Back in the EU

Johanna

N 14° 26.374', W 60° 53.104'

Lucky for us this is only an Overseas Department of France and we are not back on the continent of Europe.

But first I'll write something about our visit to Bridgetown, Barbados.

I'm not really a beach person, but I sure like to looking at one. 

There were plenty of these places in town where we could tie our dinghy.

I know that there comes a time when we have to take our dinghy to the beach, we even have wheels in the dinghy for that. Lucky for us they had these landings. because there was quite a large swell which would have made it very difficult (and wet) to land on the beach.

For some reason I seem to be unable to take any pictures of the streets, only of the water.

The view to the other direction.

After about two weeks it was time to change scenery and we sailed to Martinique.

Clearing in and out on the French islands is very easy. We go into a marina office and fill out a form on a computer and then print it out. Staff stamps it and we are all done. The most difficult part is using a French keyboard. If you've ever used one, you know what I'm talking about.

When we arrived in Le marin, we achored in a nice spot very near the dinghy landings. It also showed on the chart that it was forbidden to anchor in that spot, but since there were other boat too , we did it anyways. Today we had to move, because they are having a sail race there tomorrow. No problem, we moved to the anchorage in Sainte-Anne. We stay here over the weekend and then we return, maybe to the same place. The water in Le Marin is not very clear and there are also so many boats that I don't believe the water is very clean. Here the water is clear and we can swim again. We kind of got to used to swimming already in Barbados.

We don't know if the race tomorrow is on these traditional boats or something else. When we were told to move, Timo was also handed two sheets of paper about it, but all the text is in French...

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean

Johanna

N 13° 5.430', W 59° 37.049'

When we were leaving Mindelo, the weather forecast for a week showed that is was going to be sailing with the wind astern. We rigged our two poles already while in the dock. The new cutter jib is either on or off, but the size of genoa can also be adjusted even with the pole attached to it.

We actually bought this new cutter sail with furling system to get better performance on the beat. Now we used it for the first time and it was on a 2000 miles run.

We don't have sat phone (well tecnically we do, but we haven't bought a sim card, yet). We try to manage with the SBB-radio as long as possible. We used it a lot on the European coast. Back then our winlink email worked very well and we used it to get GRIB-files and to update our blog. Now we couldn't get good enough connections for email. We had to try something new. Every night we tuned our radio to receive weather fax. Some nights we got really clear pictures, some night we got nothing. We still don't know the reason why the quality of the reception changed so much.

I would say this is a pretty good picture even though we also had some that were much more clear. This is anyway clear enough to read. 

On this leg I didn't even try fishing. There was so much of this Sargassum that it would have fouled my lure and line instantly.

This guy (and I don't mean my husband) scared me in the middle of a night watch. This particular flying fish landed on top of our pilot house right above my head and started to make a real racket up there when it tried to find it's way back to the water. In the morning Timo threw it away, it was not fresh anymore so we couldn't even put in on the skillet.

Our life on the water was very easy. We ate, slept and kept watch. We did not have any "written" watch system. We did what felt the best at the moment. During the first few nights we took 2-3 hour turns, in the end the longest night watch was 6 hours. When it's just the two of us, life is very simple. On most days we had a warm meal, on some days we did not feel like it. Still we discovered some new dishes. We replaced all pasta with cous-cous, it's was so much easier to prepare. Other new favorite included tuna from a can rolled into a tortilla with various spices and other incredients such olives and dried tomatos.

Here I am just taking things easy. We have some very good lee clothes for some of our bunks. When we really slept we were in one of those. But when relaxing during the day we used our regular bunk for that, (we still did have some pillows stuffed under the side of the mattress). One thing in this picture is very unusual. I have a paperback in my hand. We read all our novels as e-books, so this does not happen very ofter. I was trying to learn about corrosion on boats, and, well, fell a sleep after 10 minures. The same thing happened on an other day when I took my French text book and tried to go over some basic words for the French islands

Since we have a pilot house, we keep watch comfortably inside our saloon. In the colder climates it's nice and warm inside. Now that we are in the tropics it's nice and cool. Well, the temperature does rise, but at least we are out of the sun. We can easily see to all directions with our own eys so we don't really need the radar to see other vessels. During the night we kept the radar on to see approaching squalls.

Some rain shower making an approach, Some only rained a little, some shifted the wind and some made major increase in the wind speed. Usually we just had to close our companionway to prevent the rain coming inside and after 15 minutes everything was back to normal.

Our windwane was for sure the hardest working crew member on this passage. It practically steered the whole way. We also have an hydraulic autopilot, but it takes a lot of juice from the battery. Windwane works for almost free, sometimes it wants some WD-40.

Our trip from Cape Verde took 16 days and we arrived on Barbados on New Years Day. What a way to start a new year!

Mindelo, Cabo Verde

Johanna

N 16° 53.241', W 24° 59.443'

Sailing from the Canaries to Cabo Verde was quite uneventful. We had very light winds all the way, during the last two days we even had to motor some hours.

I tried to catch some fish, but all I got was some seaweed, there was a lot of it.

I know we can't trust the charts, but I was still expecting to see some light when we were approching Mindelo in total darkness. You can see the lighthouse on top of this island, but there definately was no light flashing from it.

We have enjoyed Mindelo. This place has some very good restaurants. To be honest, we haven't found anything else than good restaurant. The prices are also much lower than in the Canaries.

It's no wonder that all the fish in the restaurats is very fresh since during the day there is fresh fish for sale around every corner.

Tomorrow we are going to buy fresh fruit from this market for our next leg.

We are planning on leaving tomorrow and we are heading for Barbados. If the winds don't agree with this, we'll just change our plans and pick an other island.

It's about 2000 nautical miles from here to Barbados. We expect to spend at least two weeks on the way, it could also take three weeks.

You can follow us on our website. The map and our last position should be updated via Spot.

When we finally arrive in the Caribbean it's going to be year 2016 already. So we wish you all very happy holidays!

Atlantic Ocean, here we come!

Johanna

N 28° 0.442', W 16° 39.628'

Today is the day we have been waiting for a long time.

We are now heading to Cape Verde. If for some reason the winds are not favorable, we might change our plans and head straingt to the Caribbean.

Today Tenerife doesn't look so nice. I hope we find the sun soon.

Atlantic Ocean, almost there, we can't wait!

Johanna

N 28° 0.442', W 16° 39.628'

I haven't forgotten  you all, but, well, I've been busy. Sorry about that. I promise I'll make it up in the near future. 

It's been a long almost two years in the Canaries. The Canaries are not a bad place to be, but we have just been here long enough. We left Finland to go sailing and we haven't done that much here.

We haven't set the excact date when we leave, but it's in the very near future.

Before we left Las Palmas we took care of the bottom. Now "Iiris" behaves like she's supposed to behave. It was kind of funny, how deffirent it was to manouver her with the dirty bottom.

Here we are testing our new furling system for the gennaker. The sail is not new, but we exchanged the sock for the furler.

We have already been provisioning for the past two months. When ever we have had a rental car for some reason, I've been bringing home some cans. Last week we did an inventory. We have plenty of food, we'd survive for much longer time than just across the Atlantic. Anyway we'll be still buying some more. We know that the stores in the Caribbean are more expensive and don't always have the things we might want.

Last summer I ordered me a Sailrite sawing machine, I hadn't had the time to power it up yet. 

My mother came to see us before we go. With her mental support I set up the machine and did my first stiches on it. We didn't quite have the materials we needed so I'll continue by myself sometime, somewhere else.

It was nice to have my mom around for two weeks. We don't plan to visit Finland anytime soon, and the flights to visit us are becoming longer and more complicated. We sailed to La Gomera with my mom. We loved the island. I'm so happy we finally got to see something else than Gran Canaria and Tenerife

We don't miss Finland, but we do like some things that come from Finland. Here we have some rye crispy bread stored for the crossing. And I must tell you, this is not all we have. We also have a lot of other Finnish crispy bread on board. This means we don't need to start baking yet.

We are now in Las Galletas, Tenerife. We'll be doing some last minute things before we set sail for the Caribbean (most likely via Cape Verde).

When we finally set sail (hopefully next week) I hope I have more time to update this blog. At least we'll be checking in with the Spot, so you'll see on the map where we are.

How to install Spinlock endless line clutch

timo

N 28° 7.628', W 15° 25.492'

We needed clutches for our new endless rope furler. Since we have Spinlock XTS clutches, and we like them, we decided to try XTS/M clutches that are designed for endless rope.

Information about this option is quite limited on Spinlock's web pages. We bought a triple XTS/M3 which seems ridiculous for endless rope, and we soon figured out that the middle one is not usable for this. The endless rope only needs two clutches, but we wanted to get the triple for it to look symmetrical to the other side.

When we got the much more expensive clutch than a normal triple, we realized that the only difference for normal triple was the open bullseyes. Very expensive bullseys!

We wanted to make the installation so that we don't have to uninstall the clutches from the deck if we need to change the rope. That is not possible with triple or double because one plastic part cannot be removed when both side fairings are not removed. 

We had also two singles and so we got what we wanted by changing the open bullseyes to single clutches. There went the symmetry.

Next I show how to put endless rope to clutch without uninstalling the clutch from the deck.

Here are the parts for single clutch.

Line must be forced into bullseye.

For example by using screwdriver.

All the bullseyes in endless rope.

Base is installed and insulated with Duralac and sealed with Sikaflex. 

This is the part that makes it impossible to change the endless line without uninstalling the whole clutch for others than singles. The small notches go under the base and can come up only on the sides, not in the middle.

Put that part in place.

Cam assembly comes next.

And the other parts.

Notice that the bolts keeping the clutch together can be assembled both ways.

Another try to get Wi-Fi on board

timo

N 27° 48.999', W 15° 45.949'

All cruising boats have a VHF-radio and most also have either a SSB-radio or a satellite phone (or both). However, most of us spend way more time near the shore than off shore. There seems to be one radio connection more important than the others; Wi-Fi. 

We have had many tries to pick up a Wi-Fi signal to share it inside our boat (or at least have it working on one computer). Now it seems that we have a working solution.

We like to use the Internet on laptops, tablets, etc. in our boat. Usually that's impossible because there is no Wi-Fi coverage inside the boat. Our steel hull and aluminium deck are not helping us, it's a bit different with GRP. We have tried external antennas outside the boat, but that is sometimes a bit difficult. What we need is an outside antenna with a system that connects to the Wi-Fi providing the internet connection, while devices inside the boat share that connection through our own Wi-FI access point.

We had the idea to implement that with Raspberry Pi, but fortunately found out that there were already many devices for this task.

We had to make the decision between Ubiquiti and Mikrotik products, both have very interesting devices. We chose Mikrotik Metal  2SHPn, because of its more powerful transmitter. It also seemed a bit more robust, which is always a good thing on the water.

There is an antenna included in the package with the Metal, but we decided to have more gain with a better antenna. Omni-directional antenna is simple to use, especially when anchored out. We bought a TP-Link TL-ANT2415D.

We tried the system in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Metal was able to see more than 60 access point at once!  That's a lot compared to the old 10 or so . The system was really working as we expected it to.

A bit of a warning! Mikrotik Router OS is not the easiest user interface to work with. Here is the screen where you connect to the WiFi.

This is only a part of the screen. However, if you can handle mail via SSB, this should'n be too difficult to handle.

We believe that Metal can also be configured as a Wi-Fi access point for on board devices. We haven't tried that yet. We just happen to have some extra Wi-Fi routers (leftovers from work in Finland) with us and configured one of them to serve as our access point.

We sailed to Las Galletas, Tenerife. There was one windy day in the marina and all of the sudden there was no more antenna.

Well, there was the antenna, but the fiberglass tube had flown away (fallen to the bottom of the sea). Antenna was sold by Manhattan Computer in Las Palmas. We tried to talk to them about guarantee, but the guy just told us, that we should also have the fiberglass tube with us. We might as well have used it as a sword and broke it :) That much for the guarantees here... 

Oh well! We still have the Metals own antenna and it is also working pretty well.