Atlantic crossing Day 11 - 17

Thunderstorms, waves, whales and a giant barracuda.

We record our daily impressions of the crossing in a small diary, as well as the distance travelled in the last 24 hours. We measured this from 4pm to 4pm the next day. Join us on our adventure!

Day 11

Good morning after a shaky but fast night! I'm loving the night shift at the moment as we have no moon and are seeing beautiful stars. I downloaded an app that identifies constellations. So every night I can search for the images I know and discover new ones! Super exciting 😊

Today is a good day! 😊 Unfortunately, we're only fishing for seaweed again instead of tuna... With Thierry, everything is as normal as it can be 😉 He's making a new Dyneema soft shackle, and I'm making him a small dread 😆 I've been toying with the idea of dreading part of my hair for a long time. Maybe it could happen in the Caribbean...

I have a really tense back and my right arm often feels a bit numb. It's totally uncool, the lack of movement isn't good for me. But with the boat movements, it's not easy to stretch properly either 🤣 In the evening, like every evening, I mark our position on the map. Wulfi bakes banana bread, Thierry cooks vegetable curry and so we head off into another dark night.

Distance covered: 144nm

Day 12

The day starts with a red sky. It looks nice, but it doesn't bode well. I wake up Thierry because it looks like a few squalls (thunderstorm cells) are heading our way today. And so it is. True to the motto: "Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors warning.". It remains stormy all day, we have winds of up to 30 knots. Everything goes well, but the waves get noticeably higher. Today we even eat inside because it's raining. It's cool that we've managed to display the wind force, wind direction and course over ground on the plotter inside. So we can chill inside, track thunderstorm cells with the radar and let the autopilot steer.

As I don't like thunderstorms, I'm not doing so well today. I first have to get used to the waves and the strong wind, because it looks like it's going to stay that way until we arrive. Because of all the hustle and bustle, we forget to take our daily crew photo. Well, we'll make up for that at some point. So we set off into a turbulent night.

Distance covered: 136nm

Day 13

The night is stormy and I'm afraid to keep my watch alone. Wulfi, who has the shift before me, stays with me for a while and we play Yatzee. We take in the foresail completely and now only sail with the main reefed. After about an hour, the wind is at a constant 20-25 knots, which I can handle. Wulfi goes to bed and I sit down outside. My shift is now from 23:00 to 01:00. At least the moon is slowly coming back so we can see the waves coming.

The day continues with 15-30 knots of wind and high, steep waves. For lunch we have pan-fried bread with chickpea salad. A fish bites, but is gone again straight away. What a pity! Thierry has used a few blocks and two ropes to pull the jibe guard (a device for tying down the boom so that it doesn't hit anyone) onto the cleats at the back. That's super cool, now we don't have to go forwards to jibe! In the afternoon we briefly see some parts of whales! Really close, but unfortunately too short to make out anything clear. Still cool though 😉 In the evening we have fried potatoes with vegetables and a fried egg.

Distance covered: 138nm

Day 14

We have squalls every now and then during the night. At the end of my shift, I'm downstairs checking the radar when suddenly there's a loud bang from the back of the boat. I run up and already feel the boat turning into the wind. A look in the aft locker confirms what we suspect: The autopilot bolt is broken. This has happened before, so we are prepared for it. Still annoying that it happens at night with 25 knots of wind. Wulfi steers (in his underpants 🤣), Thierry coordinates and I replace the bolt. 40 minutes later, everything is back to "normal".

The night is exhausting with lots of wind and high waves. Once again, we only sail with the main reefed. We now also keep to our watch times during the day, as the conditions are exhausting and we don't really get some reasonable sleep. Towards evening we take in the main and sail with the genoa unfurled so that we have a better angle. The boat is very unstable with one sail and we roll quite a bit. We have vegetable curry for dinner.

I want to say here that these days are really not funny, at least for me. I'm scared every day, these waves are really scary and the boat is being pushed around and I don't like it at all. But what can you do, give every day another chance, take a deep breath and keep going. The team spirit is great and although we're all exhausted because we haven't slept properly for three nights, we're in good spirits. Three more days, we'll be fine!

Distance covered: 154nm

Day 15

The wind calms down a little at night, the gusts become less crazy and everything seems a little more constant. At the end of my shift, a nasty wave comes into the cockpit from behind and I am completely soaked. Nasty. Thierry comes out and takes over. We cross a 1000-foot-long tanker at a distance of 3 nm, super spooky.

In the morning Marti tries her luck with fishing, unfortunately a bird is attracted to the lure and gets caught in the hook. Wulfi pulls the hook out of the wing and the little bird flies away, hopefully it'll be fine. The day is a little more relaxed, it seems that the bad weather is over and our batteries are finally charging properly again. In the afternoon we see dolphins, then the fishing rod buzzes! What's that? A huge barracuda! It looks mean and stinks so we don't want to eat it and give it back to Poseidon.

In the late afternoon we break the 2000nm mark, toast, and the rod buzzes again! This time it's a mahi mahi, which I reel in with Marti and take out myself for the first time. Disgusting fact: there was a fish inside of the fish 🤮 We have chilli sin carne for dinner.

Distance covered: 134nm

Day 16

The night is once again super uncomfortable and we all sleep badly. A new noise has started, either the boats's structure or the rudder, something is cracking in the cockpit. It's driving us half crazy 🥴 We're having a bit of trouble keeping our course as the waves are pushing us around quite a bit. In the morning, we put both sails to port which felt a bit more stable. The waves are still strong, a few come into the cockpit and cool us down. A baby squid is washed in with us.

For lunch we have lentil salad with hallumi from Marti. The mahi mahi had two worm-like things on its skin and we're not sure what they are. We'll see. In the afternoon the time has come: land in sight, we see Barbados! We can hardly make out its outline, as the visibility is rather poor, but it's there! That's it, the starting signal for the unwinding! One more night 🥳 Let's do thisssss!

Distance covered: 129nm

Day 17

The time has come, today is the day we arrive! Thierry kept me company on my night shift as I wasn't feeling confident. In the morning I take over his shift, bake another loaf of bread and enjoy the view: Saint Vincent is clearly recognisable. Wohooooo, we've almost made it!

We eagerly await our destination for the last few miles. At 11.30 a.m. local time we drop anchor in Port Elizabeth in Bequia. We are overjoyed to be here! Let's summarise:

17 days, 2238nm, 5 fish caught, approx. 50 flying fish on board, two birds, 2x dolphins, 1x whale, only (!) 2 broken things, and 4 healthy sailors!

It's done! We are incredibly proud and grateful that everything went so well. The small and big fears are soon forgotten, what remains is a feeling of strength and the anticipation of Caribbean adventures. We are also very proud of the Cervino, she did a great job ❤⛵

Welcome to the Carribean!