At Sea - On route to Madeira

Hi Everyone,

Well, wind is on the nose all the time so we are heading NW and have decided to stay at this angle for a few days as the winds are marginally better for making north. There is going to be some strong wind in this area in 3 days so we want to get as far north as possible by then where the effects of the tradewinds are less. That means that at present we are heading for Newfoundland! 
All OK on board.

Lots of love

Arti & Dimitri

Sao Nicolau

Hello Everyone,

Well, we are on our way again. We left Sao Vicente this morning and had a lovely day sail to one of the islands further east, Sao Nicolau. We have not yet gone ashore but it looks as though there are very many half built buildings in the small town. We will see. We are about to go ashore for dinner and a scout around. 

Lots of love
Arti & Dimitri

Cape Verdes

Hi Everyone,

Well, we made it in safely, much to the relief of all of us.  I had a  headache yesterday after we got in, I guess both from the reduction of the tension and also lack of sleep.  It was good to have a night’s sleep last night where we weren’t being thrown across the bed (and off it sometimes).

We have organized all our repair work so hopefully we will not be here too long.  The town is small (just two roads of shops) with not too much to do. Today we plan on catching a bus to a seaside village for lunch, to see some of the countryside. The shops however, have far more fresh produce and groceries than what we found in St. Helena so we will be able to stock up for our next leg to Madeira.

Love to all

Arti and Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Cape Verde islands.

For Everyone

Hello everyone, well, here we are in the full brunt of the tradewinds. The wind is now blowing 30kn. and there is a big sea, with spray over the bimini every few minutes. It is a pretty wet ride! We are approaching the southern Cape Verde islands so hopefully the large swell will ease somewhat as we near them. The inside of the boat is chaos. I got up this morning after only 1hr. sleep through the night (sleep is impossible for me while being tossed back and forth) to find plates on the floor, eye glasses, wrist watch, baskets of gloves and hats, which had all previously lived on the shelves, bedding, books etc. It is going to take quite awhile to put it back together! We are all very tired, the boys hae been seasick and we will all be very glad to reach our distination tomorrow. That's all for now folks! :) 

Arti & Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Cape Verde Islands

Hello Everyone,

Well we had a bit of excitement last night. Around 9pm the line (halyard) that holds our big front sail (gennoa) up snapped and the sail started to come down. It was quite a job getting her down (and not losing her overboard) and into the boat so sort out. In the process we managed to tear it as well. To put up our other one, we need to go up the mast to sort out a problem there. At the moment we are corkscrewing around, pitching and bucking in quite a large swell, so we have decided to motor/sail the rest of the way seeing as we were nearing our destination. That way we will sort it all out in the marina. We ended up with this huge sail in the middle of the saloon, with not enough space to fold her properly. It took us quite awhile to sort it out and get it down to a manageable size. We are now 283nm from Mindelo on Sao Vincente, our destination and 131nm from Sao Santiago if we need to pull in earlier. We keep smiling - after all, we are doing this for fun!! 

Love to all. 

Arti & Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Cape Verde Islands

Hello Everyone, 

Well at last we have wind again so the engine is off and we are sailing again. The downside is that the wind is now on our nose, so we are zig-zagging, doing a lot of extra mileage and, once again, we live life on a bucking and weaving slope. The upside of that is that it is such an effort to do anything that it is good low-grade exercise. We are taking quite a lot of water over the front of the boat but we are making good progress. We are now approximately level with the border between Sierra Leone and Guinea. Last night we went over the Sierra Leone Rise with several sea mounts. One of them rises just about sheer from 4,000m to 207m. That meant a lot of water welling over them and a fairly large swell for us. We have 500nm to go to the Cape Verdes and should be there by Saturday. That's all for now folks. 

Keep well and keep :) 

Dimitri & Arti

At Sea - On route to Cape Verde Islands

Hello one and all, 

Well we have got over the line! I guess Dimitri told you about the "Crossing the line ceremony?" We are now at 6 degrees latitude and the wind (slightest breeze) and swell is coming from in front of us. This has brought some relief from the humidity of the last few days. We have been in typical tropical weather for the last few days. No wind except just as the repeated thunderstorms reached us. Dimitri has been catching water for us and yesterday I did a big load of washing in lovely rain water. The sea is flat as a pancake now with just the slightest swell. We only have a 2knot breeze so are motoring. Once we get into the NE trades, we will be able to sail but as the wind will be directly from in front, we will have to zig-zag for the next 2,200nm to Portugal, increasing our distance by quite a bit (but should still reach Lisbon on time). 

Best wishes from that Atlantic. 

Dimitri and Arti

At Sea - On route to Cape Verde Islands

Hi Everyone,

All well here. Sea is like glass, no wind and only the slightest swell. I could go across this in an inflatable kayak! Will be like this for the next 4 days. Hot and humid as hell, especially inside with the engine going. It is 7am. and I am soaked in perspiration! We look forward to higher latitudes. 

Arti & Dimitri

Hi one and all,
I trust our note finds you all well, as we are.
Since our last message, we have had some interesting experiences with our asymmetric spinnaker (also called a gennaker)This is a large red and white sail that balloons out in front of the boat, looks great, and is a light wind sail. 4 days ago, the wind was, as predicted, weaker and behind us, so we flew this sail as our only sail. At 2.30am a squall passed over us, with stronger wind in front of it, but as it came over us the wind died to 5 knots & swung round and round,wrapping the gennaker tightly around the Genoa(the front sail). John woke to help,and all attempts to unravel it failed, till John thought of spinning the boat around many times,as the wind came back. We unraveled the sail, and other than two small tears that Arti successfully repaired, no harm was done. By now the tropical rain was pouring down, so John,at 3 am, had a freshwater shower in the rain! Next morning, we put the sail up and have kept it up over the last 3 days. We now have tactics to avoid wrapping the sail again. The sail is a lot of trouble, but saved us 3 days of burning diesel so far, and is great when flying. We are able to go about 5-6 knots in 7 to 8 knots wind - not bad! At 2.40 am last night,we crossed into the Northern hemisphere and Poseidon obliged by producing fireworks, by means of repeated squalls and very impressive thunder and lightening! To day, to celebrate, Arti dressed as Poseidon, and inaugurated John,and I with shaving cream, pretend surgery, and of course a dunking, as she has sailed across the equator before, but we haven't. She also baked a fantastic chocolate cake for afternoon tea. It is hot and humid,but we are able to have freshwater showers in the rain every day, it rains that often! We are now half way to the Cape Verde Islands,and expect some upwind sailing as we get closer. We all look forward to cooler latitudes. Not much sea life but we did see a pod of spinner dolphins, leaping very high and actually spinning!Unlike the Indian Ocean, we hardly get flying fish on the deck, very few birds but a small squid landed near the cockpit! On our ship's log we have now covered 21,000nm since we bought the boat. That is equivalent to about 23,000 land miles - the distance of the circumference of the earth! We have now done 14,000nm. since we left Sydney at the end of June! Have a look at www.skipr.net, the route looks awesome!

Bye for now, 
Arti & Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Cape Verde Islands

Hello everyone, 

Just to let you know we are well, and miss you lots. Our wind is gradually dying as we move towards the Doldrums so today we are going to put up the gennaker. This will enable us to turn towards Cape Verdes and away from Liberia where we are currently heading, 500nm. north of us!

Arti & Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Cape Verde Islands

Hello Everyone

Well, we have been at sea for four days now, after leaving St. Helena on Monday afternoon. Our fridge looks much more sparse now, than when we left South Africa. We could not get much in the way of fresh fruit and veg. in St. Helena- no potatoes, carrots, green vegetables, tomatoes. The only fresh produce we could buy was lettuce, cucumbers (the biggest ones I have ever seen!), onions, butternut and tiny, local bananas. No yoghurt or honey either. Our pilot books tell us that it is even worse in the Cape Verdes. Anyway, it gives us the opportunity to eat through the canned food and ready meals we have in store.

It is sad to note that the Atlantic Ocean seems much more barren than the Indian and Pacific Oceans. We saw a pod of dolphins and caught two tuna in the shallows just around St. Helena, but other than that, we have seen very few flying fish, no birds, no dolphins, nada, nunca, nothing! There are not even any ships out here and other than a few we saw near Cape Town, heading for Walvis Bay in Namibia, we have seen none. So that leaves us alone here, with our little disc of blue and, of course, the beautiful starry sky at night. The Southern Cross is getting low in the sky now. Soon it will disappear and when we cross the equator, we will begin to see Polaris, the star which always tells you where north is.

We are back in our routine- the boys play backgammon each day, we watch a movie each afternoon, reading, Spanish lessons, cooking, etc…
Dimitri says-we were only 2 hrs out of St Helena. Earlier, John had noted a large Dolphin fish near the boat and tried to lure it on my light rod (no lack of ambition there!) It took the lure as did another fish, but John couldn't keep them hooked. Anyway he set the lines as we left the mooring, & 2 hrs later his rod was buzzing. He slowly hauled in a large Tuna. While he was busy, I checked our trolling line, and hauled in a slightly smaller tuna too! (about 15 kg & 10 kg) We identified them as albacore tuna (Large eyes & pectoral fins), which stay on continental shelves and come in these (for large tuna) small sizes. We had anticipated this catch, and out came the Wasabi and Soy. The very fresh Sashimi was the best I have ever had and unlimited! John had seen a San (bushman) hunting video, and so took a leaf out their book and apologised to the fish prior to there end, reassuring them we would eat them! Since then we have had a serve of griddle-fried fish, and a great fish curry (Arti actually followed the recipy!) Still have 6 meals!

We have had to zigzag, so are making slow but sure progress. HF contact is difficult with Maputo on sail mail. We get a signal, but the ALWAYS busy! As a result, other than position reports, contact is sparodic. 
140 miles to the Equator. I am looking forward to seeing the Red line in the ocean!

Love to all 
Arti & Dimitri

St Helena Island

Hi one and all. 

Well, we have arrived safely in St Helena Island. We sailed the whole way, travelling about 2100 nmiles to go 1700 nmiles! We found we could run with the wind behind us under headsails alone provided the wind stayed above 15 knots, but had to crack off the wind if it dropped. We rolled the whole way with a following sea, and I remained slightly seasick the whole way. You did well not to come, Lea! My computer decided to update (I now found it was “flashplayer update service”, and I don’t even have adobe flashplayer on the computer! I have no idea why this happened, perhaps Tony could advise!) in any event, I exceeded my monthly limit on satellite and was cut off for a month, 3 weeks to go still before reconnect, and haven’t been able to “blog” We communicated by HF radio email (sailmail) but are very limited in the time we can use it, and now can’t communicate with Maputo, as there transciever is rather limited. I am told we can sort this in the Cape Verdes, our next stop , so no running commentary on the next leg.

We didn’t see much sea life until very near St Helena, when we saw a whale, 2 turtles and a pod of large bottlenose dolphins. The weather  is now warm to hot. St Helena is about 10x7 km, very high cliffs all round with only one landing place, Jamestown, in a small valley, Landing was spectacular, as it is King tides! No way we could come close with our dingy! The ferry watches the waves, and dashes in between “sets”, everyone scambles like mad to load water, bags, and themselves in the few seconds before the next wave crashes in! Apparently Ascension Island is worse, with no ferry service, and tides will still be high, so we will bypass it as we can’t land safely. We are carting water and fuel by jerry can.

This Island is the most friendly place I have ever been to. Immigration opened especially for us on Saturday afternoon so we could legally land.  The banks are closed till Monday so a lady at the local hotel gave us 100 pounds with an i.o.u. without even checking our identity. She says they do this all the time for the yachties! Tomorrow “Robert” is taking us, in his car, on a tour of the island to see Napoleon’s last home, his grave, the oldest tortoise on earth, at Plantation House, the Governor’s residence, the Boer Prisoner of War graves and internment camp and the forts on the mountaintop, old (and many!) defences of the island.  We leave again on Tuesday for Cape Verdes, our longest leg so we will have little contact for the next three weeks.  You can however, follow us on www.skipr.net.

 

Best wishes to you all.

 

Dimitri & Arti