Across the Atlantic, Step Two

Coffee on 5am watch

Rockin' an Rollin' for 13 days, 8 hours, but who's counting. Well, as a matter of fact, we were, certainly towards the end of the trip. We were very glad to see Barbados rise above the horizon on the 14th day. The Atlantic was very confused, wave trains coming from every direction, for the entire trip. In fact, it started that way leaving the Gibraltar Starights. But truth be told, we did have some excellent days.

Roger was still coughing up yellow goo when we got to Cape Verde, but finished the antibiotics and could tell it was almost over, so decided to set off with the next reasonable forecast. So we set forth on 22 December ok with the idea of missing the holiday madness and having our own new years celebration, which of course was Kim finding a bottle of bubbly in the bottom of the frig, which was a fine Limon soda. :)

The trip started with blustery winds/seas, but settled down in a couple of days so we could fly the spinnaker. That beast makes for a gentle ride if the winds are fair. But it didn't last and we had to motor for a couple of days to get through a period of light winds and heavy cloud cover. It was also a new moon, so the nights were pitch black, couldn't even see your hand in front of you.

That finally cleared and the winds picked back up, setting the spinnaker on and off. At one point we got it down just in time for a bit of blusteriness, where it would have been too hard to get it down. The hardest part was the winds were mostly behind us. With confused seas, that makes it hard to steady the boat without a press in the sails from the side, so we rolled along, seriously.

The funny part was all the flying fish. Unfortunately for many, they landed on deck without us knowing in the night, so died before we could get them back on their way. One morning, I picked more than a dozen off the deck. The good news was none of them flew into the cabin or whacked us on the side of the head in the middle of the night. It was a good sign though that there are actually still fish in the sea. We had lots of Dolphins escorting us in the first part of the trip, but didn't see much on this side of the Atlantic.

So, 2060 nautical miles later we didn't fall off the end of the earth and made landfall in Barbados on 4 January 2017, early enough to check in with customs, immigrations and the harbour master. But since we couldn't get a decent anchor hold (notoriously bad there), we tied to the fuel dock for the night, but had to leave at 7:30 in the morning and headed down to Carlisle Bay, we anchored in front of the Barbados Yacht Club, they gave us a one week membership, which lets us land our dingy on the beach, use there facilties including showers. So, all is good and we are happily in flat water again, plugged back into the internet and able to stream MVY radio, Martha's Vineyard.



Landfall in Barbados

So, that's the news from EQ, where the winds are blowing steady from the east, the seas still 'sporty', but not here, and the crew content to finally get more than a few hours of sleep. We even have turtles swimming by for a visit, in water that is 28 deg (80F), so happy to be back in the tropics. :)


With Equanimity and Joy...