Our first time participating in a rally, it was great to leave the port at Las Palmas with so many other boats and music and people who had come by to wave and wish us a good journey.
We were waving and saying hello to the other boats we have gotten to know.
With practically no wind at start, we sailed away from land by motor. When we first hit the wind, we set up the parasailor. The first night, we were doing 8-10 knots with course directly at Mindelo.
In the evening we had black ship for a few moments due to overload oin the inverter. It got very hot and melted some of the wires beneath it probably creating a shortcircuit. The batteries also got drained very fast. Fortunately when we got new lithium batteries recently, we kept the old lead acid batteries. We switched power supply to the old lead acid batteries and got all the navigation instruments and light working again. We used the generator to keep the batteries charged.
The crew was doing great. None of us had been seasick so far and we were enjoying the downwind sail.
The reason we are participating in the ARC+ is for safety reasons, but we must admit that it was fun to see the other boats on the plotter and keep track of our position in the rally.
The night between Tuesday and Wednesday we reached 430 nm from departure and were halfway to Mindelo. We took down the parasailor for a couple of hours because of increasing wind. Later, the wind stabilized and the parasailor went up again.
Wednesday we had a lot of sunshine and got some power from the Solar panels. But we still had to keep an eye on power supply for navigation instruments and fridge/freezer. It was still necessary to run the generator for some hours every day to keep up with the power demand.
The spirit among the crew was overall good. Skipper Martin was struggling with some headache. Other than that we did ok and none of us were really seasick and could eat two full meals everyday.
We saw flying fish in flocks. A couple of them landed on our deck. One night we saw a group of dolphins right next to our boat.
Thursday afternoon we were hanging around looking for dolphins in the water when we suddenly saw a couple of finns nearby. At first we thought they were dolphins. But when the creatures jumped above the water showing their backs, they were huge. Must be some kind of whales. It was amazing to see them so close.
Friday we saw land, the Island of Santo Antao, since early morning. Just before the finish line, we raced with another boat from the rally coming in from east. They had the genua up and had to jibe before they could reach the finish line. We still had the parasailor up and our young crew member, Ian really showed his competitive side, shut down the autopilot and steered us straight to the finishing line before the competing boat.Actually it was not really a competition since the other boat is a monohull and we are only rated in the multihull devision, but it was fun anyway. Here’s a picture of the competing boat.
This week we are in Mindelo getting some repairs done and homeschooling and getting ready for the next leg from Cape Verde to Grenada starting friday.
