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