J80 across the Atlantic

The trip in chronological order

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:14:00 +0100

Some people have been asking for a list in chronological order of the trip. I have to admit it's a strange thing we didn't implemented it from the beginning. Anyway, here are all blog posts from the very beginning to the end. You can also read all the blog posts on one very long page.

2007-11-06 14:35 - English

2007-11-07 12:22 - A new radiator

2007-11-07 13:25 - Good bye Paris!

2007-11-11 17:53 - From Paris to Lagos

2007-11-12 22:46 - Pimenta shipyard...

2007-11-13 20:40 - Luis saves us!

2007-11-15 23:28 - Finally the boat is in the Atlantic!

2007-11-16 11:39 - Lagos, probably the best seafood in the world

2007-11-18 12:22 - No wind on the Atlantic

2007-11-20 18:56 - Bad weather off the coast of Morocco

2007-11-22 17:16 - Finally nice weather!

2007-11-25 22:35 - More bad weather

2007-12-01 19:29 - Gran Canaria

2007-12-02 21:16 - A small boat

2007-12-04 13:46 - Lost whale

2007-12-05 18:13 - Leaving Las Palmas

2007-12-08 18:02 - From misery to sunshine

2007-12-11 17:21 - Lazy days

2007-12-15 18:12 - Lost genacker

2007-12-17 18:04 - Flying fish stew

2007-12-18 21:18 - 1000 nm left to go!

2007-12-19 20:08 - Night at the Atlantic

2007-12-21 00:36 - Teared jib

2007-12-21 22:32 - Not really like racing around the buoys at home

2007-12-23 20:25 - Extreme blogging

2007-12-24 15:30 - Merry Christmas from the Atlantic!

2007-12-25 19:11 - Tobago!

2007-12-27 23:53 - Charlotteville

2008-01-02 17:14 - Next door reef

2008-01-06 22:43 - Dolphins and Danish watch rotation

2008-01-13 00:47 - Tortuga

2008-01-14 15:39 - Long beaches and coral reefs

2008-01-28 17:11 - Kitesurfing - Playa el Yaque

2008-02-12 02:02 - Pirates

2008-03-07 01:23 - Cayo Herradura

2008-03-26 00:27 - Kite surfing at Los Roques

2008-04-15 18:55 - Tarifa

Tarifa

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:55:00 +0100

Two weeks ago the boat was loaded on to a container ship and we flew back to Europe. The Landcruiser where still at the dodgy used car dealership in Lagos where we left it almost five months earlier. With car and trailer we drove to Tarifa, Spain where we inflated our kites. In Venezuela the water was flat most of the time and the breaking waves in Tarifa was somewhat of a shock and took a few hours getting used to. In two days we will leave Tarifa and head up to Biarritz, France and se if we can find some good kiting there.

Kite surfing at Los Roques

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:27:00 +0100

We've been hanging out in Los Roques for the last few weeks kite surfing. Pretty much everything has revolved around kiting. We meet a norwegian boat the last week and they where also learning to kite. Their boat was a lot more luxurious than ours and we lounged as much as possible there instead of the cramped J80.

Andreas makes a grab at Cayo Carenero.

Cayo Herradura

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:23:00 +0100

The wind picked up quit a bit on route to Los Roques. A little ironic since we had been laying on the beach waiting for kite wind for a week. The choice between a night at se in 30 knots wind and dropping the anchor in Cayo Herradura was not a difficult one. The island is located on the west side of Torguta and is a tiny island with a few bushes, a light house and some fishing huts. Thanks to the combination of a small boat and Andreas Spanish skills we got to know some of the local fishermen. We've been helping them fish languster and sharing our stock of candy and rom. In return they give us lunch and dinner. Instead of staying just for the night we've been here for one week now.

Cayo Herradura is also an excellent kite spot. A long beach with nothing that obstructs the wind and flat water. Unfortunately the wind usually doesn't pick up until around three in the afternoon.

Pirates

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:02:00 +0100

There where no wind on Isla Margarita so we sailed to El Coche about an hour south. On El Coche there where at least some wind so we got an hour of kiting before the wind died. The next four days there where absolutely no wind. We spent on half of the four days exploring the island together with a taxi driver with a huge American car. Another half day we wakeboard with our kite boards after a local fishing boat. The rest of the days we simply waited for wind lounging in two sacko-bags reading kite magazines.

Two days before leaving we got a visit from the local pirates. The only thing they left of our dinghy was a small part of the rope we fastened it to the J80 with. While we where sleeping they sneaked up to the boat and cut the rope to the dinghy. During the night two other boats also got their dinghies stolen. Outside in the cockpit we also stored four kites, two boards and our harnesses so we where somewhat happy they only took the dinghy. A few minutes later we got even happier when the local community police came dragging with our dinghy. The engine was gone but at least we got the boat back. The thieves apparently dump the dinghies and keep the engines.

Kitesurfing - Playa el Yaque

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:11:00 +0100

We (Annika and Andreas) got to the hotel in Playa el Yaque after a dear reunion. El Yaque is a very small place with a lot of wind loving people. This is paradise for both wind surfers and kite surfers. Our first 5 days coincided with the stay of our kite surfing friends Joel and Anette. After a lot of cheering and inspiration from them we started getting kite lessons. Caught by the new sport, we decided to to focus on the kiting instead of sailing. A decision we don't regret. There are loads of kiting schools on the beach. One of them is Planet Kite School which is run by Wim - a belgian guy who gave up his "suit career" for doing what he loves the most, teaching people to kite.

Long beaches and coral reefs

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:39:00 +0100

Besides amazing beaches there's also a coral reef, an airport, a hotel and a restaurant here at Tortuga. The airport is two somewhat straight 300 feet long dirt roads (the only roads on the island), the hotel has only four beds and the restaurant seems to only open at weekends when rich Venezuelan people fly here with their small planes. The Venezuelan coast guard has also stationed four guys on the island that mostly play games on the beach and relax. According to one of the coast guards there's 13 people currently living on the island.

Much of the coral reefs here are dead like in large areas of the Caribbean. It's only 10 years since all the reefs around the island where alive and lots of years before that there where turtles nesting here. We found a small part of the reef still living and we've been snorkeling there but you have to wonder what this place was like before the corals started dying.

While drinking cold drinks with John and Geri Karin mentioned she missed fresh food like chicken and meat. Next day Geri brought over some chicken, meat, bread and other stuff. We where overjoyed and made thai soup for lunch and burgers for dinner. We couldn't have found better boat neighbors!

We will leave Tortuga and sail back to Isla Margarita this night. There we will switch the J80 to a hotel room and Andreas and Annika will take the boat. It'll be great with a little luxury life!

Tortuga

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:47:00 +0100

After some trouble clearing customs in Venezuela me and Karin left and sailed to Tortuga some 80 nm west of Isla Margarita while Andreas and Annika (mostly Andreas I think) enjoys beds that doesn't move, fresh water showers and hotel breakfasts.

The sail to Tortuga went without mishaps. We left Porlamar just before sunset and arrived in time for breakfast. Tortuga is a flat island with miles of white beaches and a desert like landscape. When we arrived the only boat at the anchorage was an old fishing boat. Karin immediately concluded they where drug smugglers and we were both relieved when a bigger sailing boat entered the anchorage. On the sailing boat lived John and Geri from America. Later that night we got invited over to their boat. The boat was exactly twice as long as the J80 and besides beautiful lines had all the luxury we've been missing. Toilet, water maker, diesel generator, fridge and freezer, a kitchen the same size as at home and most amazingly, an ice machine! We stayed at their boat and enjoyed the company, cold drinks and all the luxury onboard until late that night.

Dolphins and Danish watch rotation

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:43:00 +0100

We got company with a flock of dolphins only a few hours from Tobago. Amazing to finally see them in daylight. The dolphins came back again late last night and the fluorescent animals in the water made long glowing lines where the dolphins where swimming. Very beautiful!

We steered the boat by hand from Tobago since we didn't want to sail more at night then necessary. The jib-top also helped speed things up. To manage we rotated watches every hour. We got the idea from a Danish dual handed boat where they had hand steered the last 16 days of their Atlantic crossing. It's not something we recommend but it was fast. Our average speed from Tobago to Isla Margarita was 7.8 knots and it and we made the trip with only one night at sea. Now it's time to relax with our girlfriends here at Isla Margarita for three weeks before we continue our trip.

Next door reef

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:14:00 +0100

There's a small reef only 100 meters from the boat where we snorkel in the days. So far we've seen one gigantic manatee and lots of smaller fish. It's really nice with 80 degrees Farenheit in the water instead of the (at best) 68 degrees we get in Sweden during summer.

We will leave Charlotteville in a few hours and sail to Isla Margarita to meet up with our girlfriends. Thanks for all comments and a good new year to all of you!

Charlotteville

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:53:00 +0100

We could not have chosen a better place to land than Charlotteville after three weeks at sea. The town consists of a few streets and crocked old houses. Chickens and wild dogs roam the streets and everybody greets each other, even us. The first few steps where a little difficult but we managed to get to Eastmans Restaurant where we ordered beer and some grilled chicken.

The food tasted fantastic after eating canned and freeze dried food for more than 20 days.
Next day we managed to get a lift to Scarborough for 20 TT-dollars (about 2 euros, we think). We went to Scarborough to get money and visit the Immigration Office to get stamps in our passports. The money was no problem but the Christmas holiday got in the way of the stamping passport business.

Tobago!

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:11:00 +0100

The wind blew us to Tobago instead of Trinidad. In a few ours we will drop anchor at Charlotteville on the north side of Tobago. It will be great to once again stand on solid ground!

Merry Christmas from the Atlantic!

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:30:00 +0100

Thanks to our amazing girlfriends (Karin and Annika) we have managed to get some christmas spirit on board. Today we opened the packages they gave us when we left Sweden. Andreas got one kilo of salt lakrits (a Swedish speciality) and I got a pair of clean underwear, a book and some Polly (Swedish chocolate). Exactly what we needed!

Earlier during the night we got a different christmas gift. The GPS that's counting down the number of nautical miles left to Trinidad went below 300. Now it's only two to three more nights on the boat before we get to feel solid earth under our feet again!

The christmas weather on the Atlantic is a little cloudy today but it's still 84 degrees Fahrenheit. The nice 12 knot wind that has been following us the past few days is still here and the waves are as usual bigger than on the Baltic sea.

Extreme blogging

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:25:00 +0100

Lots of people have had questions about how we blog from the boat. A J80 in the middle of the Atlantic is a rather poor platform to work with the Internet from. No space for large satellite antennas and not much electricity. The Internet connection is solved with an Iridium satellite phone connected to an Apple MacBook. Both phone and computer are compact and relatively energy efficient. The connection is very slow compared to what we are used to (about 1/100 the speed of ADSL) but considering it works all over the world it's amazing.

The slow connection leads to a few problems for the blogging software. We use Roxen CMS and its blog-module. Together with Roxen we have developed an add-on to enable text creation using the Iridium phone. The texts are written in both English and Swedish and edited locally on the MacBook. Images are added and the text categorized. First when all is done we connect to the Internet using the Iridium phone. One push of a button and text and picture are sent to adventure.roxen.com where it's published. Images are scaled by Roxen CMS to fit the page and our position is updated as well. On average we need 6 minutes of Internet connection to publish a blog text. The system is very easy to use and works just as fine on Windows as on MacOSX.

Staffan Ekholm at Roxen is happy to answer any questions you may have about Roxen CMS and their blog-module. staffan@roxen.com, +46709-153948

You buy your Iridium phone from Kristian Ryberg at Telemar. kristian.ryberg@telemar.se, +4631-89 28 00

Only 341 nm left to go!

Not really like racing around the buoys at home

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:32:00 +0100

My friend Kim wondered what it was like sailing a J80 in the middle of the Atlantic. There are not many similarities with racing around the buoys in Baggensfj�rden (the place for J80-racing in Stockholm), not even with the off shore race Around Gotland.

Were we are now there is always lots of wind. Seldom below 20 knots and, at least during our crossing, often close to 40 knots. The wind is easterly so at least it's blowing from the right direction. The waves are also a lot bigger than at home. Lots of nice long surfs. The drawback is that it tends to be a bit messy when they break over the boat.

Another difference is that we rarely steer the boat by hand. Instead there's a rubber band and a rope that through two pulleys are connected to the jib sheet that steers the boat. It works fine for most of the time and it's actually the rubber band that holds the current top speed record of 19.8 knots.

We are often forced to sit inside the cabin to get away from the constant spray from waves. In the beginning it was a very eerie feeling when the boat surfed down a wave in 12-13 knots without anyone steering. In rough weather this happens once every minute or so so after a while you hardly think about it. The boat is unbelievably stable especially at high speed with the rubber-band steering system and it has never broached nor jibed at speeds over 10 knots.

The few times we are forced to steer the boat by hand is during extreme conditions. At that time all three reefs in the main has been used and the jib is replaced by the storm jib. Despite the tiny sail area the boat is heavily over powered and is constantly planing. Waves are washing down over the boat all the time and it has happened more than once that I've wished that I had brought my ski goggles for protection against the spraying water.

The last two days the weather has been a lot nicer though. Around 12 knot winds and the deck of the boat is actually dry for the first time in many many days. It's great to sit in the sun for once. :-)

Only 599 nm to go!

Teared jib

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:36:00 +0100

Today a seam in the jib split. Our first thought was to repair it but after some experimentation we got the boat balanced and self steering using the storm jib instead. We will wait until we reach Port of Spain with repairing the Jib, hopefully there will be a sail maker there.

The wind has calmed down to around 12 knots and today was the first time we sat outside of the cabin without getting sprayed with water.

Only 718 nm left to go!

Night at the Atlantic

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:08:00 +0100

Todays first watch is Jens's. The clock is almost seven and dinner has just been finished. The sun is setting and I'm preparing to crawl into my bunk. In four hours it will be my turn to sit watch but now I will sleep. I'll get two to three hours sleep at best. It's difficult to fall a sleep in a J80 that's running down wind making 5-8 knots with surfs up to 12 knots. The thin hull and lack of interior makes a great resonating box much like a guitar. One moment it's entirely silent and the next the sound is deafening. When going down wind in big waves the boat also rolls sideways making it very difficult to lay still in ones bunk without a pillow as a wedge.

At every watch shift information about boat speed, course, trim and any adjacent boats are handed over. During the trip from Las Palmas we've only seen two boats so far. Other interesting things that has happened are also discussed. For example how many flying fish you've found during your watch.

When the winds are not to strong and the self steering system works the watches are rather nice. We read lots of books and every teen minutes we check the horizon for other boats. When I get bored of reading I sketch on a new interior for the other half of Snickeriet (my house in the ski resort �re), Jens usually draws on a more comfortable boat where both he, Karin and a few more will fit.

There are nights that you rather forget though. When the self steering doesn't work because of hard winds and you have to sit alone in the dark for four hours steering the boat through big waves. The weather has improved greatly over the last days and it's now more than a week since the last dog watch.

Before Jens get his last hours of rest we eat breakfast together. If the weather is good we sometimes bake bread and eat with cheese and marmalade. Unfortunately the eggs didn't last as long as expected.

1000 nm left to go!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:18:00 +0100

Today was a great day. We have less than 1000 nm left to go. It feels incredible, although we probably will celebrate christmas at sea. Right now it's a little cloudy but still 27 degres Celsius (80 F). The last 24 hours has been a bit windy so right now we are sailing with triple reefs.

Flying fish stew

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:04:00 +0100

Before leaving Las Palmas we bought some fishing gear. We've been trying regularly but still no luck catching any fish. We do get lots of flying fish landing on the boat every night though. So far small little buggers that would suit better in an aquarium than a frying pan. This morning however we got a big catch, two rather large flying fish and the lunch menu was an easy choice: Flying fish stew!

This will feed two hungry guys on a J80:

Ingredients: 2 flying fish 1 can of peeled tomatoes 3 cloves of garlic 0.5 yellow onion 1 lime 3 inches of the green long onion (purjol�k in Swedish) 1 table spoon Heinz chili sauce butter salt and pepper rice for two people

And this is how you do it: 1. Prepare the fish by cutting of fins and removing the stuff in its bely. You might want to get rid of its head as well. Cut the fish in 1 inch slices. 2. Cut garlic in thin slices. 3. Boil rice in pressure cooker and let it sit. 4. Fry fish in butter, some of the garlic and lime. Add salt and pepper. 5. Cut the yellow onion in not to small peaces and fry in a pot with butter and the rest of the garlic. 6. Add tomatoes and chili sauce to pot and let it stir for a few minutes. 7. Poor the tomato sauce in the pan with the fish and add the sliced green onion. Add salt and pepper and you are done!

One last tip is not to try this when you are surfing down wind with three reefs in rough seas...

Lost genacker

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:12:00 +0100

When we bought our trailer the tail lights where broken. To compensate for the lights the previous owner threw in a used genacker in the deal. The old sail has been perfect when we didn't want to use our nice genackers. Unfortunately the old sail is now resting at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. We got a serious trawl when dowsing the sail and had to cut it loose.

Besides the mishap with the lost sail everything is going well. A 15 knots easterly wind is giving us plenty of speed. At nights the temperature drops to 24 degrees Celsius (about 75 degrees Fahrenheit), at daytime it's slightly warmer. Only 1439 nm left to go!