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Grenada

There had been another barbecue in Pirates Bay and there had been lots of wind for the last few days and lots of swell. The waves that were breaking on the beach in Pirates Bay were now fairly high. I had arrived with my dinghy feeling sure of myself, counting the waves and thinking that I had found a good moment to beach the dinghy. But there was another steep wave that seemed to come out of nowhere. I capsized. Everything fell out, the oarlock broke and I hit my head on the bottom of the sea so hard that my spine hurt and I couldn’t move my jaw for a few days. The skin of my forehead was scraped away and of course I had not put my camera in the waterproof bag. 
I now had no mobile and no camera, a forehead that was constantly oozing some liquid and a broken oarlock. Needless to say I had felt pretty sorry for myself for the next few days.

rainbow with Grenada in the background
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To Tobago

I had spent most of the night trying to collect the vital weather and immigrations information that I had stored on my mobile all over again. I knew I would be missing other stuff too but didn’t want to think about it now. I was ready to go. Andi and Kudi and I were going to leave together. Of course their boat is faster so at some point I would stay behind. The tide turned at ten in the morning and I had been into town early one last time to see if my phone would show up or if I could buy a cheap replacement. No such luck.
We went downriver with the tide but it turned before we were out of the estuary. After about six hours the the sails came up and Kudi filmed and took a few pictures of Amy.
After that we sailed into the night with the Guiana current and good wind. We had 550 nautical miles to go and were making good progress.

picture taken by Kudi Kiener
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Jungle Tour

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.

picture taken by Kudi Kiener
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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.

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Cabo Verde

We are in Mindelo in São Vicente, Cabo Verde at the moment, getting ready for the crossing. Zissi had come to join me in Sal almost two weeks ago and we have been cruising around some of the islands. We have met new people and old acquaintances from the Canary Islands in the “Floating Bar” and sometimes it is hard for me to believe that I am here … in Cape Verde …. 4000 nautical miles from where I started and my starting point for crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

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Posts from underway

I have found a way of sending short texts directly to the blog from my satellite device. Since I will be making longer passages from here on I will probably make a few log entries once in a while if you are interested. Of course you can also always just follow the dot with Amy’s position.
The satellite texts can for some reason only be viewed here in the English version of the blog.

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La Gomera

Last Friday I was finally notified that my battery is beyond repair. I won’t go into the “why” and “what went wrong” etc. I did that for myself long enough and apart from destroying my mood it also didn’t help at all. I then tried ordering a new one (the ones they were selling in Tenerife were to large for my battery case and very expensive). I tried ordering and every time it would take one or two days until I got a message that told me the seller wasn’t delivering to the Canary Islands. This went on with different Sellers for days. I had postponed my reservation in La Gomera to next Tuesday. So I cast off Monday evening to sail the 70 miles overnight and not arrive in the dark. I still had my starter battery. That would have to suffice.

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Tenerife

Porto Santo was probably the hardest place to which to say goodbye so far. After I had got everything pretty much ready the evening before I paddled to the harbour café one last time, sat in the evening sun and had a few beers. Besides being a little sad to go, I was also eager to get to the Canary Islands. This should be a fairly easy passage with perfect winds from the port quarter all the way.

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