First Step - First Leg done with Vincent, our French journalist

Well this is now our first Log and hopefully wont be the last one. The first leg for us was actually close to an rollercoaster ride. Well let me first start off how everything began; me (Micha) and my Dad (Martin) started on the 5th of July in the top of Germany for an 14 month trip. Leaving family, wife, fiancé, work and everything behind us to get out and experience something new, finding to ourselves, or everything else you would do on a sailing boat. Our catamaran, the FIRST STEP is an Lagoon 400 S2 and is just the perfect boat for us two and our trip. So we made our trip down the coast passing the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, England, France, Spain again and Portugal, then over to madeira and then down to the canaries.
We have everything documented on our blog sy-first-step.de, you should definitely check it out;)
Well on the atlantic we thought we switch up our internet diary and thought, why not use the ARC platform!? So here we are, sitting on board of our First Step, typing our first log into the computer and trying to revue the last week.

2 or 3 weeks before we came to Las Palmas we became an email from the ARC office in the UK, asking if we could imagine to take a journalist on board that would join us for the first leg to Mindelo. Because we are double handed and said, that we wanted to stay this way, we were a little sceptic about it, but after we became an closer look to his experience and everything he has done in the past, we thought, it might wouldnt be so bad, to have him on board. So Vincent, a journalist from France was besides his job as an journalist also active as an skipper on a 60foot trimaran and also on several catamarans before. He is a sailing teacher and also takes disabled kids on sailing trips. So we thought, besides the fact, that we could actually learn a lot from him and we could also sleep a little longer during the night ;) which, what you need to know, we both love doing. So we said we would take him and so we got company for our first leg.
Hoping to learn a lot and having an nice and peaceful time on sea-well at least thats what were hoping….

So lets move forward til the crossing of the start line; everything is great, we are crossing the start line with our Code 0, pass the acceleration zone and star preparing our Parasailor. Vincent was supposed to connect the left side of the Parasailor to the ropes (good to know is, that he said he has a lot of Parasailor experience), we pull it up and suddenly his ropes are tangled up. 18knots of wind in the Parasailor and the ropes are tangled up-great!! Me and my dad start screaming at the same time, trying both to get the Parasailor down, while Vincent just smiles, left the net and is pressing some buttons on the plotter. So finally we got the Parasailor down, I hear the MOB alarm. While i am running to the plotter Vincent is already waiting for me to turn it off. He just wanted to know where it is and how it works, but couldn't turn the alarm off. So i am returning to the net, helping dad to get the ropes right and pulling the Parasailor up, suddenly i see Vincent standing in front of us; telling us, he forgot to close his window and now his whole cabin is full of salt water. So getting out the mattresses, sheets, pillow and blanket out of the cabin; trying to rinse them off with normal water to get rid of the salt. While dad is doing that, I am down in the cabin cleaning the floor with water while I suddenly realize, Vincent isn’t helping, even tho it was his mistake- so I went out, looking for him. As I got in the kitchen is saw him reaching for a glass, but instead of holding it he throws it down on the floor and it breaks in 1000 little peaces. That was it!!!!! I was stressed out. Not even 5 hours on sea and he is freaking me out. So after a short and serious little chat we cleaned up all the glass, washed his cabin and everything else and went into our first night…. To be honest, with a lot of worries!?

So now back in the presence, everything is fine now. After the first day full of action we managed to come in a good rhythm and found a good board routine. Vincent wasn't as hectic as he was before anymore and we came along pretty good. We had an amazing and an really peaceful sailing trip. The Parasailor was up for 5 days with barely even trimming it, it was just perfect, besides that, nothing exciting really happened. We played a lot of card games, talked, ate and drank together (always red wine for Vincent) and just became good friends and enjoyed the time. We learned a couple of good things from him, so he was quiet helpful and we are a little sad, to already letting him go, but thats just how it is.

We are now looking forward to the next, long trip and we are excited, how that is going to be. Hoping to catch a lot of fish, cause we missed out on that on the first leg, playing some guitar, cards, thinking about life ohh and of course; to SAIL!;) Almost forgot that.


So I think that was quiet enough for our first log, wasn’t it?;) Excited what the future logs will bring.

See you soon