Well I have finally decided that it was time to start a blog.

our voyage on true blue thus far:

just before we were to depart from palma, we lost our captain who had been present in palma for the five month refit. we were very sorry that he could not join us after all his work in getting the boat ready for our trip. he was having problems with his license qualifications and so at the last moment we were very fortunate to find a very outstanding captain and his girlfriend chef couple who could join us .
we left palma with eight of us and had to motor into heavy seas and heavy winds (20-30 knots) which made for a very rough pounding ride to our next port, gibraltar.
gibraltar was wonderful. it has cleaned up considerably since the last time i was there with much new construction. the locals told us that this was due to the presence of gambling, particularly internet gambling. we spent several days exploring the rock which is rich with british history especially around the time of the napoleonic wars. being a patrick o'brien fan i loved this.
we left gibraltar and had a very pleasant sail for several days until we were off the coast of africa. we hit a force 10 gale (55-63 mph) with seas over 20 feet. it was a bit intimidating at first, however true blue really showed her stuff,being very seaworthy and solid. she made us all feel very comfortable despite the conditions. thank you oyster! it was good for us as well to have experienced these conditions so early on as it has gave us both much more confidence in our abilities to handle the yacht in heavy weather and difficult conditions.
we arrived in lanzarote in the canary islands. at about this time europe was experiencing a series of very heavy storms and had a large low pressure system parked over the azores which essentially killed the trade winds.
this eventually resolved and so we left the canaries and headed for antigua. however the trades collapsed again and so we headed for cape verde islands to wait for conditions to improve. a couple from seattle who had travelled with us since palma but had to get back to seattle for family reasons and so left us. we were delighted when brian and marlene lewis from san francisco were able on very short notice to join us in mindelo, cape verde islands.
the islands are very barren desert and while the people very friendly you never forget that you are in africa as things tended not to work. it brought back a lot of memories of my time spent in liberia in west africa. there is an expression in west africa called "wawa". which loosely translated means "west africa wins again". however the marina in mindelo was run by a german so things worked reasonably well. the marina was completely packed as all the other boats crossing the atlantic had similar reasoning to ours and headed to mindelo. we were moored next to a beautiful 1930's wooden yacht "the blue peter of london.
http://www.boatbookings.com/yachting_content/yacht_charter_video_blue_peter.php.
we became quite friendly with them so we decided to do our atlantic crossing together. when the trades again reappeared we pushed off and headed further south to catch the winds. we had a number of days of really excellent sailing with pleasant warm breezes of 20 knots giving a boat speed of around 8-10 knots or so. the winds died in the mid atlantic for two days. we took the opportunity to take a mid-atlantic swim with our friends from the blue peter. i think that i have set a personal record for swimming since the water that was over 5000 meters deep.
while cruising, we did manage to land several mahi mahi which made for wonderful fresh fish. i have to admit that i had a hard time watching it die as it changed from a beautiful golden color to a dark grey. leslie could not watch. unfortunately, we lost more fish than we caught. we have learned the hard way that you can not troll in the deep ocean with 35 lb line. one fish grabbed took the lure and just kept going with the result that we lost the lure and all our line . we think it must have been a large marlin. for our next voyage we have beefed up our lines to 85 lb test. fingers crossed.
the winds then picked up with a vengeance with the breezes blowing between 30 and 40 knots so we made really good time although the waters were quite rough. by this time we are quite used to the rock and roll of a boat that is being tossed about by swells coming from three different directions. there is an old saying that you have one hand for the boat and one hand for yourself. what i discovered was that in addition to the one hand you needed two feet always in attendance so that you were always braced. we all had our shares of tumbles but i think the worse/funniest was brian being upended landing on his derriére while in the galley . he was holding a plate of pasta which ended up all over his head but being the good sport that he is, he just laughted. by this time we were so far south that we decided to join our friends on the true peter who were heading to barbados and so we changed our destination to bardados as well.
after 12 days we spotted land. what excitement -even though we had satellite navigation and digital radar. one can only image what christopher columbus must have felt when he had no idea where he was going and what he was going to run into.
we arrived in barbados and spent several days getting rid of all the crusted salt/rust on board. the people here are the nicest i think that i have ever met. it is certainly not a wealthy country but everyone appears to be very happy with a lot of laughter and music but very few dogs? you have not lived until you have heard jingle bells with a reggae beat. the only down side was an unexpected exposure of salt water with my new nikon 800e camera and lens. i am slowly and painfully learning that life on board a boat is quite different than living on land. we spent christmas in barbados and then headed west to bequia. we spent new years eve here and had quite a party with a great band rocking and rolling on the beach. what great fun it was to dance in shorts in the sand with a warm wind blowing. we then headed south to tobago cays where we got to swim with a lot of turtles. we then sailed north to st maarten and picked up a large package of windsurfing sails, diving equipment etc. from there we headed south to antigua where we have been for the past two weeks. we were in green island when our water maker had a major water leak and drowned our generator. we had to sail to falmouth harbor and have everything fixed. if you had to spend time in one place this is one of the best places to do so. we have had a wonderful opportunity to throughly explore the island with our friends fran and steve butler who were visiting. we loved the island esp english harbor and nelson's dockyard. this is the oldest working dockyard in the caribbean and it is quite spectacular. the building have been reconstructed so that as you walk through the dockyard it appears as it did in the days of lord nelson. the museum is definitely worth a visit.
i hope that the generator will be finally fixed today so that we can head back to green island for a little windsurfing, kiting and scuba diving.