Hello World - 900 nm to go!

Suddenly the sun comes up and then it goes down again. Each day goes faster and faster - looks like we will get land under or feets faster then we ever could imagine! The last couple of days have been rough. Waves are getting bigger, wind is getting stronger, the squalls bigger than the last one and crew is getting tired. Håkon and Eskil was behind the wheels all night steering like pros while having the light from the moon. The autopilot is having a hard time keeping up with the huge waves coming from all kind of directions. Right now I sit on the cockpit floor looking at the wall of sea hitting behind us while listening on some christmas music. It kinda makes the waves a bit nicer together with som tones of christmas. Somehow, spotify managed to delete most of my music 2 hours after the regatta started so I only have a couple of christmas songs. Makes you appreciate what you have - you cant download music out here like you do at home. There is one song I do not play - that is «Home for Christmas» by maria mena. It is my favourite christmas song but it is a bit sad to play it because each year I play it counting down the days before getting home. Not this year. It is so wiered not going home for christmas this year. Think we all here on Hello World miss our family <3

Despite the weather and the long distance from home we are still going strong! We have had a 7.4 knot in average the last days....at least until our spinnakker pole snapped of the mast. I think we had too wide angle making the power in a surf powerful enough to rip it off. We manage to fix so we could keep our sails out for downwind sailing :) ....we were a bit worried to not be able to sale wing on wing for the rest of the trip. Another situation was when we almost lost our liferaft....AGAIN! Me and Håkon almost lost it in the middle of Bay of Biscay and now we almost lost it in the middle of the Atlantic. The problem is our preventers that somehow manages to be stuck under the raft when jibing. When the beem gets its full power over to the other side the preventer stuck under the raft rips it of. We have now moved it and strapped it some other place away from the preventers. When things goes wrong there is one thing thats always bring a smile - putting on baby shark song and do the dance. Recommend it! ;D I think it is a asian show for kids, but it has become quite popular. Everyone that can move their hands are able to dance! «...Baby shark dododododo...mommy shark dodododo...» :) We will gladly give you a demonstration i St. Lucia! In one of the pictures i cought the boys doing the dance at night xD

I think everyone in this boat did not imagine that the waves would be so big and the periods between the waves be like 6-7 seconds. Me and Håkon have seen worse, but then we usually have a port to go to after a couple of hours. Out here you just need to take whatever mother earth throws at you :)
We have about 900 nm to go while writing this. We have started dreaming about a cold beer on land! Especially me, Marte - I got a big wave crashing into cockpit at the darkest of the night today. I was kinda pissed and tried to find all the bad words I could find asking the wather to calm down... I do not think the sea did listen, but it kinda maked me feel better :) I was then, like now, sitting safe on the cockpit floor right in the entrance. To the boat. Here I feel very safe and all the surfs seems less scary...until the wave wanted to joing me making me soaking wet with sea water. Our boat is fully open in the back making the huge sea very close. We managed to upgrade our Raymarine device and some software, now I can follow the plotter fom my ipad or phone so I do not need to sit in the back with the plotter :) Me and Håkon sleeps in the front. When the boat surfs in 9-10 knots there is a lot of noice - then it is nice to be able to stay in bed checking the plotter and the radar looking at the status. We also have a plotter inside with the chart table making the logging nice. Or a nice place to prepare for your watch. We do not plot our position on a map, but we do plot pourr position between every watch!

Before starting our trip we knew about those squalls everyone had talked about. We have never seen one or experinced one before. We have a radar, but we did not quite know if it was working correctly or if it was able to spot the squalls....it definitley could. A couple of days ago red spots started to show up on the radar. We could target the squalls and track direction and strength/water density. For those of you have never seen a squall before it is a heavy dark cloud, usually heavy rain under it and it moves very fast. Just before it hits you the wind picks up (then you would like to have a couple of reefs in you sails!) and then the heavy rain falls down. Now that I know how it work I am suuuuper happy to have the radar making it ok to be on watch at night alone knowing the radar will give you heads up when they approach you. 2 days ago we had squalls hitting us for 12 hours straight!

We are stilling eating good food. Think the hommade tikka masala and the lasagne was a hit because they quickly dissapeard. We also put some snacks on the table when the night sets down. It is quite cosy having some time together talking under the stars and the beautiful moon :) As we are sailing west the sun sets late and raise late. The weather is also chaninging as we sail south. We now hide under the bimini since the sun is stong and the air so warm! We still use some wool at night because it can be quite humid making it cold when we get lots of wind. The sea is also warmer so we can shower on the back of the boat. To save fresh water we wash us in salt water (we have a salt water shower in the back) and just take some quick seconds with fresh water in the end. We do have a watermaker but it will need a lot of power to fill the tank. I kinda regret not cutting my hair before leaving. All your daily stuff you do at home is usually requires a bit more work out here at sea - like shaving your legs and washing your hair.

Regarding the regatta I think we still are doing good. I think there are many of you back home have seen that we have fallen quite many spots on the list. In the start we just kept climing upwards every day, but that was because we are good at sailing in light winds from the side! Also, many of the racing boats that went south got some poor conditions. Based on the fleet report some boats had to go to Cape Verde for refill... I know many boats in our group needed to use the motor. We are lucky to have sailed all the way...It feels good! Just need to give you a reminder that all boats using motor gets some penalty. All boats do also have a «handicap» - just like in golf. Looking forward to the 21- then we will have the seremony. We hope we maybe can win our group, but it is going to be a though one as there is some really great sailors out here!

I downloaded the new season of «The Chrown» on Netflix - looking forward to getting some calm sea so I can spend some time watching it! It is not very easy to watch movies out here in the sun - but there is a hack! Just make your own cinema with a blanked over you :)

When do we get to land?
Hopefully late 11th of December!
Depends on how mother earth treat us for the last miles.

<3

Marte