Back in northern germany since late evening of last sunday, july 11th.

Pia uploaded some of my panoramas.

On the video the waves look quite acceptable …

Sailing without sails from as3.1415rin on Vimeo.

Calm on the Atlantic from as3.1415rin on Vimeo.

Dolphins from as3.1415rin on Vimeo.

Horta Harbour in the evening from as3.1415rin on Vimeo.

after 10 days we arrived in england in falmouth, unfortunately the last day we only used
the engine, did not sail at all. we could’ve waited maybe some days just in front of the
english coast to have wind at all, but well, going ashore was a better option weather
is nice here, we were welcomed by 2 danish boats who saw us entering the harbour and
called us right away via VHF to tell us the marina we’re currently all in. Bernd had met
them already on the canary islands and in the carib.
the crossing was really nice, fast and without big problems.When leaving horta we met the frigga again, a small boat we met in the middle of the
atlantic by chance, one day it just appeared on one side. unfortunately he just entered
the harbour when we left. in between we had some email contact toe xchange weather
information.
Again on the open ocean we then saw another sailing yacht, called it via VHF. it was a
dutch singlehander, who also welcomed us here in the marina. he stood here on the quay
and asked: hey, do you remember me? of course not, never having seen him, but having met
so many sailors the last weeks, you rather answer: “let me think, …”

after falmouth we continue via fowey, cawsand and plymouth where we currently are.

flourescing water behind the boat:

We met Frigga right again when we left Horta, a boat we met already somewhere in the middle of the atlantic ocean:

a good example of a weather chart we were able to receive using our short wave radio and a demodulating program on the PC:

We should’ve started storing cheese like this already earlier, quite effective:

2-3 days before arriving in england we saw some pilot wales:

well, my plan was to write more about life in general onboard this sailing boat, important daily things like saving water or how to cook, nightshifts and stuff in general, but somehow it turned our that we’re busy all the time. and due to the current weather we’re about to leave on monday, that’s tomorrow or today, depending on how you want to put it.

on http://www.climaat.angra.uac.pt/WebCams/index7.htm you can actually see us if you’re fast enough, there is this wavebreaker, and it has some broader parts on the right side, with some construction site on it, just in front there, there is the sailing boat i’m now living on for almost 2 months. the marina was so full that we had to anchor in the harbour.

until the azores we’ve been 3 ppl, the owner of the ship, a journalist returning from south america and me. leaving soon to England, we’re only 2, the journalist left towards home early, not having had that much fun on the atlantic (http://www.pia-roeder.de/ )

yesterday we already bought about 4 big backpacks of food for the crossing to england which is expected to take around two weeks. this morning I left again for some the supermarket, finishing that part. we continued cleaning the boat a bit, found a hole in the cockpit explaining the saltwater in some storage room and found salt-water at another place below the seats in the ‘salon’.

some days ago we already painted some logo onto the wall in the harbour of horta on faial, as it is tradition. and met some more people from germany returning, most them today watching football. (not us, we helped some guy repairing his sail and reinstalling it (90m^2))

a way to check the weather we’re currently facing is e.g. using grib files or checking out http://www.passageweather.com/ .

pia already uploaded some pictures on flickr, you can check them on http://www.flickr.com/photos/33787195@N06/ , also some pictures of mr. kiwi are included.

so far so good, you’ll hear again something from England

now since yesterday on the british virgin islands, today in spanishtown, a little ‘town’ with two main roads, a small ferry terminal some shops and a lot of small churches.

( skipping a lot of stuff from St. Martin ) We decided to leave from St. Martin the day before yesterday. Taking care of some smaller issues like getting rid of an old sail and buying some more food on the dutch side, we said goodbye to some others we got to know there, also some germans we went on a little trip with the week before. but ‘unfortunately’ we had to take the bridge at 17:30 to leave the lagoon and then prepare our departure. we left at 10 in the evening for the 80 nautical miles to the british virigin islands (BVIs), expecting the trip to take something around 16 hours, that we arrive in the early afternoon.
Actually the winds turned out to be stronger, the waves to be more chaotic than expected. the latter was caused by varying water depth, and caused he waves to come from all sides. We arrived after 11 hours at 9:00 at the reaf near to prickley keys island – a lot faster than expected. with an average speed of 8 knots on sea pia as well as me had problems with seasickness. I managed not to lose my dinner and vomited later, but at some point I wasnt able any more to drink nor to eat, usually I know that I feel a lot better while seasick when not being hungry or thirsty. the waves in the moonlit night look a bit bigger than they actually are and sometimes the boat was surfing on bigger waves, gaining speed up to 12.5knots with only one reffed sail, the other sail was removed after half the distance to have a nicer passage. each of us slept some hours, surprisingly easy it was to fall asleep, even though the waves hitting the boat from the side were quite loud.
having arrived in calm waters again we anchored and made breakfast to recover from the night. later the day we continued along the north coast of virgin gorda towards spanishtown were we anchored in the evening and checked in this morning.

Now back into the water, air temperatures are a bit higher than comfortable, at least inside or when there is not much wind.

well, still close to marigot on St. Martin on the french side, but not any more in the bad smelling lagoon, now outside without any mosquitos. my swollen feet in the beginning might have been caused by the mosquito repellent rather than by the mosquitos itself, everything fine again. here the water is nicer (which is nice for swimming, but also for cleaning dishes, that saves a lot of drinking water). We have to be back in St. Martin next monday to get the missing part of the satellite phone, unfortunately the shop is currently closed due to carnival in Philipsburg. The part already arrived and is needed to download weather data directly from e.g. http://www.ugrib.us on the atlantic, giving us some more information about possible courses, without touching storm of calm regions. Thus we have some time left before coming back, we might go to Anguila for a day, without signing in there, which takes time and costs money, for some of the islands here the only way of income, therefore according prices. From St. Martin on Monday we plan to buy some fresh food and leave towards the british virgin islands. We did provisioning some days ago, buying maybe something around 150kg, from the one shop we did not manage to bring it to the boat at once, we had to go twice and fetch the rest and we also went twice back to the boat with our dinghi. The second time we fixed the boat at an almost empty laguna close to the shop, of course there was some security when we came back asking us how long we’d planned to stay there and if we had already checked in. As we said we leave straight away, he just went away, nothing to get there. but saved us a lot of work, two big backpacks full of food directly on the boat.
The day before yesterday we sailed for the first time, heading towards friar’s bay for a full-moon party. It was nice, but late, therefore we were really tired yesterday, going to bed around 10:30 already. yesterday back to the lagoon, hoping to finish the sat phone stuff already and some other small stuff, e.g. getting rid of an old sail in exchange for an old car tyre to have a possibility to slow down the ship on the open ocean in certain conditions.
Today we are outside the lagoon again as already written above, doing maintenance work on the ship. The ship needs to be cleaned from below, algae and all sort of different animals can be found there, interesting to watch, but it has to be removed before the long trip to the azores. some shells are already quite big and sharp, bernd yesterday had a couple of cuts in his hands after he had checked how it felt like on the surface. A sail needs to be strengthned and other small things need to be done.
Pia did most of the cooking so far, we had quite a variety of stuff these days, usually still some vegetables still from the island. Cake or bread we didnt yet do, also because it’s really warm and nobody really wants to heat up the ship further. we bough some additional 10kg of flour and have some old stuff, whose packages are unfortunately inhabitad by some ‘ … and even more flaked oats for muesli, even thought we’re not yet sure if that’s really enough. maybe we’ll get some more on monday, on the BVIs food is said to be really expensive.

I’m currently too lazy to really write something – or let’s say other stuff to do. Ship was painted, cleaned, stuff inside rearranged, left the shipyard after collision induced repair days there, … and it’s been ‘quite warm’ … today some rain.

Some current texts(german) and pictures can be found on pia’s blog, another third of the current crew.

(picture: thanks to aorai.eu)

Sunsets, yesterday and today, yesterday with clear air, today probably affected by the vulcanic eruption on iceland (and some usual, common clouds) – roughly the same time and place:

and another one …

In German this changing weather is usually called ‘Aprilwetter’ …

clouds were sometimes quite strange-looking

Some climbing at the Riesenstein at the bottom of Gaisberg/Königstuhl in Heidelberg.

we weren’t the last who stopped climbing that evening:

http://johannes.lampel.net/hq/klettern20100323.zip

Heidelberg Riesenstein from as3.1415rin on Vimeo.

(picture: thanks to aorai.eu)