Day 1 - 25.01.26

Crew of 3 : Anouchka, Lorenzo and Jean-Baptiste (JB)

First day out on the big blue ocean

We left Port Owen at 8 :30, saying goodbye to family and lifelong friends that came to greet us at our jetty and then followed us, some on S.V. Gombera, some on the piers, all the way out into the bay. We even got a goodbye hoot by the Yacht Club committee waiting for us to go by the waiting jetty! Once out in the bay we waved a last goodbye to our friends on Gombera and hoisted our spinnaker…lets just say that there wasn’t much wind but at least it made for a good photo ! What a funny sensation to finally slow down things after months of last minute preparations and the stress from all the yard work done the previous week.

After about 3 hours we finally reached the unprotected waters north of St Helena bay and started catching 17-22kts winds. We then decided to bring our Oxley parasailor (spinnaker) down and to go full on cutter rig (aka, Genoa and Staysail open).

The swell increased during the evening which made the ride a little « rolly polly », but luckily everyone was fine onbaord. Jean-Baptiste prepared a typical Belgian supper of mashed veg (stoempf) with sausages, the twist being that the sausages were South African boerewors. :p

We then undertook our night shifts till dawn in good spirits. During the night I started smelling a wif of diesel coming from the tank, it turned out to be coming out the air hole due to all the rolling. Nothing we could do then, just block the hole, we would need to run the engine to get the level in our tanks a bit lower (650l total capacity).

Night shifts ended at 6 :30, the start to a second day on the Atlantic ocean !