Here are a few pictures of my trip to Albina in Suriname and our excursion through the small creeks in the jungle of the Maroni river. I went on both trips together with Andi and Kudi (two sailors from Vienna who I had got to know in La Gomera). At the end you will find a short video that I shot in the creeks. We had also visited a village where we asked the chief for permission to anchor and to visit the village. It was unbelievably beautiful and tomorrow I am leaving for Tobago. I had meant to write a bit more but lost my mobile in the meantime and therefore spent a lot of time organising things that I hadn’t expected. Therefore the text will have to be short this time.
I had intended to make another movie that speaks for the whole crossing. It turned out that I didn’t film all that much because I sometimes neither had the time or the energy. I am still going to make a little movie with the material that I have which I will post later.
Leaving Mindelo was an emotional turmoil. Zissi had left in the morning and I cast off pretty soon after. I was sad, excited, scared and above all very much looking forward to this new adventure: Crossing the Atlantic Ocean. A passage of roughly 1800 nautical miles from Mindelo, CV to the Îles de Salut in French Guiana.Because Zissi and I had taken the trip to Santo Antao I knew how rough the channel between the two islands could be. There was a lot of wind so I didn’t even bother to set the mainsail at first and I was flying towards the southern tip of Santo Antao with just a bit of genoa. The waves were uncomfortable but diminished after about 10 hours. I was going to have the wind from behind me all the way so I later poled out the jib and fixed the mainsail to the other side. We were going wing-on-wing which always causes a bit of uncomfortable rolling motion in the boat. The first couple of days were easy sailing. I was cooking real meals, celebrating life, reading, preparing flying fish that had found its demise in the cockpit for breakfast. I was underway laughing and crying out of pure joy and could hardly believe all this was real.
