Yeehah!! We made it!! We made it!!! We made it!!! Jubilation, mixed with a heady dose of exhaustion and relief has seen us arrive in St Lucia after 15.5 days at sea and over 2800 nautical miles covered. The feeling is quite indescribable!! We have had near perfect sailing conditions and really have had a great crossing. That said though, the experience is fairly intense and it is brilliant to be in calmer waters again as the balancing act to cook, wash, teach and generally live aboard a rollicking rolling fast paced machine is challenging.
To combat the weird existence of feeling like we were the only human beings out here, we started calling up any and every boat we have seen (not that there have been many we are talking a handful the whole 2 weeks) on the VHF and chatting to complete strangers about all manners of things. The camaderie amongst sailors does lend itself to making you feel like you are best friends even though you have just had a few radio calls. At times, we have scored well, once calling up a glamour superyacht to be given a personalised weather report from the skipper's shore based "weather router!"
To pass the time we have been naming days - quarter day, halfway day, chocoloate cake day, bread day, FOB (flag overboard when we retrieved our flag and flag pole feeling very patriotic!)
It is awesome to be here and to catch up with all the ARC crews and swap the stories about the big bad Atlantic and compare notes on our various crossings. No doubt the bullshit factor will be out in force but heh what do you expect from a bunch of sailors after a few rums??
The kids have coped admirably with lots of reading, playing, staring out to sea at water water everywhere, sleeping and the dreaded Delta Sierra (naval speak for DS). The school work has been a regular daily occurrence which is quite an achievement given the swells.
Next up is a couple of months cruising in the Caribbean which hopefully will be a real holiday now that the boat is all set up. Grandma Nades is joining us for a month which is very exciting. She is fresh from a Darveniza reunion (I promise I will not miss the next one) and will be full of great stories and family news.
Keep up all the blog comments - we love hearing from you. Bear in mind we tend not to reply to comments posted on the blog but are better with emails. We hope to be a bit more in touch now that we have our satphone sussed. We cranked it up this week even letting Jesse phone his class to speak to all the kids. A bit of a hoot from mid Atlantic.
Thanks for all your thoughts and best wishes. Love to all for a safe happy and healthy Xmas. Nika over and out back to Channel 16.