Position: N 23° 36,955´ W 81° 04, 240´ 2200 UTC

6.20am this morning the coast guard woke us up, they were supposed to come at 7.00am to collect our visas and give us permission to leave Cuba. However, the sooner the better, since we wanted to leave as soon as possible. Emelie was signed on the boat and the clearing out procedure went really smooth. After some last preparations we could finally, at 8.15am, leave Cuba to hit big ocean again. So far we haven't been fortunate with the wind though, it is north-north-easterly, head to wind. Despite Emelie and I tried all our trimming tricks this morning, the wind is too weak to sail, we were doing 1,5-2 knots. But we knew it could be light winds and we had to get going today in order to escape a low coming in a couple of days from now, so now the engine is running, we got the main up and are doing pretty ok speed in the sunset, we are on our way! However, I can't say it feels like we are going to cross the Atlantic Ocean again. The take off this morning was very chill and as far away from the hyped and totally stressed out preparations and start in Las Palmas you can get. It rather felt like we took off for the next Caribbean island. Because now we only spent two days preparing, Monday and Tuesday. We were very efficient, worked hard and got fantastic help from our lovely boat neighbors in the marina. As you might sensed or maybe experienced yourself, it is not easy to find provision in Cuba, some things can only be found on the black market only or not found at all. Thanks to our neighbors we could for instance get propane for cooking from a black market source, something that would have been impossible otherwise. We got help from a very friendly sailor with a motorcycle to provision. He and I drove around trying to find supplies and I trying my best not to fall of the motorcycle, injuries weren't an option before crossing, but wow, it is so much fun riding a bike! And as you all now I am so glad to be insured by the insurance company Europeiska when out on adventurous missions like that. To give you a little hint of how it works here around, at the first potential propane place we couldn't get any propane because the seller was in prison for selling propane.. Egg is another thing that is hard to find, but we managed to get 40 eggs! To put it in a context, the ration of eggs for Cubans is 5 eggs a month, if you can't get eggs from the black market that is… Once again, a BIG THANKS to everyone who helped us get ready for the crossing, you are amazing!

Now we have 2786 nautical miles a head of us, so expect to hear a lot more from us than you have done recently. And thanks for all the good luck wishes we have gotten on the satellite phone, so much fun to read! /First Mate Sofia