NDS Darwin - Nds Darwin Day 15th onboard..

All has been pretty good the last two days.. just sailing and sloooowly sloowly getting nearer to our destination!Got two fishies yesterday onboard.. a nice Marlin (threw it back) and a Wahoo!!!!!! I was so excited i finally caught a wahoo that I couldn't stop smiling! So today we tasted both sashimi, Mahi Mahi and wahoo to see which one was better.. We couldn't even tell the difference, both were so fresh and good! Yesterday morning I woke up to three dolphins jumping on the bow, dad, mom and it's little baby! They did a whole show just for me!!! So beautifulThe more south we get, the hotter it is! Sometimes is unbearable the heat, you really need a bucket of salt water on the head to keep on with the watch.. even at night, I am with the bikini on and some shorts! we are closer to. read more...

NDS Darwin - Day 13

Day 13 onboardAfter everything that happened two days ago, nothing else interesting happened! (Thankfully!!) Only that today, I had one of my meltdowns... I'm 19 years old, skippering a boat across the Atlantic, already took a 'gap' year and have no idea what to do next year! I want to keep on traveling, meeting new people, but at the same time I think I need to have an university degree not only my yachtmasters! Because I want sailing to stay as my hobby not make it into an obligation by working 24/7 sailing.. This feeling of watching the horizon and smiling is not going to be taken away by an awful boss that yells at me because of being a young woman... I want to keep this sensation for me and the people I love. Sailing and feeling the wind in my face, playing with the sails to make. read more...

NDS Darwin

Day 11 onboard...Everything that happened today couldn't wait until tomorrow. I woke up to the engines off and sailing nicely.. right on time to see the sunrise and put the fishing rods out. It was an amazing morning, with fresh bread and fruit. We decided to put up the spinnaker, the wind was perfect for it...Spinnaker up, and doing 8 knots of speed. Suddenly fshhhhh we caught a fish!! Brought it in slowly, perfect it made it to the boat. We cut it and had some nice steaks of mahi mahi. Awesome... the day couldn't get any better, we opened a couple of beers because we were under 1000 miles to go! Great!!! Happiness everywhere.. Everyone left and I was doing my watch.. out of nowhere, no gust of wind, no change of direction. PUFFFF THE SPINNAKER JUST EXPLODED! Diego and I flew downstairs. read more...

NDS Darwin - NDS Darwin - Day 10 onboard

Day 10 onboard...I don't know what is going on with the fish out there!! We didn't get ONE SINGLE fish. Like I seriously think there is something wrong with them!!! We caught one little mahi mahi today, but it got free after 10 minutes of fighting with it. We are doing good with the food though, I went through the freezer and all the tins we had left, and I wrote 15 meals we should survive with, until we arrive. Get ready St Lucia restaurants we are going to be starving!!! Guess who has the genoa back on place????? We do! After fighting with it for more than 4 days we finally found out what was wrong and fixed it! Everything is back in place. The wind finally picked up a tinny little bit, 10knots.. so the engines are taking their well deserved rest after some hours working. It's perfect. read more...

NDS Darwin - NDS Darwin. - Day 8th onboard

Day 8th onboard..Today we started having one meal per day, no fish yet. So we had to start saving the food.. it looked like we didn't cross 3 oceans and did more than 25 long passages! Like we were beginners.. We just really thought we would catch something like we most times do. We even spoke to a boat one night, that was on our VHF range and told us that they had caught some fish but only after they threw all their bananas overboard. They told us we wouldn't fish unless there were no bananas onboard (another sailing superstition added to my list). So what did we do before even saying "NDS Darwin back to 16"? we started eating fiercely all the bananas onboard. They were way too many so decided to wait until the next day so Dad would bake a banana bread! It was no good at al so the. read more...