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Pictures of our Arrival

Our Welcome Committee with music, rum punch and fruits

Admiral and Skipper enjoying the music

Relieved to have arrived: Rolf, Kevin, JoAnne, Richard, Silke,
Chester (clockwise from top left)

Even the pets are happy (Sparkles not so much due to his
temporary lap confinement)

Making friends

Sparkles enjoys his (watered-down version of) a rum punch

Sparkles wants more rum punch...

Pictures of our Crossing

Exploded Spinnaker Block

Rolf tries to fix the broken main sail

Beautiful sunset

Sparkles gets a back rub by the autopilot
(wheel kept turning right and left)

Can I jump ship, please?

Beautiful Chester in front of beautiful sunset

That's me (Silke) on day 14

Almost there....view of St. Lucia

Pictures from the Start of the ARC 2012

Racing Division started on Sunday

One Spectator used the time to get a tan

Next Life Crew being busy during our Start on Tuesday

Other boats during our Start

Other boats during our Start

Our Wild Ride across the Atlantic - Silke's view

Before you read this account of my Atlantic Crossing experience, you need to know that I am not a sailor. I don't like monohulls too much because they heel. Heavy winds, high waves and heeling boats freak me out. That's why we are traveling on a catamaran. I'm what you could call a 'nice weather and no waves cruiser'. So why am I crossing the Atlantic? Because of my dog, Chester. Somebody had to make sure he's going to be fine, right? And flying didn't come up as an option...at least not for the dog...so, here we are...

Day 1 - Nov 27, 2012 Tuesday
Delayed by 2 days due to high waves and strong winds, we started our journey to St. Lucia today. And what a great start we had! We were the third or fourth boat over the starting line about 10 seconds after the signal! Not that that matters in a 'race' of 15+ days.... But we had fun.
Anyway, this first day was shit, pardon my French. Up to 35knots of wind and up to 4m waves, not much better than the original start day! Why am I doing this? Barely had sufficient sea legs to heat up some pre-cooked bolognese. Feeling like on a roller coaster. During the night we broke the line that takes down the main sail. Great! So what do we do now if we need to get it down quickly? I was scared, quite scared, tried to knock myself out by taking Gravol and sleeping as much as possible, but whenever I woke up, I was scared all the way to that weird tingling feeling on your skin. Anyway, Rolf has fixed that line as well as any other things that gave us trouble. 
I should mention that at no time of our journey were we in any danger.

Day 2 - Nov 28, 2012 Wednesday
More waves knocking us all over the place, wind a little better, seasickness not. Except for my 7am watch and 1/2 hr at dinner time, the rest of the crew didn't see much of me. More Gravol and sleep. Why am I doing this again? Mind you, we had to pick the year of all years in which the trade winds do anything but what they are supposed to do, right?! The normal weather pattern is out to lunch this year. Yep, that's our luck....

Day 3 - Nov 29, 2012 Thursday
Okay, got my sea legs. Knew that it would usually take about 2 days. Enjoyed the watch running the Parasailor, what a great invention! Didn't have to do or worry about anything. Cooked up a storm while training my abs and back muscles - the sea is still quite rough, wind is good, though. I call that 'Rugby- Cooking' - you get into a wide stand, crouch down and start chopping vegetables...everything is kind of 'Rugby' these days: Rugby-teethbrushing, Rugby-sandwich making, Rugby-walking (you could also call that 'crab-walking' or 'got your pants full, eh?!' kind of walking...)

Unfortunately for them, Kazaio had more trouble with breaking things than we had and they are now headed for Cape Verde Islands to have repairs done, such as replacing the broken (again) spinnaker block. That's a minimum of 3 days detour, bummer! Now that Kazaio has left, we cannot see any other boat on our charts or at the horizon any more. Does that feel weird, neither to see any land nor other boats, you might wonder?! Funny enough, it doesn't. Guess we are down to a very limited world view, limited to the measurements of this catamaran.

Enjoying the sun and warmth right now. Feels like we should be half way across the Atlantic already, but when you look at the chart, we hardly left the Canary Islands... We are making good speed, though, and have already travelled 402NM with 2325NM still to go, that's only about 300 hrs left at current speed...

Day 4 - Nov 30 Friday
One of my daily routine is watching after my Tamagotchis - at least that's what it feels like - meaning my fruit and vegetables. I make sure they are happy, don't get squished, don't get moldy or otherwise damaged. Tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers are holding up great, troubling is the lettuce (as expected) and the carrots (totally unexpected as I did wrap them in aluminum foil individually as instructed). Other root vegetables seem to be happy in my bedroom, bananas are unhappy next to pineapple and apples are dangerous for any other fruits around, did you know that? Still got lots of kiwis, oranges, pears, avocados, celery, etc. So far I'm very happy with my veggies/fruits delivery guys in Las Palmas. Not like the no-show Karina ended up with...the ones I didn't have a good feeling about and thus ordered somewhere else. Thank you, gut feeling!

On another note: Chester can't go. To the loo, I mean. He doesn't shit. No shitting - I mean, no kidding! He doesn't even pee most of the time unless I walk him to the front, the boat is so unsteady, he can't relax. Imagine you trying to take a dump while standing on a balancing board. No way, men! Poor guy...And the worst of it: our conditions won't change the next three days. We will continue with up to 3m (9feet) waves that run kind of all over the place, as well as up to 25knots of wind. Mind you, we travelled 201NM in a 24hr period while Rolf expected a maximum of 150NM. Means this thing here (why am I doing it, again?!) will be over faster. JoAnne and I came up with a new T -shirt slogan for this year's ARC: "ARC 2012 - Trade winds, what's that???" or "ARC 2012 - just nice not to be nauseous!!!"

BANG!!! Guess what, one of our spinnaker blocks just broke, exactly like on Gonzalo's boat (only that he had only one to begin with). Came out of the mast with a big bang (no theory). You tradespeople that claim to know how to do things, are you aware what effect your shitty work can have on your clients? Somebody should send you out into the Atlantic with crappy work done on your boat, maybe you would do a better job then??! The one that broke was the additional spinnaker block we had put in in Palma (which was just 4 weeks ago), which Rolf then wanted to replace in Las Palmas because it looked so flimsy, but the Las Palmas rigger never showed up... Luckily, we still have one spinnaker block intact, the original Lagoon one, and have two spinnaker halyards with the Parasailor attached to both of them, which might save us, hopefully until St. Lucia.

BEEEEEEEEEP!!! Shortly afterwards, the bilge alarm came on and wouldn't stop, we checked the bilges, no water intake. Phew! What's going on?

Today, at 1600 hrs, we have done 620NM with 2122NM (roughly) more to go.

Later same day: he did it! Chester pooed! Yeah! JoAnne, Richard and me discussed the problem a little further and we came to the conclusion that giving him two prunes could help more than hinder. And one hour later: tadah!

Day 5 - Dec 1 Saturday
Another big bang and our second spinnaker block is gone. Means we cannot fly the Parasailor any more without risking to break the mast. Shit! And I mean it! No pardon! We are now flying jib and main wing on wing, doing only 7 knots compared to the previous 9knots. Means this journey just got longer...

Day 6 - Dec 2 Sunday
Pancake breakfast! Or make that Rugby-pancake-breakfast.... Waves are still all over the place. But hey, it's Sunday and we are having Karina-recipe pancakes with bananas, original Canadian maple syrup and whipped cream! Had to prevent the whipped cream dispenser from sliding off the table, though. This being a catamaran!!!
Saw two other ARC boats on the radar, talked to one. After such a long time without anybody around it feels like "Hey, there actually ARE other life forms in this universe!"
We have to head South more as a tropical storm is building up in the North, sucking up more of those non-existing trade winds. We are not in any danger from the storm, we are enough South East, but it means we have to go at a 50degree angle to the choppy waves, which makes the ride even more uncomfortable. Also means that the kitchen is closed for today. And I had such a nice Sunday lunch planned! Maybe tomorrow.

By the way, you don't think that sailing the Atlantic is a quiet affair just because there is no motor, do you? Well, think again! First, the waves are loud, really loud. And they keep hitting the boat in one of two ways: One way feels and sounds like you are driving a big truck at high speed over the wash boards of a washed out logging road. The other one sounds and feels like when cartoon-mouse Jerry hits cartoon-cat Tom with an oversized frying pan or something even nastier, and Tom goes all "Boooiiinggggggg!", resonating right and left for a while. Then there's the creaking of the Fiberglas hull, the howl of the wind in the shrouds, the flapping of the sails, the beeping of the bilge pump alarm, the roaring of the generator, and more creaking,  slamming, banging, gurgling and sloshing; and all the time we are swaying back, right, left, rightleftright, foooooorward, leftrightleft, backward, uuuup, downfoooorwaaard, rightleftrightleft, up ....you get the idea? And you know what, it's day 6 today, we've had that for 6 days now! 6 * 24hrs = 144 hrs non stop. Why again am I doing this?

Day 7 - Dec 3 Monday
It's supposed to get better in 3 days, that's what I've been told the last few days. I feel like a donkey with a carrot dangling in front of its nose, juuust out of reach.

Day 8 - Dec 4, Tuesday
So, this is my daily routine:

I
cook and eat,
nap and read,
putt'r and sleep.
:-D

"putt'r" means "putter around", but that doesn't fit so well in my little poem. Also, "watch" is missing, didn't fit either, but I do one watch a day 9am to noon.
JoAnne doesn't think my little poem rhymes, but I do...;-)

The waves are still throwing us around, up and down, right and left, forward and back; but it is getting better. Rolf says we will reach our half way mark sometime around midnight tonight. Yeah! Might be that we arrive in St. Lucia the evening of Dec 13th. That would be nice!!! My sister will be there already, waiting for us. We are doing around 8knots with jib and reefed main out.

The pets are fine, by the way. They do have four legs after all, makes them steadier on their feet... Just kidding, that's not what I mean. They ARE doing fine, though. I think Sparkles is the one whose daily routine has changed the least, if at all. He sleeps, eats and shits. His daily routine is even shorter than mine... Chester is fine, too. Still needs some encouragement to use his dedicated business area, but he is using it. I sometimes catch him looking out the side of the boat longingly and I wonder what he is longing for. Is it the dolphins we see way too rarely? Or is he wondering when we might finally find land again? Or maybe he's dreaming of the past, how nice and relaxing it used to be to go for a dump...

Day 9 - Dec 5 Wednesday
This is so no fun!
Can anybody tell the waves which direction to go, please? They seem to have forgotten, are still all over the place. Doesn't help that we are going further south than feels comfortable, thus going parallel to the waves instead of a preferable ninety degree angle. But we are trying to avoid even nastier conditions than if we stayed on a more westerly course. Prognosis now is that it will become more comfortable in about 24 hrs. Yeah, right...!

Funny thing today: when I briefly emerged from hibernation in my cave, eh, cabin, the air smelled of honeysuckle! I swear! Just like when we got to the two Pitons on St. Lucia a year ago. (Just before it started smelling of sulfur ;-)...) I know it's not possible, we are still over 1200NM away. (And nobody else smelled it.) But to me, it was the smell of St. Lucia. Nice (right, Rocio?!)!

Day 10 - December 6 Thursday
Rough night, didn't get much sleep, so forget today, okay?!!

Day 11 - December 7 Friday
We celebrated Chester's sixth birthday today. I baked Auntie Anna's Apfelstreusel, a family staple, which brought back so many happy family memories, and had a birthday Kaffeeklatsch. I'm hoping for at least another six years with Chester!

While we seem to finally have found the trade winds (tadah!), blowing nicely from North-East and pushing us right to St. Lucia, the waves still have no clue, even though they seem to be coming more steadily from the North- East now. But as we cannot fly the Parasailor (remember, two broken blocks thanks to...ah well...), we have the waves hitting us at a diagonal on our starboard stern, thus it still feels rough. Feels like we are hobby-horsing on a two legged horse: only front right and back left leg intact... Quite the contrary yesterday, where we got into a lull which we used to try to fix the broken blocks. Didn't work, too complicated. Did give me time to admire the beautiful blue colour of this ocean, though. Had to motor for some hours (yeah!) and even when the wind picked up and we started sailing again, it felt like we were still just happily and ever so slightly bobbing around, even though we were making 6.5knots! What a (short lived) relief!

Having more squalls to deal with these days, and will run into more and more commercial vessels from now on. Crossed paths with one today. Squalls are heavy rainfall with lots of wind under a very dark cloud.

Put my Canadian chip back into my iPhone, can't wait to call my sister in St. Lucia and tell her we have arrived. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm over-early... She's not even there yet, but will leave for St. Lucia tomorrow (Have a good flight, Petra, and I hope the Stugeron work for you...) Gotta go another 885 NM approximately to the North of St. Lucia, and then still around and into Rodney Bay. Doing about 8.5knots at the moment, but will slow down for the night, phew...

Day 12 December 8 Saturday
Finally! Today was the first time in 12 days we actually surfed the waves. It was the usual trade winds condition we should have had every day, in a usual year...Felt good! Didn't last.
Rolf managed to fix the generator after it got drowned by a huge wave that went over our starboard stern. Yeah!

Day 13 December 9 Sunday
We are back to the same old crappy sailing conditions. Started with bacon and eggs breakfast, gotta keep the spirits up somehow...
Less than 600NM to go! Looks like Wednesday! Only three more days!
Generator is down again. Some steering hydrolics is making weird sounds. Spinnaker blocks still broken. Single sideband radio gave up. But otherwise, knock on wood, we are good.
But hey, solar panels are providing more and more power.
What else? Nothing new, really. Had a pretty rough night again, some heavy squalls. I think we are all ready for this journey to be over...
******
Oh, oh, shouldn't have said that... No wood in the middle of the ocean...the failure list is getting longer: we lost our main...I mean, we didn't lose it, we still have it, but we can't use it any more. Or in laymen's terms: we broke the connection between the main sail and two of its cars. It's down to just the jib now, but hey, we are still doing 8 to 9 knots, so who needs a main anyway?!? (You have to read between the lines here: any idea what wind conditions we have when we are still doing pretty much maximum speed with just the jib...?!)

Dreading the upcoming night. Will it be another "almost sleepless outside Seattle "one, lying on a non-balancing balance board in the middle of four heavy-duty construction sites...?

This trip reminds me of my first ever cigarette: "Yuk, why do people do this...????" ;-)

Day 14 December 10, Monday
Another day we better don't talk about...

Day 15 December 11, Tuesday
Hang in there, one more day, almost there...

Day 16 December 12, Wednesday (which somehow is actually day 15, not 16...)
We made it!!!! 
More strong winds with up to 17knots surfing down a big wave!!! 17knots!!! With maximum usually being 9knots. Couldn't wait to see land and when we did, we were still 22NM away from the island. Got, time slowed down then...
Had a nice welcome with rum punch, steel music and fruit basket. Had some Champaign as well. Had some Aperol Spritz after that. Went to a party and had more rum punch...ah, really needed that! Really needed to celebrate!

Thank Bob we made it here safe and sound. It feels sooooooo good to be back on land. 
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Chester in Yachting World

Read about Chester in Yachting World:
http://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/533169/arc-two-dogs-tales

We have arrived!

We arrived in Rodney Bay Marina yesterday, Dec 12, at 3:15pm.
YEAH!!!!
We were welcomed with fruit and rum punch and some Steel Music.
Pictures and an account of our 15 days at sea will follow.

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3 Days into our crossing

We have had 3 very fast days of sailing. Too fast for our liking. We are averaging 190Nm per day with top speeds surfing down 4 m waves of up to 16.9 knots. Quite scary for us. Just now one of our spinnaker blocks ripped out of the mast. Luckily we have been flying our Parasailor for the last 50 hours on 2 halyards. Many things are just dimensioned too small for long crossings. Kazaio has diverted to the Cape Verde Islands for repairs to his broken halyard fitting.

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We are off

We are off to a great start to cross the Atlantic. 2850 miles are in front of us. We had a great start, right up with the lead boats. Now, at the south end of Gran Canaria we are going straight downwind in up to 30 knots of wind surfing down 3m waves at up to 15 knots of speed. We hope to get to slightly calmer conditions soon.



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ARC Online Viewer Ready for the Start

The Yellowbrick devices (mentioned earlier) have been installed. Now you can see us by moving the cursor over the colourful catamaran symbols on the ARC Viewer at
http://www.worldcruising.com/arc/viewer.aspx
Clicking on the star in front of the boat's name will add that boat to your favourites, which you can then view under "My favourites" instead of "Multihulls".

One of the multihulls must be filling up
at the gas station at the moment...

Official Start Date of ARC 2012 Postponed!!!

Due to the weather, the one thing that is in charge at all times, the official start date of ARC 2012 has been postponed. The racing devision (which we don't belong to) will still start Sunday, and thus will encounter up to 6m (18feet) waves with 25+knots of wind on the nose. The rest, like us, will sit tight until Tuesday. Official new start date for the non-racers is now November 27, 2012. This is the first time since 1989 that the ARC start date has been postponed.
The good thing about this is that we have 2 full additional days to keep preparing, which means Rolf is right now having his first afternoon nap since we arrived in Las Palmas ;-)
The bad side is that the delay screws up my provisioning planning. I received my order of veggies and fruits yesterday, which means those will be two days older already by the start of the trip. Maybe nothing to worry about, but with the warm temperatures during the day I'm a little bit concerned... Ah well, I could stock up a little more on Monday if I have to. We'll see.
On another note: the rest of the crew, Richard and JoAnne, have arrived safely last night. Welcome!

Veggies and Fruit all over the place...

...getting ready to be put away for the trip.

Pictures from today's Island Tour

More pictures will be on the ARC gallery site soon, but here already a few:

Botanical Garden

View of Las Palmas

Caldera volcano crater

Pico de Las Nieves

Street view of Arucas' old town

Beautiful buildings in Arucas' old town

ARC Opening Ceremony Parade Sun Nov 18

Check out the ARC photo gallery again for another great picture of the Canadian Team Representatives during the Parade: 

http://www.worldcruising.com/arc/GALLERY.aspx?PageNumber=1&EIValue1=

More pictures on that site mean that the page numbers I published yesterday are not correct any more as older pictures have moved back on the pages. But Chester is still there! ;-)

Getting ready for the parade -
don't you like Chester's 'doggles'?!!

Proudly representing Canada

Everybody loves Chester!

Chester was the big highlight during today's ARC 2012 Opening Ceremony and Parade. Check out page 1 and 5 of the Gallery on the ARC web site at
http://www.worldcruising.com/arc/GALLERY.aspx?PageNumber=1&EIValue1=
for his pictures.

Chester, Rolf and myself during today's Flag Parade together
with Sheryl from Distant Shores II as flag flagbearer
- more pictures coming up tomorrow -

The catamaran dock in Las Palmas

NEXT LIFE in the middle of the picture, with the little
flags hanging down the top of the mast

Aft view of NEXT LIFE
bottom left quadrant of the picture 

You want to see where we are?

Well, at this point, all you will see is our route as we have not received our 'Yellowbrick' yet. That's the device that will send our location per satellite to the ARC web site once every 24 hours. We will get that device some time next week, they start installing those on the 232 boats on Wednesday.

Anyway, you might want to already bookmark that page: http://www.worldcruising.com/arc/viewer.aspx

You will be able to find us in the Multihull division under the boat name or boat number, which is 166.

Our approximate route to St. Lucia

We are definitely not on vacation right now ;-)

Sewing a throw-line bag, among other things....

Polishing the (not-so) stainless steel, among other things...

Pre-cooking, among other things...

Nov 9-25: Las Palmas, Gran Canary Islands

We have arrived! Our last destination on this side of the Atlantic, our last destination before St. Lucia! After a slightly rough but surprisingly speedy trip from Morocco to Las Palmas, we are now "parked" on the catamaran dock until Nov 25. Oh my, there is so much to do! Not only do we need to finalize things on the boat, such as get the SSB radio going, need to do the provisioning for 5 people for 3 weeks (even though we hope to arrive around day 16 of the voyage), need to get pet documents ready for import to St. Lucia, there's also the ARC program that started yesterday. There's seminars, dinners, cocktail parties, Happy Hours, and so on and so forth. We already had our ARC safety check done yesterday, you would be proud of us. And so that you don't worry too much about us during the crossing, here are some of our safety measurements:

• Life jackets for everybody including spray hood, tether, crotch strap, light, whistle etc.; 
• Jack lines on board to use with the tethers; 
• First Aid Kit;
• Raymarine life tag for the night watch to wake everybody up in case of a man overboard (MOB) - and for Chester; 
• ResQLink and SeaLink for Rolf and me (personal locator beacons); 
• MOB Lifesling with whistle and light;
• MOB pole with ring, whistle, drogue and light; 
• Liferaft for 8 people; 
• Grab bag with emergency water, flares etc.;
• 6 normal fire extinguishers plus two automatic ones in the engine compartments plus one behind the electric panel and one in the battery compartment; 
• Fire blanket;
• Rigging cutter;
• High power search lights;
• All kinds of flares;
• Emergency tiller;
• Storm drogue;

and so on...
And don't forget, we'll have a doctor on board as well (Richard). I think we are very well equipped!

Our Atlantic Crossing will start on Nov 25 at 12:30pm Las Palmas time. We will not only have our usual SPOT on board to send you location notifications via this blog, you will also be able to follow our course on the ARC web site, details on that will follow.

Nov 1 - 4: Exploring Morocco

We spent four great days exploring a very small part of Morocco. Kazaio crew, Rolf and I rented a car with a driver, what a great way to move around! We went to Fes first, where we also hired a guide to show us around. We stayed at a traditional Moroccon home, called Riad, and had dinner at a semi-private, family-run restaurant. Great food!
The second day we continued to Meknes via Ifrane. Ifrane was weird, as the whole city looks like a town in Switzerland - well almost, I guess... the style of the buildings anyway. We couldn't find accommodation - our driver turned out to have no sense of direction (and no GPS), so we continued on to Meknes. What a lucky move! We stayed in another Riad (Riad Lahboul), run by a British-Moroccon couple. Had the best food in all of Morocco right here as they luckily served dinner. And what an outstanding building! Very traditional. And as a special treat, the couple, both musicians, gave a little private concert one night. On our last morning, we explored the Medina of Meknes - the nicest one we have been to, relatively clean, well put together and just fun to explore - from the smelly butchers' stalls where they cut a cow's head in half (yuck!) to the stalls offering spices, or olives or sweets of all kinds, to the clothes, yarn, ceramic and shoe stalls. Luckily, none of us suffered from Montezuma's revenge, something to be expected as we were told. Though very interesting, the trip was also tiring and we were all happy to get back to the boat for some well deserved rest and home cooking. Nevertheless, we felt like we had spent at lest a week, so much did we see, and it was nice to be on "vacation" away from the boat for a change.
In the end, it was too far to go to the desert and we only saw the mid-Atlas, which wasn't all that exciting, so we actually should come back for a longer visit. Maybe we will.
Today, we spent one more day at Sale/Rabat and will head out with the high tide tomorrow at 6 am, going towards Lanzarote, a three nights-trip.

Fes' Medina - between 9,000 and 12,000 little alleys - believed
to be the largest contiguous car-free urban area in the world

Those Medina alleys can get pretty narrow...

Tannery in Fes

Tannery in Fes

Meknes market - Meknes was capital of Morocco in the
17th to 18th century

Meknes Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail, who is noted as one
of the greatest figures in Moroccan history (not only because
of his alleged 888 children)

Meknes market

Private concert by Simon and Mouna
at the Meknes Riad Lahboul - check out their
web site www.riadlahboul.com to see their lovely place

Surprising Moroccan scenery - so green!!!

Volubilis, a partly excavated Roman city,
 developed from the 3rd century BC onwards

Volubilis

Volubilis

Hand made mosaic tables