Atlantic Crossing to French Guiana

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.

The next day my port jib sheet block ripped out of the traveller and the sheet and sail were flapping loosely and loudly in the air. A bit of chaos but something I could fix fairly easily and quickly.
Shortly after one of the blocks of Wayne’s ripped away from the pushpit. This was a bit harder task to fix. John my autopilot wasn’t strong enough to hold Amy on course while I make a contraption for a new block. We had to heave to for the repair. After that everything went well. 

The next morning the wind had picked up considerably. We now had 25 knots gusting 30. The sea had also picked up and there was a nasty secondary swell on the beam which made the rolling motion even worse and things were now flying around below decks. Wayne was steering without any problems and everything was fine except I didn’t feel like cooking with everything flying around. I now needed two hand to hold onto the ship in almost all situations. Even when sitting down I needed to use my hands to hold onto something in order to not get thrown around.
The next morning I looked up the mast and noticed the jib halyard was flapping around loosely. On closer inspection I noticed it had ripped in two just above the sail. This was a real blow. Luckily  a good part of the sail was furled because we had so much wind and so by some magic it had not fallen down. I had covered 800 miles, 1000 to go and I was now going to have one sail (my mainsail). This was not good. Another fact that gave me a real scare was that should the forestay break the mast would fall immediately. It was now only attached to the forestay as opposed to stay AND the sail with halyard. I had broken a forestay in Poland before and knew that this is not something that just doesn’t happen. At the time I still had the jib with halyard so the mast stayed up and I was able to make it home. And now I knew that the constant chafe was apparently eating away at everything on board.
This was the situation: Should the mast come down I would have a small chance of building some sort of minimast and making a small sail and then somehow cover the remaining 1000 miles with contraption or rather 700 miles because I also had 60l of diesel which would cover about 300 miles. It was clear I needed to go up the mast to solve the problem and attach a new halyard.
I made it about halfway up with I don’t know how many bruises. The seaway was just too rough and I had to abort my mission. Later I tried another time with even less success. OK so no new halyard… The positive side: the jib still stayed put and I could use a towel size of it for sailing wing on wing. Since I couldn’t hold the course with the sails as they were, I had to shift sails at least once or twice a day. That meant going through a jibe with the main boom. Attach the preventer on the other side, then go forward and shift the spinnaker boom with the mini jib to the other side. A routine that I got down to 10 minutes of work before but it was now taking around 90 minutes every time because of the rolling and the seas. 
The next thing that broke was the radar reflector. It came down from the top of the mast and crashed into the solar panel, then the pieces went overboard. The solar panel was still working luckily. I am not sure if the reflector killed only one cell or none at all. But at least we were still getting energy. The wind and waves had not eased up for one week and I was starting to get a bit tired and very frustrated. This was not at all how I had thought my atlantic crossing would we. I had pictured myself reading, playing the guitar, recording some stuff, filming, taking care of the boat, cooking etc. I was now eating cold canned food. I felt sorry for myself and started yelling at the gods, the and the crew who had nothing to do with the failures.
By now we also regularly experiencing squalls. They are some sort of mini thunderstorms without lightning and thunder but with lots of wind and torrential rain. They can bee seen coming by day of course and then it’s time to reef fast but by night it’s always a bit of an unpleasant surprise. When the boat is already heeled over, it’s a bit late to reef but of course it needs to be done in the dark and the rain and the windy chaos.
Later the second steering line block broke and this time we had a bigger problem because without a real jib we could not heave to. John was definitely not up to the task of steering in these waves and I really needed two hands for holding on and could maybe repair the block with the help of feet nose and mouth but there was no way I was going to handsteer at the same time.
I don’t remember how I did it. I do remember (because it’s in the logbook) that it took almost three hours. After that I went below and cried for another hour out of pure exhaustion and frustration. I left the boat to itself and needed some serious distraction which I found in my movie library on my tablet. I chose “Hector and the search for happiness” more or less by accident. I was fascinated and very moved. It was like the movie was speaking to me and Hector’s journey became my journey or vice versa.
And after that I was able to pull myself together and actually start to enjoy the passage again and not be frustrated by what it was not. Instead I could finally celebrate the fact that I was sailing across an ocean with Amy and enjoy the beauty of the ocean and the ever-changing sky.

We were now about 4 days away from the coast and the wind finally let off and we were back to very enjoyable and much less strenuous sailing. A few dolphins came by and escorted us for a while. I was cooking meals again. The stay had held and we were almost at the point where we could motor to the coast should she mast fail now. Life was good and easy.
After a couple of days it was clear that we weren’t going to make landfall during daytime. A pity because I had so wanted to see the coast after 2 1/2 weeks and yell “LandHo”. Oh well. Can’t have everything. The upside was: there are no dangerous reefs in the area so we would be able to go into the bay by night and drop the anchor.
Of course the sea or Neptune or what or whoever had one last test for us during that very last night at sea:
I had gone forward to reef (in the pouring rain and lots of wind) when the mainsheet traveler broke with a loud bang. The sheet with its large block went into the sea immediately and the sail was flapping like crazy. Wayne lost the course and Amy was heeled over pretty good. At that moment I had just undone the preventer and was holding the fairly expensive block and shackle. Because of the shock I somehow let go and the pair went overboard. Oh well… more important stuff to do right now than be sorry. I ran back to the cockpit, fished the mainsheet out of the drink and made a makeshift traveler out of a line that attached across the width of the cockpit. I fell down while doing that and landed on the broken traveler (a few pieces of ripped stainless stell that were sticking out of the rail) which immediately cut open a bit of my leg. It didn’t even hurt so bad but it was bleeding like crazy. The cockpit looked like after catching and slaughtering a big fish. I had never caught and slaughtered a big fish but I imagined this is what it would look like.
Anyway the wound would need treatment and I took down the sails, went below and put iodine and a sterile dressing and tried to calm down. 
I then decided I was much too shaken for the navigation to the islands and the anchoring manoeuvre and decided to wait for daylight before going on.
The next morning finding the bay and anchoring went like a charm and I had arrived in what looked to me like paradise. The Îles de Salut were part of the French penal colony and have a dark history. But it is a very beautiful place and I spend a few days, did the necessary repairs including going up the mast with the new halyard.
I then went another 120 nautical miles to Saint Laurent du Maroni which is on the border between French Guiana and Suriname.
This is where I am going to wait for an Austrian couple that I had met in La Gomera and we will all celebrate Christmas here.