Lea - Log Day 24-23 – Tuesday-Wednesday/The final countdown

  13:07 Local LEAtime Yesterday was December 1st, but with ourbikinis on and 30 degrees in the cockpit, it just doesn’t feel like December.The squalls gave us a break for the day and with the comfortable speed of 4-5knots, yesterday was by far the best day we’ve had on this entire crossing. Thesea was calm, the sun was out and we took turns taking naps in the cockpit inbetween reading, being look out and having porridge (the traditional, Norwegianrice-version) and Christmas cookies for lunch. With my turn as cook of the day,chili con carne was served for dinner, followed by an outdoor movie night in thecockpit. This seemed like a great idea, and it was, until about an hour into themovie when we were slightly interrupted by pouring squall-rain catching up withus. Not that we minded. read more...

Lea - Log Day 20 + 21 – Friday + Saturday/Broken pole and potatoes and… paws.

21:30Local Lea Time, Saturday Wehave now logged about 1700 nautical miles, and have about 500 left. So we’re allexpecting palm trees in the horizon any time soon now. It’s come to ourattention that the leading ARC+ boats have already reached Saint Lucia withinthe last 24 hours. Considering we have about 4 days to go, I find that kind ofcrazy but also kind of cool. Go them! In our defense though, they all have thesuperpower of a spinnaker (in addition to being bad ass sailors) and we nolonger have a spinnaker pole (that we use for our sail that isn’t even aspinnaker) because, well, it kind of broke.Thenonstop fun these past few days started Friday afternoon, when Erin was cookingdinner and had baked potatoes in the making. She was on a good roll with thewhole ‘spreading food all over the. read more...

Lea - Log Day 19 –Thursday/Christmas Calendar

  22:48 Local LeaTime Todayis the day we decided to start our Christmas calendar. The reason for that isbecause in 25 days, my mother is leaving us for a few weeks because of work. Soit’s partly so that she doesn’t miss out on the very precious tradition of theChristmas calendar, and partly because it’s our 9th day at sea and weare really starting to run out of jokes. The way it works, is that we each havetwo gifts for everyone, so that we’ll have 24 in total, which of course wouldmake more sense if we started on the 1st. But anyway, whoever’s dayit is to do the dishes also has her turn to get a gift, so they kind ofcompensate. We are all probably more excited about this than the normal amount,but then again who said we were ever normal.  Todayit was my day to do the dishes, so. read more...

Lea - Log Day 17 – Tuesday

So anARC staff walks into the Las Palmas marina minimarket, to buy a brand newdeodorant. The cashier says ‘would you like a bag for that?’ in surprisinglygood English, but the Yellow Shirt just smiles and says ‘No thank you dear, I’lljust take it under my arm.’ Ah,how you Yellow Shirts crack us up. To anyone (if anyone) reading this who aren’tfamiliar with the ARC; the miracle workers who make the ARC happen, who sends uson our way from one port, only to stand there ready at the next one to welcomeus, check us in and make sure we’re taken excellent care of – they wear yellowshirts. And they pull it off. The reason I’m telling you the joke from lastnight’s watch instead of the detail of our very pleasant day at sea, is that mycreative, but not really top-notch joke-telling was pretty much. read more...

Lea - Log Day 16 – Monday/ Banana pancake, without the pan

It’sMonday, and I just realized it’s now more than 2 weeks since we left Las Palmas,and in a few days it’ll be a week since we left Mindelo. Even though some daysare slower than others, I every so often find myself surprised how fast the timehas gone by. The days at sea really flies by with watches, sleeping and wakingup for meals, and occasionally giving the bananas onboard their pancake-destiny.My sister decided to pursue this today, but instead of doing the usualpancake-joke-on-nature kind, she managed to whip up a cake. It tasted likebanana and still was truly delicious. Don’t know how she doesit.Andfor the record, cooking at sea is really no joke. Or should I say the Atlanticis no joke, we’ve come to discover. And we thought we had experienced tough seaand squalls. This ocean is. read more...