We started on the 19th of December and sailed from Mindelo, capital of Sao Vicente, one of the islands of Cabe Verde. The wind was favourable and the sailed straight West towards the sunset. There were 5 of us: the skipper Dirk and his son Tom and a dutch lady Betty and her son Guido and myself.
The skipper installed our watch routines and the ladies were going to have the watch from 20hoo to Midnight and then again from 4h00 Am to 8H00 AM. So that was the start of the journey.The first thing that we noticed was the starts and the milky way. I it a really awing spectacle looking at it and to imagine the existence of all these stars and planets. One starts wondering....
Close at the end of our first "dark:" watch (4 to 8 AM) we noticed 2 pilot whales quite near the boat. They only made a quick appearance and didn't stay long with us, but it was really quite exciting to see them. They can be up to 6m and weitht up to 3 ton !
The next days the routine settled in, but we had a bit of a problem: there was very little wind and we even had to start the motor when the progress was at 0.8 knot ! I was starting to get worried when the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) on the GPS showed 6th of the February!
The second appearance of pilot whales (I guess between 5 a 10 of them) was the hightlight of the 3rd day. The showed up around noon in front of the yacht and Tom was able to get a real good picture. Mine are less visible.... but it is really something to see these creatures. They have something mysterious about them.
We wanted to download the gribfiles with the weatherforecast but for some odd reason the Satellite telephone was only working with the voice not for data download. So we contacted via the short range radio some other yachts that we previously met in Mindelo and based on the forecast that we received we went down south to approximately the 13 NB. The weather was quite hot and we caught a tan helming during the midday hours.
Christmas eve was really nice: we had music and tapas that Tom prepared and a couple of bottles of champain. Quite nice under the stars. Christmas morning had it's surprise since suddenly the fishing line was moving. I woke Guido telling him there was a big sushi on the line and he caught a real big fish from the Tune family : a Wahoo. As you will notice on the pics quite a big fish. We ate sushi, grilled tune, stewed tuna and even tinned tune. So now for a while you will understand that I will refrain from having Tuna on the menu !
Another big event was our en counter with a Catamaran in the middle of the ocean. Since our VHF (short range radio) wasn't working at that moment we came quite near and had a chat. They were from Lille (France) quite near Ostend and they were heading toward Guadeloupe. It was quite fun to meet a yacht there.
