Last night, Anett and I were in the cockpit, getting rocked by ever confused waves and asking ourselves “why is it like this?” We are so far offshore, what are the weather systems sending us waves from all directions and keeping them so close together?

Have you ever asked yourself what living in a washing machine would be like? Probably not (lucky you), but let me describe it for you.

If yesterday I woke up living in a tractor, this morning, I woke up living in a washing machine. I normally write those updates between 4:00 AM and 8:00 AM on my night watch, but today, I was busy hanging on for my life in very confused seas and there was no way I could look at a screen. So I am late writing this, but my stomach is grateful for it!

I went to bed around 9:00 PM last night after a full day of great sailing in flat seas. I don’t think that Ryan and I ever had such a smooth start to a crossing before and for once, getting in our offshore rhythm is fun and easy.

A little over a week ago, the weather forecast showed some weird low pressure systems on our planned route from Bermuda to the Azores, as well as some big patches of no wind in between.

It is 9:00 AM in Saint George, Bermuda, and we’ve just raised the anchor. Together with our two buddy boats Sargo and Zanzibar, we are making circles in the harbor to secure the anchor and raise the main sail.

This morning, we were informed by the wonderful people who turn these satellite tracker updates into blog posts (hi Erin and Liz!) that the majority of you guys reading our updates everyday heavily leaned in favor of us making a pitstop in Bermuda.

Now that we are out of the Caribbean Sea, the motion of the boat has gotten a lot more gentle on us, and we were finally able to put ourselves on an actual watch schedule.

The simple fact that it has a name should have been a red flag. But even so, we were clueless about “the Mona passage,” the little body of water between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, when we made our approach to exit the Caribbean Sea.

Last stretch before our departure towards the Azores! At this point, Polar Seal is 90% ready to take off. All the systems have been checked, maintained or upgraded, and she is in better shape than ever.