two little birds

towards the end of the crossing the boat had very unexpected and unconventional visitors, they were a couple of land birds, a female and a male who were migrating probably from africa towards america. they must have been very tired when they decided to make a stop over for almost two days on board, specially as they had just passed two full days of squall after squall. through the time that they were on the boat they were very friendly and allowed peter and esteban to touch them, play with them and even feed them dead aunts and water.

it was easy to tell which was the male and which was the female. the female was poking the male on his head and feet trying to get the male ready to go flying again. she was the most energetic of the two, telling him, “come on, time to move again…” and giving him encouragement. the male was tired and was probably old and sick, his attitude was more, “…leave me alone, let me rest… i am tired and cant go on….” they communicated with each other, touched, played and flew around each other. they even showed affection. it was wonderful to see the couple interact.

sadly, after over 24 hours of watching this love affair, the male died at dawn. it was devastating. the crew had the moral at its lowest. it was really heartbreaking, and unfortunately the worst was yet to come. in a effort to protect the widow female, esteban threw the male overboard so she did not have to see her dead partner’s corpse. this did not help much as she immediately noticed he was gone, and right away her attitude changed. she stopped being the vibrant bird with the “let’s go flying again” attitude. instead she grew sadder by the minute; and after mourning him for 8 hours straight, she gave up and also died. this was tragic, probably the lowest point of the crossing. peter thought it was a love story, exactly as i am writing it here. husband died and then wife could not take the grief and went to a better place to join him. esteban on the other hand had a more hypochondriac version of the accounts. he though to himself how unlucky they must be to get, in the middle of the atlantic ocean, two animals infected with the bird flu who came to die on board and spread the disease. he was then looking for symptoms of the flu, which of course none of them had. but i tend to agree with peter. i think it was a love story; a very beautiful, romantic and sad story.

crossing the atlantic

with a fixed sail esteban and peter left cape verde towards the caribbean on december 1/11. a 2000 nautical mile journey of only sea and some rain in between. the crossing was uneventful for the most part, which is good news; mostly following seas and many wind gusts. some days the gusts came every hour with torrential rain and dark skies. few electrical storms though. with the many rainy days the rainbows were spectacular; something not seen anywhere before.

the food was plentiful with a total catch of 10 mahi mahi, the last one being so big that it lasted for an entire week of food supply. in total they saw only four other sailboats which is not that many considering it is a busy shipping lane and it was also the time of the arc. the arc is a sailing rally of over 250 sailboats which for some inexplicable reason decide to depart all at the same time from the same port in the canaries, and sail together the entire leg, to exactly arrive and overcrowd the same port at their destination. knowing they would be sailing around the same time as this rally, it was rather surprising they did not see other boats.

the wind was constant always coming from the stern making them sail wing on wing; with the head sail to one side and the main sail to the other; capturing all the wind from the back. there were only a couple of days with no wind at all, and our beloved yanmar, as always worked marvelously. there were also a couple of days with wind from the nose. very bizarre and uncomfortable, but at this point in the journey nothing surprises us about the wind and the direction where it comes from.

as far as living together in so close quarters, i have heard from both esteban and peter that it was fine. they enjoyed each other’s company and had a good time despite some of the boring parts of a long crossing. this is an outstanding result considering what we originally expected and wanted from a crew. because i was not going to be on board, my only condition was that it was a man. esteban’s expectation was that it would not get sea sick. we thought this was best, to have little to no expectations. and at the end, we never imagined that we would end up with a great chef, an experienced sailor, and overall an excellent man who has become a very dear friend.

bye bye main

i guess it would not be a proper ocean crossing if we did not have at least one minor incident. and so we did, or they did, i should say. last tuesday, only 3 days after having departed, and during the night (everything always happens at night) the main sail ripped in half, from one end to the other, rendering it completely useless (sadly after having paid in gibraltar some sterling ponds to restitch it….). losing the main with over 2600 miles to go is not a minor incident … so they changed course and headed now for mindelo in s. vincente, cape verde islands, off the african coast some 800 miles south of the canaries. still on the way, so luckily this is not a big detour. there are not that many facilities in the cape verdes, but it was the best alternative considering that returning to the canaries would have meant sailing against the wind. i also checked on line and this is the most visited island by other cruisers; something we would generally avoid; except this time, because we hope to find some sail repair facilities (wishful thinking perhaps), but the odds improve if we go to the most visited island, we think.

with the new course in mind, but still considering that there may not be sail lofts or that the sail is probably beyond repair (which might very well be the case), i retrieved the original old main sail we had in storage. luckily for us, our good friend jerry who had taken this old sail to texas had brought it back in case we needed it. who would have thought that that case would be a reality (I guess he thought it would, someday.) so after inspecting it and going to the sail maker in fort lauderdale to inspect it again, it was shipped and it is now on its way to the cape verdes. i just checked and it is within the DHL network traveling to meet the boat soon and continue the journey through the atlantic.

transatlantic crossing

the 2011 atlantic hurricane season is almost over. it is actually officially over on november 30 but historically the last days of the season have been rather quiet, so we hope this year is not the exception. the boat and crew were ready and they finally set sail on sunday november 20. a westbound sail through the atlantic ocean with 2900 nautical miles of open sea, great sunrises and sunsets, hopefully many fish and unfortunately a lot of freighters and other sailboats to be on the lookout for.



the estimated landfall should be sometime around december 15 in the west indies where I will be waiting to rejoin my husband in barbados at last!! peter and esteban will sail around 25 days at an average of 120 miles per day. This is the last of the long crossings of our circumnavigation. I am anxious and very happy to know that they have finally departed.

until the next post, this time from the caribbean...!