Amadeus - blog Dec 9

Few important things were not mentioned in the previous post. First of all, according to Hungarian traditions, Santa visited Amadeus on St. Nicholaus day (6th Dec), and left a piece of chocholate Santa in all crewmembers deckshoe. Luckily everybody discovered this little surprise before putting on their shoes...We gave up fishing finally. Few days ago not only the last lures, but the rode gone, too. Fishing is not our sport.Last days were really busy. Two days ago, in the middle of the night, the jib halyard shackle released the sail, so it falled into the water. Qick fishing and the sail was on deck. The weather was stable so we decided on prompt repair and not to wait until morning. Stable weather meant 20-25 kn wind and 2-3m waves. Was not an easy mast climb. The furler came down, the. read more...

Amadeus - Amadeus blog dec 7.

Two days ago we jibed (or how to spell) finally and now we can sail towards Santa Lucia. Two boring days. Sunshine, very steady wind (18–22kn with some gusts after sunset) ,surfing down the waves, cold beer or white wine.New downhill surfing Personal Bests in the 16-17 kn range, but no one could overtake Blanka. Shorter and shorter distance to go, we can nearly see the finish line. Just in time, we run out of wine. All other food seems to be ok, both in quality and quantity. Maybe we have just a little bit more pasta than absolutely necessary. Thinking about opening pasta shop in Santa Lucia. By the way yesterday we had duck confit with baked potato. Delicious.We saw a big flock of dolphins and a huge see animal. We all believe it was a killer whale, but no clue if they live here, too.. read more...

Amadeus - Amadeus blog dec 04

The wind slightly decreased yesterday, we prepared the gennaker and were waiting for just a littlebit more easing. Unfortunately the opposite happened, we got 30 knots, big waves and a squall front. Some of them hit us with heavy rain and gusts over 30 kn. We enjoy sailing in this fresh breeze . We have good boat speed, 10-12kn, butunfortunately we can't sail deep enough. So we will take a little longer tour. Blanka is the the master of downhill surfing, she easily reaches 14-15 kn and she keeps our ARC speed record (18.1 kn), too. Sometimes she entertains us with slight broaches beside the speed :) Meanwhile Blanka is entertained by the flying fishes, one hit her while driving, another one flew to her within the salon.. read more...

Amadeus - blog Dec 4

Slower progress, technical issue20-25 kn (up to 30) wind and 2-3m waves slow us down. Dead downwind sailing in these conditionsis not what Amadeus is famous for. We try to find the best combination of vmg and comfort. Sailing under our large, lightwind dowwind sails is not an option, even with more shifts of full crew (helm, spi trim, grinder, main trim) would be risky.Dead downwind with jib is painfully slow and untolerable because of rolling. Now we run under jib to north, poor vmg but probably we will find some lighter winds an can try another sail combination.A day ago a big breaking wave hit us, Amadeus knocked down. The spinnaker flew across the salon and landed on my face. Not a nice wake up call. Just a little splash of seawater found is way into the salon, unfortunately hit the. read more...

Amadeus - Amadeus blog 02 Dec

Yesss, the first fish!!!!. Yesterday evening, just after dinner we caught our first fish. Not a very big one,rather small, half meter max, just the right size for our inexperienced crew to manage. We fried it immediately and ate it for dessert. We could not agree what kind if fish it was, probably a young mahi-mahi? Definitely not mackerel, but it had a prettierface than a mahi. (Anyway, we are all well today) We made good progress in perfect sailing conditions, without pushing Amadeus too far. We reduced sails andgave up few knots during the night but won a good sleep. Probably stronger wind today, more advantageous for the bigger boats.. read more...