Atlantic Crossing logbook Day 1: Not exactly a smooth start.
Mindelo is behind us, and getting out of there was a bit of a pain. As soon as we passed the jetty, we got the full headland effect and the winds started to blow up to 30 knots sustained with steep chop hitting us right on our beam.
We decided to put a little bit of headsail out to stabilize the rolling hell that our boat had become, and the manœuvre wasn’t our best one.
Our nerves probably had us all confused and between the 30 knots wind, the steep chop and pre-departure anxiety, we really didn’t display our best sailing skills on that one
Besides, once passed the headland (10 minutes later), we had to turn south and put Polar Seal on her course, which placed the wind right in our butt.
We now had to pole out the headsails, and again, it didn’t go very smooth.
We took a quick breather after getting the poles up (without the headsails our), and realized that we were running at 8 knots with 0 sails out.
We still popped a little bit of butterfly out to stabilize to boat, and are now patiently waiting for the “inbetween islands chop” to calm down when we exit the channel between São Antao and São Vicente.
We knew that this part of the passage would be a bit rocky, and we were not disappointed!
We are a bit wet, the coffee machine fell and spilled ground coffee beans everywhere in the galley, Ryan lost a hat while taking the poles up but oh well, at least we’re on our way!
Cheers from a choppy sea!
