24 Nov: Meet you over there for Christmas!
Jonathan with some of our purchased fruit in Tenerife
The words echoed in my head. It sounded unrealistically distant both in time and place, and still, closer to our doorstep than we could realize. Our friends on Norwegian Galadriel backed out from their berth in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where we both had enjoyed a couple of intense weeks. Jon and Anne greeted us from the cockpit with their two children Sondre and Synne waving from deck. A farewell, a last wish for fair winds and good luck, re-assuring that we would all meet again in Bequia for Christmas.

We followed their mast disappearing out of the marina heading for the American continent. They would sail along the Tenerife coast and then not see land for a long time. Soon, we would be doing the same. A strange feeling spread in my stomach. I suddenly felt so small; the Atlantic seemed so huge.

The North Sea, Biscay and the leg to Madeira and later the Canaries suddenly felt compact compared to what lied ahead of us. Luckily, we were not alone. There were at least constantly 250 boats in Santa Cruz preparing for the crossing and as soon one left, other boats entered the packed marina to go through the same preparing and provisioning we all had to. The same took place in many marinas around the Canaries, not to mention Las Palmas with the ARC fleet (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) having their hectic weeks before the departure, counting 250 boats in their fleet.

Was it already this close to Christmas, anyway? My shorts, bare feet and T-shirt did not reveal that family and friends back home had since long withdrawn from outdoor activities, sitting in front of the fire place, possibly even reading about blue water sailing, letting dreams fly away to a lifestyle we were currently experiencing in real. At least, that was what I had been doing for the last couple of winters with November storms roaring outside. Dreaming about the Atlantic crossing is a totally different matter compared to being here seeing all these boats leaving, waving to each of them, knowing that one day it becomes our turn to do the jump-off.
Our neighbors in Tenerife. Among these the beautiful Hallberg-Rassy 62 Bamsen as well as a HR43, which here in Tenerife did not look as impressive among its pals.
All kind of vessels do it, from rowing boats over single handed sailors to the paid crews on the numerous superyachts. Christoph Rassy’s HR 62 participating in the Blue Water Rally did not look quite as impressive down here as on the open yard exhibition in Ellös every August, by the way, and the Hallberg-Rassy 43 adjacent to it looked more like a pocket cruiser. Many sail huge yachts down here. Maybe Jessica’s question is justified when she asked why people were more rich here than back home, sailing these big boats.
Some of the 26 rowing boats taking part in the toughest rowing race in the world. Rowing across the Atlantic in this race takes some 60 days! There was also at least one other rower who did not race and did it single handed (or do you speak about twin-handed if you are rowing alone?). I wonder how long that may take...?!
If you believe we are "crazy" crossing the Atlantic in a comfortable Hallberg-Rassy boat, think of these guys and girls!
Taking extreme boats as the little rowing boats and the superyachts aside, the typical size of a modern cruising boat for a couple seems to lie in the 45 foot-range nowadays, quite a bit larger than our 40 foot pride that once felt like a ship and was one of the biggest boats in our home port marina. Living aboard, stowing tons of equipment, water, diesel, food and belongings is just another matter compared to holiday sailing. I am really glad that we actually dared to invest in the bigger HR40 rather than a smaller model we also were thinking of at first.

All these yachts now came together in the Canaries, waiting for the right timing to leave for Americas. November and December is the high season for the marinas in the Canaries with many being fully booked weeks in advanced. Las Palmas on Gran Canaries could just offer their anchorage outside as long as the ARC was due, Santa Cruz de Tenerife was fully booked for weeks and La Gomera was almost impossible to get in to due to the overwhelming number of yachts who all come here to get to the Caribbean for Christmas.

Thinking of the fact that Christmas already was this close, I couldn’t believe that such a long period of time had already passed since we let go our shore-lines last June. We were now totally into our new life style rhythm, living beyond normal seasons and the stress of everyday life. Hundreds of sailors are doing the same as we do, many have even been cruising for several years. Amongst these cruisers, we were nothing special other than the fact that we have just started our lifestyle recently. We have not even crossed an ocean, yet, which, however, might soon change.

If you, back home in the armchair in front of the fireplace, think we live some sort of exceptional life, the contrary seemed to be valid here, looking at all these yachties finding living ashore with a nine-to-five job being eccentric. “Working is overrated”, as one good friend stated it, hinting at the fact that the “exotic” life-style always is the one others live, not the community you currently belong to. The exception to live on a boat seemed to have turned into a new rule.
The Auditorio of Santa Cruz de Tenerife overlooking the harbour entrance with Corte Ingles in the background which stood for a good deal of the many boats' provisions.
Suddenly, I started to visualize that we, too, belonged to this group of ocean sailors and would have a three weeks leg ahead of us. It was not the sailing that scared me, instead I was thinking of the huge amount of food and water this meant. Even with a watermaker onboard, we needed to calculate with a “worst-case scenario”, namely that the watermaker failed and our main tank would get contaminated due to this. Left would our second water tank be (thank goodness we have two smaller tanks instead of one bigger one!) as well as bottled water.

As a novice in ocean crossings, we didn’t quite know, yet, how much food to stock up, what kind of food lasted the best and how to stow it all. Having read about how long various vegetables and fruits keep if you treat them in one or the other way and how they best are to be packed and stowed is a totally other story compared to when you actually stand there with several fully packed shopping carts in Carrefour or Corte Ingles loading shelf after shelf of food into your carriage. Karolina, organized as she always is, made menu-lists for each day so we could shop according to these, allowing for extra days as well as “emergency food” such as pasta, rice and tinned food.
All available space was being used for food, here juice is packed into a locker.
Interesting items, such as boric acid and condensed milk to feed potential blind passengers was equally purchased together with Cockroach Motels to host the same pets. They say they check in and never check out, but the entrance door to the Motel looked much too small compared to the creatures we saw on the marina quay hushing along during the dark night hours. Every packing, especially cardboard boxes, was removed from purchased items, each fruit was soaked in water, every object was carefully examined before taking onboard. Once we found cockroach eggs on a package of sweets wrapped in plastic. These eggs live in a light brown “bag” about the size of a quarter of a fingernail. To get them onboard meant a nice little colony of hundreds of cockroaches onboard a couple of weeks later, tuning into the thousands in forthcoming cockroach generations, increasing exponentially. So these eggs are the worst to get onboard. We were lucky to have noticed them. This time. How many were we to miss in the future?!

More experienced sailors are less worried and are no longer affected by the cockroach fever. Getting them onboard is not the end of your sailing career and they can be defeated. However, a great effort is always made to minimize the risk. Tropical cruisers are used to examine all food, have learnt which shops are considered the “safest”, namely the big clean department stores, and never take cardboard onboard. I can, by the way, mention that our cockroach eggs originated from a small corner shop and not from a big well-known super-market.
Sitting on the pontoon each afternoon to check all purchased items became a habit. Not seldom we got help from boat kids who took a pride in examining all items in greatest detail.
Carrefour and Corte Ingles became our main source of food, visiting both of these almost on a daily basis with long shopping lists corresponding to Karolina’s menus. While they both deliver directly to the boat, we took a taxi home with all the stuff, instead, which just cost EUR 5. From Corte Ingles we ordered vacuum-packed and frozen meat, which could be stored directly into our freezer.
Our detailed shopping plans, however, were heavily distorted by neighboring boats, who all had good ideas, very willing to share their experience as good advice. As valuable as they were, they all meant you were never coming to an end buying more and more of both groceries as well as boat stuff to keep up with their inputs! We didn’t want to be less well prepared than anyone else, right?

Storage, food and good bargains were discussed continuously. Listen in to this typical dockside discussion:

- “Have you seen this great camping lamp I just bought? For just EUR 30!”
- “I bought a Honda 230V petrol power generator. Really neat! Do you have one as well?”
- “Wine is less expensive here. We bought a shopping cart full.”
- “How many spare halyards do you have, by the way?”
- “How much diesel do you carry? We have 5 huge Jerry cans of diesel on deck in addition to our tanks. Just in case.”
- “Do you think 200 bottles of water will be enough? I might go and get some more.”
- “Look what I found! Olive oil in Tetra Pack! Light, easy to stow and great for decreasing garbage. We bought 15 Liters! How many Liters of olive oil did you buy? You know, you hardly find olive oil in the Caribbean, and if so, it’s enormously expensive”.
- “I have this new navigation software, but it won’t load on the PC. Do you know why?
- “My e-mail software does not talk to the SCS modem for the SSB. Could you come and help, please?”

It was a never ending story!

There were others, who did it differently, however, namely the ones who had done an ocean crossing before. They had lived long enough onboard to continuously keep their homes in perfect condition and had the experience from previous crossings, knowing how much to stock up for the trip. I envied their calmness, as they sat in their cockpits enjoying Tenerife, rather than running mad doing last minute adjustments to the boat, shopping to indefinite.

People were hanging in their rigs like monkeys, drilling new holes for new poles, checking sails or putting on anti-chafing tapes. Jigsaws and grinding could be heard, painting and varnishing was done. New canvas was sown and bottoms were cleaned.
Liz from Amaranth making spraysheets for the cockpit
Now, what will we eat on our 3 week passage? Definitely not dried food and corned beef, although both are onboard as an emergency ration. We are lucky enough to have a freezer onboard and this is filled with 46 possible meals for our expected 22 day crossing. The freezer is packed with chicken breasts, minced meet, stewing steak, frozen fish fillets, port fillets, hamburgers, and even Swedish meat balls (thanks to IKEA on Tenerife!) plus some pre-cooked meals for the first days. The recipes will be easy, yet hopefully tasty, and have been tested before onboard.
Of course we hope to catch some fish and even this has been tested in beforehand, when we caught a nice 3.3 kg (7 lbs) "Little Tunny" sailing in the Canaries. John on Wild Alliance is a professional chef specialized in fish, so what better could there be than getting a first hand lesson in fish filleting and preparing sushi?! A fresher tuna is difficult to find, and the fish was big enough to allow all of us on the pontoon to join the sushi feast.
The Little Tunny we caught while passing Lanzarote. Photo by Jessica.
Boat kids gathered on Wild Alliance after the filleting, learning how to roll the fish and rice into seaweed, serving it with Wasabi sauce and ginger together with Japanese soy sauce. The children loved the party, starting from catching the tuna, filleting it, preparing the sushi and then enjoying this most delightful meal! You bet, we have stocked up with roasted seaweed, Wasabi, soy sauce and ginger for our Atlantic passage, together with a new sushi rolling mat and new tackle for big fish! We are now prepared for a daily sushi meal!
John from Wild Alliance, who has been a professional chef specialized in fish, gave us all a lesson in fish filleting. Photo by Jessica.
My turn to fillet! John watching over my trials. Photo by Jessica.
The outcome of our Little Tunny, made by all the boat kids around under the supervision of chef John, who had all the necessary ingredients onboard, except for the fish. Photo by Jessica.
The remaining parts of our Little Tunny, that did not become sushi was fried the following day. Photo by Jessica.
Living onboard has widened our scope of recipes and meals, since most sailors show a great interest in food and are happy to share it with equally interested yachties. Rama from Israel, who has lived on their boat for over 10 years, showed us how to bake pita bread directly over the open gas flame on the stove, Liz from Amaranth shared her favorite bread recipe, Dan from Koshlong explained how to use Thai spice while Val from Valhalla gave the tip to peel tomatoes directly over the gas flame, not to forget the professional chef John on Wild Alliance already mentioned above.

I think we will eat ourselves over to the other side, arriving with our bodies stuffed with food. I’m already looking forward to our Atlantic meals!

After two weeks in Tenerife, we had first of all no more space to fill onboard and secondly, Karolina was complaining about the fact that we were eating from her Atlantic stock! If we stayed longer, she claimed, we had to replace it, meaning more provisioning, which, in turns, would make us stay even longer. Time to break this circle!

When finally both the Blue Water Rally and the French Atlantic Crossing Rally had left Tenerife, a calm atmosphere spread over the marina with just cruisers left, who did it in their own pace, more taking weather and their own preparations into account than a specific starting date.

The rallies had merely left, when the weather situation on the Atlantic became interesting to say the least. The Azores High, always responsible for stable trade winds, had suddenly retreated to the British Isles, who now experienced an extraordinary High of 1039 hPa. With no High over the Azores, the Atlantic laid open for strangers to enter the scene. Lacking our Azorean guard, Lows were forecasted to form in the way between the Canaries and the Caribbean. A Low meant beating against headwinds, which no sailor wants to do.
The deep Low as forecasted for the 25 November giving strong SW-ly headwinds south of it.
We were thinking of the boats who had already left, hoping that they had received the same long-time weather outlook, making them to turn as far south as possible to avoid the hardest headwinds closer to the centre of the Low. We decided not to leave, yet, therefore. Rather than interfering with Lows which were where they shouldn’t and High’s that were not where they should, we decided to sail to La Gomera, instead, one of the western most islands in the Canaries.
Beautiful La Gomera with its well-run marina and impressive bunkering facilities with good supermarket and fruit market, diesel and water. This was a place I really could imagine to stay an entire winter.
Fully stocked up for the Atlantic, we are currently enjoying this last Canarian island before heading out into our own Atlantic adventures. Like Columbus, we checked into La Gomera, not, as he did, to load blessed holy water to Christian all Indians he would meet, but to find tranquility and harmony before our big crossing. Also on La Gomera some 200 yachts had gathered to sail to the Caribbean, but here, the hectic atmosphere was totally gone. The well-run marina had only one disadvantage and that was that it was constantly full. The problem lied in the fact that yachts arrived for a night or two, fell in love with the island and stayed for weeks, instead.

We have equally become fond of La Gomera, but still wanted to keep our promise to meet all our friends "over there" for Christmas, weather permitting.

During our crossing, I hope to be able to send updates via Iridium, which will be posted here. Please feel free to check in to see if I have been able to post any greetings from the high seas!