We arrived in Ushuaia on Friday 28th. Luckily the weather was great with generous sunshine and no wind. The first thing we did was to lower the genoa. We unfurled the damaged furler by hand, but some parts of the sail were stuck because the profiles were bent or damaged. So I went up along the forestay with the harness…

Thursday January 30th. We are about to leave on the last stretch of this first leg. There is 150 miles from Piriapolis to Buenos Aires. It should take us about 20 hours. We will arrive in the afternoon of Friday 31st. There is a diminishing South-easterly wind. Philippe forecasts that it will drop during the night. The good news is…

This morning, Friday 24, we have passed the latitude of Rio Grande del Sur, we will soon leave Brazil. I realise that I forgot to write about Itajai in my preceding mails. It is there that I have done the exit papers from Brazil. We arrived in Itajai on Saturday 18 late afternoon. On Sunday, I was hesitating to stay…

We arrived yesterday at the Ilha do Papagayo, a little paradise with a small hotel. The owner, Renato, is the one of the friendliest guy and the nicest soul I have ever met! We anchored here, with my cousin Andrew, exactly ten years ago and not a year has gone by without thinking that I would like to come back…

Allow me to say a few words on the subject of dreams. Einstein said “imagination is more important than knowledge”. Indeed, if we cannot imagine or dream something, then how can it ever be done or realised? Dreams are important, it is important to have dreams and to cherish them. However, not all dreams need necessarily to be realised. Often…

We left Mindelo at noon as planned. The boat clean and in good conditions. The crew on board for this leg are: my daughter Larissa and her boyfriendNiels, Sandrino Rhodius, my schoolmate friend, Serge and myself. The only thing that bothered me was that my Maxsea navigation system wasnot working. An update had been done after I arrived in Mindelo…

The rudder was brought at 10h30 on Friday morning. It was mounted and we were ready to launch at 2pm. However, the tide was ebbing and we were almost at low water. It was too low to put the boat back into the sea.  Perhaps we could try later before the day ends? I went with a mask and fins…

Well, to be frank, progress was slow at first. We had stored the rudder in the shop on Saturday and Monday at 2:15pm the rudder was still there, untouched! That was not a good start. Finally, they gave it to a sub-contractor in the afternoon. On Tuesday, a new bombshell, the (German) owner of the shop did not want to…

After a last stretch with the spinnaker, we arrived in Mindelo on Monday, November 11 at 18h00. Our time from Las Palmas was four days and 6 hours. Nine hours before my prediction. Nice results. Conditions were very windy and that is the reason for this fast passage. But it was tiring as well. Unfortunately, it came at a cost…

Good morning everyone, evidently with a forecasted wind at 25 knots and more, this is  going to be a fast passage. But first a nice anecdote. While jumping off the boat on the pontoon on Wednesday, Bernard lost his leatherman in the harbour in Las Palmas. I looked if it was possible to recover it, but the waters were too…