I just love sunsets, I can't get enough of them. At the moment I am sitting in the cockpit of Cantare philosophizing on life while I am watching the sun disappear behind a mountain making the sky look orange. It is very relaxing and I am almost starting to get tired even though this has been one of the most relaxed days in ages. We are at anchor outside Playa de las Tejitas and we haven't done many knots today. Oh, I forgot, we have actually been working for one hour, we have started polishing all non-corrosive parts of the boat: Cantare is going to shine before we leave Las Palmas for the Caribbean! The evening is going to continue in a relaxed way, dinner and a movie onboard. (However, there is a full moon party in Las Galletas tonight and I, a true party girl, have to admit that is little tempting going there…=)) Have a nice weekend all of you! /First Mate

Position: N 029° 16' W 017° 10'

I love to turn off the engine and hear the sound of the wind and the waves as Cantare starts to move forward due to the pressure in the sails. It's a great feeling, and it's even better when the sun is shining and the water is deep blue. Yesterday the wind was excellent, about 7 m/s from the north. This morning it was a bit weak but we kept the sails up, settled not to use the engine, it paid off, the wind has now increased again and we are doing good speed towards Santa Cruz, capital of La Palma. We will probably be there sometime tonight or early tomorrow. The harbour should be easy to enter during the night so we will go in whatever time it is. Might get some disapproval from the authorities though, they like yachts to enter during office time, at least according to the pilot book. Let's see what it's like in reality. Yesterday evening we caught another mini tuna, he was beautiful, he's in the fridge right now and I have been planning what do with him the whole morning. But I would like to get one more before I start making dinner, one is not enough for the three of us. Sadly my fishing rod's reel is not working correctly, but I have solved the problem temporarily. Maybe I'll send the reel to Sweden with Marcus to get it fixed, it was a birthday present from my sister and her boyfriend so it's almost new and should be working. When we get to the Canaries it's time to fix all those small things that's not working. On Thursday it's no more than a month left until we depart Las Palmas for the big Atlantic crossing. Exciting and a bit frightening! It will be great to get our third crew member Emelie aboard in Las Palmas, she will join us on the 11^th of November. Marcus is about to leave us soon, he has booked a flight from Tenerife next Sunday. It will be sad to loose his company. But it's time to relax and prepare before the ARC parties start, and that will probably be done better with only the two of us aboard. We will cruise the western islands while our Norwegian and Danish friends cruise the eastern, then we will reunite in Las Palmas for a big party. / The Captain

P.S We caught another fish a few minutes ago, a Dourado!, bright yellow and bigger than our mini tunas, but when we tried to lift him aboard he got loose and swam away, lucky him. D.S

On our way to Ihlas Selvagens we started wondering whether the dolphins had left us forever since we hadn't seen any for a very long time. Suddenly, as if they could hear our complaints, a playful herd of 15-20 dolphins appeared in the sunset. The dolphins were swimming around the boat, jumping and making different tricks to our great delight. We got wonderful pictures and movies of the spectacular dolphin show, which we promise to upload as soon as we have proper internet access. Not only did the dolphins bring joy, they also brought little more wind and during the night we made 3-4 knots and yesterday morning around 10 o'clock we arrived in the area open for anchoring outside the nature reserve Ihla Selvagem Grande. In the little bay with room for about five yachts, Escape, Johanna and Time Out were already anchored and joining them did two other yachts, two Swedish yachts! When arriving we couldn't resist laughing little at the fact that here we where, thousands of miles from home outside a little desert island together with Swedish and Norwegian yachts. I mean, what are the odds?! Apparently, we Scandinavian sailors tend to stick to each other. Most funny was the fact that we finally got a draw in the competition, "number of fellow yachts". Sweden against Norway 3-3.

Yesterday afternoon was spent diving and snorkeling. Both Escape and Johanna have dive equipments onboard. While Tom and Kenneth were diving the rest of us were snorkeling and tried to dive as much as we could without the tanks. I borrowed a lead belt of 3 kg to be able to get further down when diving. It didn't only made me see the fishes better, I also got a good exercise. Under the surface of the water there is a magnificent world I am looking forward to discover more during this trip. I have done two discover scuba diving dives in Egypt and I cannot wait to get the license somewhere on the trip, most truly in the Caribbean. In the evening the inseparable boats (Cantare, Time Out, Johanna and Escape) had a nice dinner at Escape´s. cockpit. Having a big boat certainly has its advantages, especially when it comes to hosting many guests.

This morning we were left alone in the windy bay, the Swedish yachts and our friends left early. We were planning on staying longer but swells are making the anchoring little inconvenient and unsafe, so after a little visit on the island we are heading south as well. Next stop will be the Canarian archipelago and more precisely the island La Palma, an island hopefully still unspoilt by the tourists. /First Mate

Last night, after we had left Madeira, we could se very dark clouds rolling in over the island. For a while we thought we were going to have a rainy evening but the clouds stayed over land so we got a nice and bright night with no wind and no clouds just a lot of stars. This morning we got a nice northern breeze, just strong enough for sailing. We put up two jib sails and after some adjustments we managed to get our Monitor to steer for us. We have had problems to get the Monitor working down winds before but after some practice it works just fine fore us now. God news for the Atlantic crossing. We are making 2-3 knots and have about another 24 hours to go before we reach Ihlas Selvagens.

Marcus

It has been a long night. The wind picked up and so did the rough waves, we had to close all vents, to not get water inside the boat, which resulted in a very hot saloon and an almost non existing night sleep for all of us. During my watch, close to 6 am, the sky lit up, it took me a while to understand that it was distant flashes of lightning. Then I had to awake my dozing crew, time to lay out the lightning conductors. We were lucky, the thundersquall never past right above us, but we came close enough to get the wind and the rain. It's easy to feel exposed when you're surrounded by nothing but waves and you have a mast of 12 meters, but on the other hand there's nothing to do about it. Therefore I didn't feel scared, it's all about handling the situation your in in the best possible way. The good thing about this night and morning is the fact that Monitor has steered continuously, even though there has been a lot of changes in the wind speed, we have had winds from 5 m/s to 23 m/s. We were sailing with a double-reefed mainsail and a small furled headsail and still did good speed. Now we have about 80 nm left to Porto Santo, the wind has died and we are running the engine again. I'm going to download a weather file to see how the forthcoming two days will be. We will probably have to slow down a bit not to reach the harbour in the middle of the night. / The Captain

Position: N 33° 04' W 13° 46'

Tjooohooooooo! Today we have finally been able to set sail and not being forced to lower the them the next minute. Not having to listen to old engine Yanmar is absolutely great! But the very best part of the sailing story is the fact that it is our wind vane that is doing the steering, we are released from the wheel at last, wonderful! When you do not need to be physically bounded to the wheel, you can do other things on your watch, like baking for example. After all, today it is the day of the cinnamon bun and I wanted o celebrate it a little bit. However, the baking did not result in cinnamon buns, but in a fruit pie containing cinnamon. Sometimes you have to make compromises! Then there is another story of the day, the fishing story. Recently, we have had such a bad luck in fishing but today the fishes realised the beauty of our new hook and swallowed it, not only one fish but 3 similar fishes! Due to lack of true Atlantic fishing experience and lack of a good book about fish species, we have not really been able to make up our minds about what kind of fishes we have caught. However, one thing is for sure, we are going to have a nice fish dinner tomorrow! /First Mate

Position: N 34° 03' W 11° 32'

It's time to celebrate, we have made it half-way to Porto Santo. A small bottle of champagne has been cooled in the fridge for the occasion. Today, our third day at sea, we have been able to sail. Turning of the engine is nice, and the silence (except for the sound of waves and sails) is fantastic. Sadly the wind died after a while, and old Yanmar is doing his job again. If you have checked our positions you might have noticed that we are heading a bit more south than a direct course would take us. That's because there are southerly winds west of us. In an attempt to avoid having them against us we are going on a course of 210 degrees. When we get further down, about 40 nm left now, we will change course and go westwards towards Porto Santo. Hopefully this decision will make it possible for us to sail the last two days, without having to beat up. It makes the journey about 75 nm longer, but what does that matter when the sun is shining and the water has a temperature of 25 degrees? Life is good! /The Captain

Position: N 35° 32' W 10° 35'

It´s always nice to make plans and have dreams come true. This is one of them, crossing a big sea in a sailing boat. Me and Maria were talking and dreaming about longer sailing trips in an own boat already in high school. When I first heard about Maria and Sofia's planed trip I got both happy for them and jealous. Therefore it feels nice to be able to at least take part of one or maybe two legs of their around the Atlantic journey. It has been two days since I got onboard and even if it's a new boat and new routines for me everything works just fine. I have been very nice taken care of and introduced to everything between the safety round to were to find the rice aboard. I have crossed the Atlantic ocean four times before on a bigger vessel and every time I have asked my self how it would be to do the same thing in a small sailing boat. We have not yet crossed all the way over to the Caribbean but some answers I've got all ready. Being on a small boat gives you a total different view of the sea. You are closer to everything, the dolphins that came playing last night even scared me a little when they started playing just beside me. The biggest different I experienced just a few moments ago when we saw a big group of whales not to far away from the boat. Maria steered closer to them and turned of the engine. To sit there in total silence and listening to the whales breathing felt unreal, one of the more beautiful thing I've ever experienced. This feeling of nature I guess is the different.

We are proceeding towards Porto Santo and hopefully we will have some wind soon so we can set sails. /Boat Bunny

Position: N 37° 14' W 09° 29'

I just got up on the boat again after a refreshing bath in the Atlantic ocean, the water temperature is 23° C, that is the highest temperature we have experienced so far! Since it is light air today and we are forced to use the engine, which made a little quick stop-over for bathing easy. As you saw on the picture from yesterday our what-to-do-list before take off to Madeira was rather long, as the work kept us busy pretty much all day and it was getting dark before we where ready to go, we decided to postpone the take off until this morning… Actually, that is not the whole story… Before leaving we had to wait for our new "boat bunny" to arrive. Boat Bunny, whose real name is Marcus, got tired of the tanker he has been travelling on for a while and we promised to take care of him a little while onboard Cantare. And we wont complain about little male company, having a man onboard can, from time to time, be very pleasant. However, our boat bunny has been well introduced to the rules onboard and aware of the fact that Captain Maria is in charge of the boat and First Mate Sofia is her ally. So far, so good, our Boat Bunny has accepted the ranking list, and moreover he has even shown some qualities in the kitchen by cooking tasty dinner today, to our great delight! Boat Bunny is also helping us try out the watch-keeping for the Atlantic crossing, when Deck Hand Emelie will join us. Both me and Maria got a strange feeling this morning when Boat Bunny had the first watch and we where able to get a little nap at the same time. Normally there is always on of us at the wheel, but now we will have a great deal of off-watch, lovely!

Before I will do some baking (better take the good opportunity now when Cantare is not rocking), I will give you some details. We left Sines when it was getting light this morning, around 8 am. Due to fog visibility was poor the first couple of hours, however the fog cleared up. We are heading for Porto Santo, a little island about 30 M north of Madeira. From Sines we had 553 M to Porto Santo, resulting in an ETA on Monday/Tuesday, all depending on how the low outside Madeira develops. /First Mate