Another 140 nautical miles clocked and we are happy with the sailing, the wind is better than expected and the sea has calmed down. We can eat meals without holding on to everything on the table… ahhhh it’s the little things! The sun was lovely in the afternoon and everyone was smiling. We are trying to ration electricity so the sunshine was very welcome to the solar panels.

We contacted a fishing boat that came into view (the first one we have seen since we lost sight of our friends) and he was doing circles around us, but he told us “I see you. Everything fine. Have a nice voyage. Ciao” Teo heard it and said “what a strange fellow”.

The night watches were fine, even if we had some squalls with rain, there was also quite a lot of time to see the stars! And this morning we had banana pancakes thanks to Tina, yum yum! Everyone was hungry for lunch, too, because Jon baked bread for us – this boat smells FABULOUS. Thanks to Julia for the tips of measuring the ingredients into bags so you can just add the water and oil.

Tina and Mia did some strength exercises on the aft deck, working on those Barbados bods. This should become a daily routine. The balance exercises of yoga are extra challenging!

Teo is doing school lessons and he is doing really well. We did some reading, writing and then he drew in his journal, a page per day! And as a treat Kevin is teaching him to solve sudoku puzzles. He seems to be getting hang of it. Yesterday his passage present was a very cool reuseable notepad from Grandma and Granddad. He loves it and is practicing drawing stars. And he told us a joke that we should share, “Why did the parrot cross the kitchen? To get to the chicken.”

We clocked another 150 nautical miles and that is the good news! The bad news is that we were sailing a lot closer to the wind and we got thrown around quite a lot. This disturbs sleep, costs everyone energy and gives lots of bruises. The best place to be is bed and there have been lots more naps. The weather in general was grey which included wet spells, so the calmer seas and sunshine this morning are much appreciated.

Night watches are extra dark with the moon and stars behind cloud cover. But we are seeing our first ARC boats on the plotter and that perks up the interest. Tina had a dream with beautiful blue water, sunny conditions and dolphins, we decided it’s a premonition, so we’re looking forward to that!

Tina and Teo have been creative, hope you enjoy the picture as much as we do!

We did 150 miles and that is our best yet. We got some practice changing the configuration of our sails as the wind kept shifting. We even got the pole on the other side yesterday and this morning we stowed the pole away. We have changed course.

Even though we had three checks before leaving, we think there might be a small crack in one of the spreaders and so our new plan is to stop in the Cape Verde islands to check it out and fix it if necessary. We will most likely have a long walk and a beer ashore too. We should be there in three days, and then we can add a new country to our lists. The stop will probably cost us two days plus the time we spend there. Since the weather forecasts show very little wind further along, a couple of days pause might be a really good thing! We will make the most of the stop, so aside from the spreader and potentially the generator (it would be really nice to have that working again!) our list includes having showers, filling water, cleaning the boat and buying a few extra fresh things. You might notice the water luxuries theme to our wish list. We really should have bought that water maker!

The weather is grey and the seas are rocky rolly but the crew still remain smiley and I dare say we are eating better than any of the other boats! The last of the tuna is now in the freezer, we plan to grill it on the beach in Barbados.

Day 3:

We are finding a good rhythm here aboard a Itchy Foot with mostly 2 hour watches and sharing cooking and cleaning duties. It is amazing and satisfying how the day is consumed with the simple stuff.

Kevin won some serious chef points with Teo as he gobbled up the tuna steak dinner last night and French toast with real maple syrup for lunch today, all without any prompting. Usually meals require some reminders. Tuna salad is on the menu for dinner tonight, that fish was BIG!

We had a bit of a wind lull yesterday and it was a mostly quiet night, too. We have unfortunately lost our buddy boats who motored through the night. The wind picked up at about 5am just after a squall. We scrambled around a bit to put the Bimini up in the dark. Right after that we had a dolphin visit, but we could only hear them as it was a very dark night. In the morning they came back to show off their jumping skills at dawn. It is breathtaking to watch them and it never grows old!

Other daily stuff includes Teo doing a little school and Tina and Mia trying out their yoga on the foredeck. We couldn’t have a better view for it, 360 degree blue sea! No need to visualize the boat or the waves here.

We don’t have lots of extra space on board so we have to make the most of what we have. We spent some time sorting out solutions for storing things that were lying around and noticed the fridge needed attention because it was defrosting itself. Ideally it should have been done before we filled it up with provisions but the to do list was long and it didn’t make the cut. Water is another important issue for this passage and Jon put together a water budget so we are sure we have enough to make it to Barbados. Kevin is offering up his shampoo water allowance and the girls are eager to trade. Plus, We are making attempts to wash dishes in salt water. On the whiteboard is a schedule for who is on watch when, who is charge of lunch and dinner and who is Mum for the day (the one who cleans, makes sure people pick up after each other and reminds everyone to drink water).

Kevin is making progress learning to use the sextant to figure our location (Jon teases him that we have GPS), so far it has mostly been settings, but he has promised to teach us how to use it. However first on the teaching list, is chess, but only if Mia can locate the missing pieces that ended up in the clear IKEA bag of LEGO…

Tina and Teo read for hours out of his General Knowledge book and then she taught us Ubongo, a puzzle game, which had us giggling and singing and counting in Spanish, hopefully this will be a regular occurrence! It’s fun to play puzzle games, we also have a new edition, River Crossing.

Night watches were uneventful and quite dark under the cloud cover. Orion came out to play for a bit but the moon hid behind the clouds mostly. We did however see lots of phosphorescent algae and the sea sparkled-gorgeous!

It was a quiet morning and Tina made banana bread, yum the boat smelled amazing! And not only was the coffee made but also porridge with pumpkin seeds and goji berries! Kevin and Jon pulled in a giant tuna, we think it was a “Skipjack Tuna”. There was a lot of action for a while and in the end, we have eight one-inch tuna steaks for dinner and that is after our sushi for lunch.

The wind has died on us and we were sailing mostly on broad reach this morning, and we are full winged now with just enough wind to sail by. We decided not to put the spinnaker up today, and we are looking forward to the wind that is on our forecast tomorrow.

Teo says, “so there are presents on this trip to the Caribbean and that’s cool, Over” and “the way to be cute is to eat lots of pasta of course” so now we know that.

The official rules started we needed to leave our marina berth at 10:15, So of course we left at 10:45. Too busy giving and receiving knuffles (hugs to those who don’t speak Dutch). Leaving Santa Cruz we had fog horns blasting us out and friends from Bright Eyes waving from the dock.

In the excitement of leaving in the company of 30 other boats we almost missed the start line, only just sneaking past the officials boat for close up photo opportunities.

Giving that our departure date was fixed months ago we had lovely weather for the first 24 hours. Just enough wind from the right direction has sent us towards our initial goal of 200-300 miles NW of Cape Verdes. Mia stubbed her toe and wants to stop for medical evacuation.

Dinner was Mexican themed, thanks to having avocados which needed to be used and the night watches were pleasant and uneventful. Jon and Mia feel completely rested, which has never happened on a passage before, thanks to our excellent crew.

Quote from Teo, while sitting on the foredeck relaxing in the sun with Tina “This is life, isn’t it.”

140 miles down, 2450 to go.

We’re leaving on our Atlantic Crossing tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 11am. To track our progress over the coming weeks and also see how the rest of the boats are doing you can follow the link below:

Track the boats

You should also be able to track our progress on our website as normal but it may not be updated very often.