in St Vincent, before we move on to St Lucia, and the next stage of our Caribbean adventure.

Until next time…..

R&M x

Atlantic Crossing

Days 1 – 7

With our sub 24 hour pit stop in Cape Verde over, we set off in absolutely perfect conditions for our trip west. As we slipped out of Mindello between the Islands of Sao Vincente and and Santo Anteo, we had 25 knots from astern, and lovely rolling waves to send us on our way. We also had a small collection of other boats all leaving around the same time, and it was comforting to know that we’d got some company as we set out. 

Unfortunately, these champagne conditions didn’t stick round long, and as the sun set for our first night, the wind died away to nothing, and we sat rolling around in the swell for several hours. We eventually took down the main to stop the incessant flopping from side to side, and made very slow head way under the jib until the wind returned the following morning. 

For the next couple of days, it was much more “business as usual”, with a sunny 15 – 20 knots of wind pushing us along. The trickiest bit of those first few days was managing the early passage anxieties – including, but not limited to: What if we hit something? What if we lost the steering? What if we start sinking? What if we lose the electronics? What if some one gets ill? What if I give everyone food poisoning? What if some one falls overboard? Etc etc….Fortunately, as more time passed without catastrophe, and the daily routines became established, the anxieties subsided into something a bit more manageable, and time moved on. 

We were also super excited to see some Dolphins – we saw one pod a couple of days out from Cape Verde, who played along side the boat for a while. We also had a couple of night time visits, and they looked very cool with all the phosphorescence as they splashed around on our bow wave. 

Day 5 was particularly notable, as the first of the two assigned Shower Days – great excitement! By “shower”, I mean that we each had roughly 5 litres of fresh water allocated to us, warmed nicely in the little camping solar shower on deck – by usual standards, not quite a shower, however after 5 days of salt, suncream, flying fish attacks etc, it was more than welcome, and we all relished the feeling of being clean for at least a few hours. 

Day 7 was the official half way day, and we crossed the 1000 mile mark. As we passed that milestone in the middle of the night, we didn’t really do much to mark the occasion – but we celebrated with a delicious breakfast of bacon and baked beans in the morning! 

They do say that spending time at sea is a good way to learn more about people, and this proved very true in our case, when Marty whipped up no less than three fresh loaves of bread en route. Our secret baker then further surprised us with fresh home-made pizzas – he’s kept this talent well hidden up until now, but now the secret is out. 

Days 8 – 14

Day 8 was a funny old day – we had very light winds and rain in the morning, with the wind coming from the west – not what we’d been looking for! The rain soon disappeared, but the wind was taking it’s time to materialise. We took advantage of our becalming by going for a quick swim off the back of the boat, with a long line and a fender. The novelty of having a swim 1000 miles from land, in 5000 metres of water was pretty exciting, until the inevitable thought crept in that essentially you’re now just the rather large lure for all the sea monsters lurking nearby, and we scampered out very quickly, feeling refreshed. 

We had mixed success with fishing on the trip. For the first few days, the swell was too large for us to fish comfortably, and the fridge and ice box was so full of food that we had no space to keep it, so we only really fished in the second half of the passage. The first time the reel went off, it shot out the back of the boat at high speed, with the rod bending at all sorts of mad angles. The line suddenly snapped, and what ever we’d hooked was gone, along with our favourite lure. The breaking load on the line was 320lbs (about 180kg), so what ever we’d caught was clearly enormous, and I’m not sure we’d have had room for this one on board anyway! 

The second time wasn’t much more successful, although this time the blame fell squarely on some poorly tied knots. Another fish and lure lost, and most irritatingly, my favourite hat was also sacrificed during the proceedings. 

Third time lucky as they say, and we reeled in a beautiful little Albacore – the perfect size for three people for dinner. By this stage, we’d started to run low on the fresh meat, so the fish was a very welcome update to the dinner menu, and we enjoyed the freshest of fresh fish with our few remaining potatoes. 

We spent much of our days playing Sudoku to varying levels of success, doing crosswords, and reading. By this stage in the trip, I’d read everything on board, including a Maintenance Manual for Diesel Engines (very practical, but I suspect that this will remain more Marty’s area than mine) a Sea Survival Tactics book – note, this does not make for good bed time reading when roughly 1000 miles from land in any direction – and the Cruisers Guide to Fishing – this did come in handy when dealing with the aforementioned Albacore! With hindsight, a glaring omission from our reading materials was any sort of book on the Stars and Astronomy, which would in fact have been very handy – the stars were truly awesome. And I don’t mean in the “I had an AWESOME burger for lunch” kind of way, I mean the truly vast, make you feel really really tiny kind of awesome. As it was, we did much pointing out of Orion and his belt, and the Big Dipper, which seemed to be about the limit of our astronomical expertise. 

Marty also passed the time battling the War on Amps – when it comes to battery management, Marty could probably write an entire post on the battery management, solar outputs, amp hours, watts etc etc – but it’s a bit techy and not that exciting, so I’ll just let him tell you all about it another time!

Other night time incidents included a series of vicious assaults on the crew by the Flying Fish. Dad was the first victim and took a direct hit to the chest, while Marty and I escaped with more minor blows to the legs at various stages of the passage. The worst  was yet to come though, and at 2am on the 12th day, an especially vicious attacker stormed the deck, and hit me square in the face, prompting a dramatic yelp which had Marty and Dad running for the companionway.  

Those little guys are very persistent, and our daily Rig & Deck check included clearing the decks of the previous nights intruders. This search was extended in the second half of the trip to include downstairs in the cabin, after one particularly intrepid individual managed to make his way into the kitchen sink, which was at that time experiencing very light usage, in light of our strict water rations. 

Day 10 was particularly significant as our second allocated shower day – it may seem like a small thing, but there are no words to explain how much of a morale boost this was! By now, every one was starting to get a bit tired of the long night watches, we’d had a very rolly couple of nights and were fed up of being all salty and suncreamy, so the chance to freshen up a bit did wonders for the team spirit! 

Day 11 marked the passing of the “500 miles to go” mark. This key mile stone meant that we probably had less than 4 days to go, and we all started dreaming of real showers, fresh vegetables (you really miss those after a few days!) and clean clothes

Days 12 – 13 passed reasonably uneventfully, which in reality is exactly what you want on a long ocean passage! We hit record times for completion of a sudoku puzzle, and completed the entire book of crosswords, and generally counted down to our scheduled arrival day. The only minor piece of excitement was when the eye on the mast for the spinnaker pole sheared off, and the pole suddenly became a flailing spear, clipped on to the end of the jib sheet poled out to windward. Once we’d successfully lashed that back to the mast, we continued as before. Incidentally, this was the only breakage of the entire trip, largely thanks to Marty’s dedication to our preparations and maintenance along the way – top work! 

The other notable occurrence was the arrival of the much anticipated squalls – we’d been warned to expect them as we approached the islands, and we were not disappointed. In the space of a few hours, 4 or 5 squalls rolled through, bringing wind and rain in abundance. The wind speed topped out at 38 knots, but quickly dropped to almost nothing and swung around all over the place for an hour or so – until the next one turned up! Once piece of advice we’d received was “if you can’t see the stars, reef!” – which turned out to be very true. The squalls crept up in the dark, and we found ourselves scrambling for the reefing lines, only for it all to be over before we’d finished. Fortunately, these only really caught us in our final 48 hours, so we escaped fairly unscathed, although now very wary of large dark clouds! 

Day 14 – we arrived! Roughly 30 miles offshore, we first spotted a tiny dot of land on the horizon. As the day went on, the dot got larger and larger, and we could practically taste the rum. We’d ideally hoped to arrive in daylight, but the winds weren’t quite playing ball, so it was just after nightfall when we eventually dropped the anchor at Port St Charles in the north of island of Barbados. The port officials seemed to have disappeared for the evening, which meant we couldn’t leave the boat, so we whipped up some pasta, and crashed out for our first full night of sleep in three weeks. I can confirm that it was as good as you’d expect – with out a doubt the best sleep I’ve ever had. 

We checked in with out incident in the morning, and went ashore for our first meal and to get some wifi to see what had happened in the world after the last 3 weeks. The plans from here now involve a few days in Barbados, before the 80 mile passage over to St Vincent and the Grenadines, where we’ll spend the next couple of weeks. 

Until next time….

R&M xx

Thursday 21st November – Canaries to Cape Verdes Islands

We set off from Tenerife bound for Cape Verdes bright and early on Saturday morning. Full of enthusiasm (and breakfast), we cast off around 8:30am into a light northerly breeze. We’d been expecting a light patch until we get clear of the island and it’s enormous volcano, so we motored out until we found the breeze. 25 knots from the North East kicked in fairly quickly, and we reefed down the main, and settled in for the next few days. 

The forecasts had all suggested that we’d have 20 – 25 knot NE wind all the way, and we were not disappointed – for 5 days and 5 hours, we had steady breeze from behind us, and we were pointing almost directly for Mindelo, in Sao Vincente. 

As seems to be the norm for us, we started the passage with huge rolly swell, which made the first couple of days quite challenging. For the first day I didn’t feel too bad, and hoped that I might have got away without my usual 48 hours of seasickness, but sadly not, and on the second day, I felt truely miserable. However, the most seasick crew member award definitely goes to Dad, who spent the first 48 hours either clinging to the rail, or in bed – there was no in-between! Fortunately, as is usually the way, we all settled in to the rhythm of boat life after the first couple of days, the seasickness faded away, and we could get on with the trip. Having learnt from my previous legs, this time around I had food for at least three days cooked and prepared in advance, which meant this time around, a quick heat up on the stove would produce hot meals in a few minutes, without the need to hanging out downstairs for too long! 

It was a bit of a lonely trip – the only other boat(s) we saw were a large tug towing a container ship very very slowly towards Gibraltar – by our calculations at their speed of 1.3 knots, they’d be on their way for another month! Other than that, we were on our own. Even the wildlife seemed to have deserted us, and we had a disappointing lack of dolphins on this passage. Dad and Marty did spot a pod of large white whales heading north, and we found a couple of turtles drifting along. That said, we seemed to attract a considerable amount of flying fish, and we spent the last two nights dodging them as they launched themselves into the boat. Marty was convinced that one had managed to get into the aft cabin, and came in rooting around for it at 4 am. We never found that one, but in the morning the deck was covered with it’s friends, along with a tiny baby squid. 

On the third day, some ominous cracking and creaking noises started coming from what sounded like the rudder. We spent a nervous couple of hours trying to identify the cause of the noise, and pulled the aft cabin apart to get a better look at everything. The culprit turned out to be some of the plastic combing was rubbing and compressing against some fibreglass on the bulkhead, and nothing to do with the rudder. Much relieved, we shook out a reef, and continued careering downwind at 9 knots towards Cape Verdes. 

Other trip highlights include a new speed record for Èalù of 17.3 knots which Marty put in down one particularly large wave, and some roast potatoes on Tuesday evening!

As we’d managed to sail down slightly quicker than we’d planned, the Arc Plus boats were getting ready to depart Mindelo for their Atlantic crossing as we approached, and we watched them as they disappeared over the horizon. It was a very sunny day, and a perfect day to start the long leg to the Carribbean! Fingers crossed for more of the same for us when we depart again today. We’re off to do a quick re-stock for the fridge, fill up the tanks and get ready to cast off again this afternoon – next stop Barbados! 

With regard to our tracker, so far we have learnt that it checks in once a day, usually sometime between 10am and midday, and updates our position, so we will continue to try and do that for the next leg.

Until next time….

R&M xx

We didn’t quite have the start we’d planned to our trip, and due to a family situation, I spent the first week of our planned trip at home with my family, while Marty did all the final jobs, and got the boat ready to leave.

I flew back to Dublin on the evening of 29th July, and we set off from Greystones at 6am on the morning of the 30th. We left the harbour, and were met with a 30 knot northerly breeze, and big waves. We had originally intended to sail the 14ish hours to Dunmore East, but in light of the conditions, we decided to sail the slightly shorter trip to Kilmore Quay, and stop there for the night. After a couple of hours, and with very little sail up, we settled into the swing of things, and finally managed to get some food into us. We reached Kilmore Quay around 5pm that evening, and after a quick ice cream pit stop, we settled in for the night, with another early start planned for the following day.

The following morning, we left Kilmore Quay in a light breeze, to make the short passage to Dunmore East. We arrived in glorious sunshine, and anchored off the beach for the afternoon. Ross, Lynda and the girls arrived that afternoon, and we swam, paddleboarded and ate more ice cream.

We spent the next few days making a couple more hops down the east coast, slowly making our way to Schull, where we planned to stay for a week. After Dunmore, we stopped in Kinsale and Glandore, where we spent a very bumpy night, before our final windy sail into Schull. Safely on our mooring in Schull harbour, we then spent the week sailing and socialising during the now infamous “Calves Week regatta. We enjoyed the week racing on the mighty Rockabill VI, and had a thoroughly enjoyable few days. I was blown away by the kindness and generosity shown to us over the last few days – from hot showers (and hair dryers!), the offer of a bed ashore for a wet and windy night, and the loan of a car to do all our provisioning, we were very grateful for all the help and support from our friends – thank you all!

We spent the day on Friday preparing for our first long passage on Éalú – our planned departure for La Coruna in the north west of Spain was Monday 12th. We filled up with water and diesel, stocked up the boat with enough food for three people to last 6 days, and downloaded charts and weather forecasts for the coming days so that we could finalise our passage plan and routing. We’re very fortunate to have a third crew member joining us for the crossing to La Coruna, so we were looking forward to Neilo arriving on Sunday night. The weather forecast looks good for the week, and we were aiming to complete the 500 mile trip in approximately 5 days.

In the meantime, we’ve loaded up on podcasts, books for the kindle and movies for the ipad before we go!

Until next time…..

R&M xx