Somnium - Paul Part 2: Getting Up

The waking-up part itself isn’t so bad, you see. There’s the mild existential crisis, but no worse than how you feel when waking up for work. You know; one minute you’re slaying dragons with a lightsabre, and then next thing you have to find a clean pair of socks to match your shirt, and remember your Windows password that changes every 90 days.Anyway, this morning was a morning of the Atlantic Rally, and began in the middle of the blue part of the map. I laying in a wooden cabin as described before. Some of you may be familiar with the situation from a previous rambling, though it’s not particularly necessary if your imagination is up to par.But back to the story, I flicked on the bedside lamp. It has two modes; gentle red, and screaming white. I always get it wrong the first time.. read more...

Somnium - Paul Part 1: Waking Up

Look, I’m not saying it’s particularly interesting or anything, and I wouldn’t like to bore you about it, but whenever I wake up, wherever I am, I always think I’m in my own bed at home. Before the old grey matter kicks in, my eyes gently open and I stare at the ceiling wondering whether the place was redecorated by the tooth fairy.This morning, I woke up to a familiar ringing noise, and an unfamiliar mattress. I could tell by the foam mattress that it was not my bed. My mattress is pocket sprung. That was the first hint that I wasn’t at home.A gentle ring.I peeped one eye open with the lazy suspiciousness of a dog that has heard a food wrapper. It was dark, and my bed was spinning as though I had had rather a jolly time the night before, and a morning of regret was nigh. I queried my. read more...

Somnium - Part 2, Midway Meeting

Hello "land rats", this are the "sea bears" from Somnium!Today was really exciting! We made almost half of the way to Saint Lucia. Thanks to the bloody wind, we didn't hit the exact half yet, where we wanted to bake a cake. But we met Scallywag...Scallywag was close by and radioed us this morning. We had a nice chat, exchanged experiences and impressions of the last days and talked about the weather. Additionally they told us, that unfortunately their Gennakerhalyard ripped and they couldn't fix it yet, as it is quite difficult with just two people on the boat of their size. So Somnium offered to help.The crew of Scallywag liked the idea, so the two boats came together in the middle of the Ocean with nothing around. When we have been close together, Sven and Mart swam over to Scallywag. read more...

Somnium - Part 1, Feeling like Flotsam

Hello civilization, this is Somnium writing from the middle of the Ocean.Since five days we have to get along with really low wind ranging between two and nine knots. We have been that much annoyed by the wind, that we are delighted now, if we get five knots of wind or a little more and sail above three knots SOG. If the wind speed is below four, even Somnium turned on the engine sometimes to move at least some miles, though we wanted to stay engine free as in leg one :(As there is nothing we can do about it, we try to stay motivated and make the best out of the time. We already went swimming twice, have once in a while a movie night on a laptop in the cockpit beneath a marvellous starry sky and cook nice dinner. And it could be worse than floating in really hot temperatures, lots of sun. read more...

Somnium - Once again...

Once again we had a great start and are looking forward to the next days of sailing. The weather is brilliant and the gennaker works perfectly. Let's see how fast we can go... Happy sailing!image. read more...