Furia - sailing in a soup of brown sea weeds

Day 11 seems to be more laborious. In the morning we raised the spinnaker again. We were sailing on port tack. Amazing speeds, however some 20 deg. off course, not exactly in our destination. There was some vibration felt and we checked the rudder and the keel with the GoPro camera to find out a big bunch of sea weeds around our keel closer to the bottom. Dropped the spinnaker, turned the engine on, turned into the wind, mainsail let our some way to avoid flapping and gave full throttle astern. We let the bunch of weeds loose. Decided to sail butterfly (poled out jib) on port tack. A lot of rolling. Changed the tack to starboard, more into the course. However,in the early afternoon we entered a soup of brown sea weeds. Dian tried to avoid them without success. They were everywhere. We. read more...

Furia - baking our first bread onboard

Nothing interesting on day 8th of the passage. Since our fresh bread finished two days ago, I decided to try to prepare and bake one myself. After creating somemess while kneading the dough here is my first baked bread ever and the first on board of Furia as well. Fishing is left for Sunday, December 6th, when in the Orthodox Christian world is feasted one of the great religious holidays Sveti Nikolay day. Sveti Nikolai (Saint Nicholas) is considered patron of seamen and fishermen. On that day it is obligatory to eat fish and other seafood. We hope to catch one. If luck does not come our tuna/mackerel/sardines tins are always available, neatly stored under Furia floor boards (and we are not that prudent sailors to have nailed them on as an extra precaution). The last small tin of salmon. read more...

Furia - Resuming hand steering

Good morning,Throughout the day of December 1st and during the following night we resumed hand steering on Furia because of confused (though not big) swell and wind shifts. Tiller steering though it has its own benefits, is not appropriate for keeping precise course while on broad reach to dead run spinnaker sailing. It is tiresome as well. I left this hard job to the more skilful sailors onboard Furia, Mihail and Dian. There will be freshening of the wind during the following 2-3 days. For us it is much more important what would be the waves pattern. Nevertheless, our mood is up with Furia eating on a regular diet the remaining miles to Santa Lucia. Rumen. read more...

Furia - vodka and caviar on a beautiful mid ocean sunset

After a week of seasickness our forth crew member, (the autopilot), finally recovered and resumed his watch. We celebrated this by mounting for the first time since the start the cockpit table and enjoyed some caviar and vodka on a nice sunset in mid ocean.RumenOn the picture from left to right: Dian, Rumen and Mihail.image1. read more...

Furia - trying to keep spinnaker shape

One weak since the start in Las Palmas all three of us are doing fine. Trying to keep both course and spinnaker shape in weaker winds. Three days ago we changed substantially our course south from the Great circle direct route trying to avoid being becalmed during the second week of our passage. We thinkt was a premature erroneous decision. We lost time, miles and ranking for one day. For our modest size boat the less miles we sail the better. If/when we enter the weakest conditions then we will change course accordingly. For the time being we are not considering any motoring. Besides with a total of 100 litres of diesel (60 l in tank and 20 l in jerrycans) one can imagine how far we could go? Besides, we need to keep our batteries using the engine without propulsion.We have not dropped. read more...