A great Atlantic crossing

Lagos and Portimão

Before heading for the Canary Islands, we had a few things to fix on Kerpa, and as we live in Lagos Portugal when not sailing, we had a stop in Lagos. There we had the rubber bushings in the Vetus flexi coupling replaced.

And when we were at it we also replaced the damping plate

It was a small thing for the mechanic to take off the gear box, and he found that the springs on the damping plate was more or less warn-out.

The cooler was also rather corroded, so we replaced it with a proper bronze cooler

The mechanic also supplied us with a set of gaskets, including head gasket. As well as a spare starter motor. Now I think we have most things in order with our old VP TMD 22 from 1999, with just short of 5000 engine hours. Before last season we had the injectors and high-pressure pump serviced at Bosh, as well as replaced the timing belt and the freshwater circulation pump.

But it was not only work, I had my 66 birthday which we celebrated with friends, and Kerstin made me a small but traditional birthday cake.

We needed one more thing and that was a new cockpit enclosure, the current is 8 years now and started to deteriorate, and it was severely stained of mould, not nice at all.

We headed for Portimão to have that done just 7 Nm east of Lagos, we had been recommended a canvas man there by several other local sailors.

This is the old cover, looks really nasty, this is a part of the top, so this time we went with an alternative fabric, with vinyl on the inside, which should be much easier to keep clean.

Working on the new cover.

Kerstin happily enjoying a glas o wine under the new cockpit enclosure

Which she did last time as well (photo October 2015)

To be honest we are not super happy with the new enclosure. The craftmanship on the old one we had done in Turkey was better. A second matter that annoyed us was delaye in the delivery for more than two weeks. In Turkey they had it done in a few days, and now they had the old one as model and should at least have it done in similar time. Due to that we missed a good weather window to sail over to the Canaries and also the opportunity to cross over with some new friends while we were in Lagos/Portimão, the crew on Corisco and Cool. We had some nice time with them, had planed to sail over with them, but at least we meet them later in Las Palmas.

Canary Islands

Beautiful evenings on our way to the Canaries

And occasionally good sailing

Arriving at night

We anchored at Papagayo, Lanzarote

At Isla de Lobos we got the opportunity to try our new Davis rocker stopper

The Davis rocker stopper, we have two strings of 5 that we deploy from our ballooner booms.

We become very wide with both the pools out so we have a light on the end of each pool to prevent someone from hitting them if they manoeuvres the anchorage at night.

They stack and stow rather easily and do not require that much space.

We can recommend them.

Las Palmas

In Las Palmas we had a very unpleasant discovery, our water had been contaminated, we had severe bacteria growth. We have always had very good water and no need to buy bottled water for drinking, but suddenly the water started to taste very metallic and earthy. We opened the only easily raceable hatch to the water tank, and this is what we found.

A grey and slimy coating of the whole tank, by the way the tank is in the keel pocket and can carry 1000 l of water.

What to do? We decided to shock treat with chloride. We found a pool store and bought Chlor powder from them. A shock treatment of 100 ppm, to stand overnight, purge al l outlets and then empty the tank, with our submersible emergency 220 v pump.

We rinsed the tank a few times, replaced the charcoal filter as well the Seagull drinking water filter. To make a long story short, now we have good water from the seagull filter, but from the tap it still tastes a bit earthy.

Another job was that one of the sheeves in the car to control the boom position was missing some parts of the edge, I tried to find a new one but did not succeed, so filing it down to a smooth surface and now work smothly.

On the ballooner boom there is a cavity to hold the sheet, and the locking mechanism was broken.

This is how it should look.

Fixed it with some webbing.

A quick fix and it work rather good.

Emergency tiller

We wanted to test the emergency tiller, to see that all things work properly, Last timer we crossed with a rally that Jimmy Cornell arranged the Barbados 50 rally, one of the boat lost their steering, so it is better to try it beforehand.

The rudder quadrant is under the bunk in the after cabin, and going up through the after cabin roof.

Tiller in place.

Kerstin trying the emergency tiller with a smile on her face, doubt she would have that smile if we really had to use it.

Propvisoning

Provisioning is a big and important task when going away for a bit longer, Kerstin have done it a few times now and has become very good at it.

This is just one of the round of shopping, I think they brought 25 of that boxes down to Kerpa.

Christmas and New Year in Stockholm

During Christmas and New Year, we were in Stockholm to meet family.

Christmas eve at our daughter Emelie, all of our kids were there, a real delight to meet them at such a traditional event.

Our granddaughter Ingrid

And our grandson Alexander

Emelie even wanted to have New-Years eve with us, who could believe that when she was a teenager!

We also had the time to visit our family summer cottage where my interest for sailing originate from.

It looks much more attractive during summer but is not too bad during winter either.

Back to Las Palmas

Back in Las Palmas it was time for last preparation.

Beja one of our crew cleaning the fruits and vegetables before we take them aboard, He and his partner Kia was to crew with us over the Atlantic and a few week in the Caribbean.

We left with the rally Viking Explorer together with 25 other boats, a small low-key rally.

The wind was not very strong so it became a lot of motoring, but now and then we could sail, in total ca 60 % of the distance was under sail.

One scary thing on our way to Mindelo was the first night, we had a tug boat who tug a big platform the total length was almost 1Nm long, and no light or AIS on the platform, fortunately I had seen it in the distance just before it got dark. Then in the very dark night I saw the tug both on AIS and its navigation lights was due to pas just in front of us. I called him up on VHF ans asked how long he was and why he did not had any navigation lights on the platform. They only answer I got that stay more than a mile from him and then he turned on a very strong fllod-light towards the towed platform. Very irresponsible way to navigate at night, could easily resulted in an accident.

The hydrogenator gave good energy to our batteries.

Halfway over to Mindelo was celebrated with Cava, and the following evening was very beautiful.

And when approaching Mindelo we were greeted by dolphins

Arriving Mindelo

In Mindelo it was a few social events very pleasant.

More maintenance, our electrical motor for our water maker did not worked, it was the relay that was broken. Then one is very happy to have Beja onboard, he is a MacGyver, and he can fixe the most issues with whatever spares and tools that are aboard. He had to solder a tiny, tiny short wire that was broken, but he fixed it easily.

Happy and exited crew ready to depart.

Over the Atlantic

I have made a short YouTube video about our crossing hope you like it.

But I have some photos as well.

In the beginning some boats are relatively close even as we not started at the same time, we delayed our start to the afternoon as Kerstin had an upset stomach, but she recovered very quickly so we decided to cast off at about 15:00, rough weather was promised so about half the fleet decided to postpone the departure a few days.

But only 24 h later there was none within sight.

To pas time we baked coffee bread not only ordinary bread

Bread with cinnamon and cardamom, does not look much, but it tasted good.

We make bread in an Air fryer, works great.

We got one fish

Mahi Mahi, one of the tastiest one can get.

Celebrating half way—-

——-with Cava

Looking for squalls on the radar, luckily we did not have many and no violent one.

We rather often get the question, “don’t you get bored being at sea that long, the day must be very long?”

The answer is definitely NO, The days pas rather quickly. We start with breakfast, have a talk about something, maybe rest a bit, then some snacks, and soon it is time for lunch, then maybe some snack, tea or coffee again, some talk, and suddenly it is time for dinner, then it is time to have a look at the sunset, and short after that it is dark. The day passes very quickly. The night are rather long when crossing to the Caribbean, close to 12 h, but as we are 4 aboard, each watch is only 2 h during the night, so the watch is not very long, but as a watch is only 2 h, one of us has the two dark watches one in the evening and one in the very early morning. so every 4 days that occurred and the crew found them to be the least attractive.

Then we broke a few tings,

The hydro-generator, I must admit it was a handling issue

Ripped the clew of our down-wind ballooner.

Code sail halyard broke, it fell down in the water in the middle of the night, so quickly “all man on deck” but it was not to difficult to retrieve the Code sail, Kerstin and I have done it alone a few times during worse conditions. But no down-wind sails the last days.

But we were not the worst affected of break downs, One of the participants had to turned back after Autopilot failure, another had the connonction between the quadrant and autopilot broken, he manage to fix it, but it required daily maintenance. Another participants had a severe leak through one of the portholes and bailing in substantial amount of water before it was fixed. But the worst was two injuries due to being caught by the main sheet inside the cockpit, one was just a “minor” thing when he barefoot had his fot on the main sheet track and when the car went over and severely damaged his toes. The real serious accident was one participants who got the mainsheet coming over him and he fell and broke his arm so badly so that the bone pipe stuck out close to the elbow. He was a tough guy, he squeezed in the broken pipe into his arm again. He was one of three but the only one with sufficient sailing experience so he declined to be evacuated from his boat, one of the buddy boat a large motor sailer offered to turn back and evacuate him to his more comfortable boat, but as said he declined and stayed abord. Eventually they reached Barbados after more than a week in that condition, he got surgery and I understand he will be fully recoved.

On top of that an American Amel owner I have had FB contact with came aboard Kerpa in Mindelo, we had a nice chat aboard Kerpa about his around world trip and this was the last stretch for him to complete his circum navigation. He departed one day before us, and he broke both his mast about 5 days out from Mindelo. Starlink is a great tool being out on the ocean, a WhatsApp group was formed handled by the coastguard of Martinique, at first we was the closest boat, they were about 130 nM ahead of us, so we put the course towards them, a bit later the coastguard got contact with a large catamaran who was closer, they transferred ca 200 l of diesel to Aquarius (the name of the Amel boat), they then motored all the way to Martinique. Aquarius is a Youtuber so if you like to have more information about their ordeal https://youtu.be/LmVlhvc3Xg0?si=jwq2wlxZR4Ksofoe

So a few things did happened on the way.

But after ca 13 days and 6 hours we arrived in Granada-

Of course we celebrated.

We enjoyed the time in Grenada

Being on the beach.

Had a guided tour on The Mayan Queen a 96m yacht. Crew Kia had a relative who work as head steward on the yacht, it is like a major hotel with very many features all of outmost quality.