Odin tends to attract whales! On their way to the Azores from St Martin they
bumped into one, luckily there were no injuries on any part though! Onboard
Odin I have now seen my closest whale ever! I was standing at the helm,
talking on the VHF with Cecilie on Safari when my heart started pumping
frenetically and I almost lost the VHF while trying to scream whale… On
starboard side some meters from the boat something huge submarine boat look
a like appeared on the surface. The whale stayed about 10 seconds before
slowly diving again. It was spectacular seeing its gigantic fin pointing
straight up before disappearing into the deep blue. The whales are enormous
animals! The adrenaline kick lasted for a while and I tried my best not to
think of what consequences a whale crash would bring. At least I'm lucky to
be covered by the insurance company Europeiska, as if the whales would care
about insurances, but I do!

Do I need to say that Odin, X-yacht, is great upwind? It is amazing how
close to the wind she can sail. Beating with her is impressive, especially
when you see your competitors disappear behind you. However, the yachts in
our little mini-regatta towards Dublin are still fairly close, more fun this
way, having company on the ocean. But in order to allow MaggyV (Beneteau 45)
and Safari (Bavaria 42) to follow we tend to reef conservatively and to
decrease the often upcoming gap between us we sometime furl the genoa at
dinner time to let them catch up on us and let us have a comfortable dinner.
But what so far has hit me the most is Odin's ability to sail in almost no
wind. Even if it is only blowing a couple of m/s, the sails are still being
filled and she manages to sail while the other yachts need to support the
sails with help from their engines.

We are having a wonderful time onboard Odin, not only is she a terrific
sailor, as I think I've mentioned before, her skipper Lars is an
extraordinary chef. It is very hard to keep up with his tasty cooking.
Nicolay and I tried our best the other day with some baking and Kjetil is
very keen on doing the dishes. Time flies when having fun! Even if Sex and
the City has not yet been introduced, yesterday we watched the movie Dirty
Dancing. Ten year old Nicolay found the dancing and kissing parts little bit
too much though! He prefers fighting movies a la Narnia instead of romance,
but do sometimes agree to a goodnight hug : -)

There are lots more to tell about my adventures with Odin, and updates will
follow when we reach Dublin and proper internet. ETA is at the moment
sometime late Sunday/early Monday.

Have a nice weekend! /First Mate (who will do her best to celebrate Sweden's
National Day on Sunday among all the Norwegians…)

Most of the pictures from this last crossing were of dolphins, I have picked the best for you and blended them with some pictures from our life on Cantare. You find them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/SailingCantare/AtlanticCrossing2#

There is also a new post in Swedish on the insurance company Europeiska's homepage, you find dit here: http://www.europeiska.se/sv/blogg/?p=1807

/The Captain

41.25N 17.58W - Odin has been using the engine last 24 hours

In order to avoid an unnecessary divorce, my wife and I have decided to take
some time apart. Living together for almost 11 months now on a 9,33m x2,78m
area with no where else to go except to maybe go for a swim has caused some
minor boat marriage problems. But please don't worry, even though we will go
back together in a couple of weeks we are perfectly straight, and available!
I hope you have heard the expression "one guy in each new harbor"… and by
that I will stop joking and be a little bit serious. :-) Maria and I are
two very strong individuals. There is reason why it was the two of us that
actually got our asses off university/work and took off on this amazing
adventure. We are ambitious and want things in life and work hard to get
where we want. As I always tend to say, I aim for the stars and hopefully I
will land somewhere among the clouds. Even if a lot of you don't know us in
person you might have noticed through our blogging that we are two unique
persons with very different personalities. We want different things in life
and we have different ways of achieving what we want. Two strong wills with
different ways of seeing things do not equal for ever on a tiny 31 footer.
(Neither on a 100-footer I think).

Even if the idea of leaving Cantare for a little while was figured after an
angry argumentation where the skipper's blood sugar level was down on the
sea bottom and we were 2 days from Horta, we later talked it through and
decided this would be the best way to recharge the batteries and get some
personal space. To put it in boat terms, we were about to go under 12volt,
in desperately need to recharge and reach 13,9V again! Go see a shrink? A
psychotherapist specialized in boat marriage? No, not really an option, but
to be able to remember this Sailing Cantare year as the best year ever
getting away from each other was crucial. Are we giving up? Absolutely
not!!!! I will go back home to Cantare, we will finish in Høganæs together
and Maria and I are, as I said, still married. We invited Maria's father,
who's been eager to sail his Cantare again, to come sail with us long time
ago. So you can skip all potential thoughts about me leaving the Captain on
her own to England, no way! Deckhand Anders will arrive on Fri to Horta, but
if there would happen to be any problems on the way, I will fly from Dublin
back to the Azores to do another delivery, to sail with Maria to the Azores.

After 30 days at sea, coming ashore was wonderful but it also turned out to
be the most intense 52 hours in a very long time, haha, almost like being
back in my old life, constantly on the cell phone running back and fore to
sort things out. As you have already heard we arrived on the Thursday 1400
UTC. Then it turned out to be a very fun but hard night…waking up the next
morning (lunch hour) I was told the Norwegian boats had to leave as early as
possible the coming day due to the weather forecast, around 0600 UTC.
Ahhhhh, shit, at least I had finished something on my list of what to do on
the Azores: a 200% night at Peter's Café Sport. But then there were some
other things on the list, like washing my sweaty, dirty clothes, go though
and reply to my hundreds of unread mails (sorry guys, I will try to take
care of it in Dublin), pack, say good bye to my lovely Cantare girls,
shower, have time for a little catch up with friends who just arrived, a
last gin & tonic at Peter's and send flowers to mum for mother's day. I
managed everything except the laundry and some emails! The sleep was sort of
reduced though, 5 hours in 60 hours, but sleep you can either do on your
free watch or in your grave.

So, for those of you who haven't figured yet, I am not in the Azores
anymore. Last Sat 06.00 UTC I left with the Norwegian yacht Odin. It is a
45,2 foot X-yacht from 1988 and just to give you a little tease, she sails
great and my bunk is bigger than our fore peak on Cantare... Odin also did
the ARC and we first met them in Porto Santo and it is also the yacht I
helped babysitting one night in Antigua. Odin consisting of Lars, Hella and
their two kids; Nicolay turning 11 and Anna-Luna turning 6, is also doing a
one year cruise and is now on it's way home. Hella and Anna-Luna are at the
moment in Norway and onboard heading for Dublin are Lars, Nicolay, myself
and a new crew named Kjetil. Odin and Cantare sort of saved each other,
Skipper Lars had desperately tried to get more people to join him but not
succeed, only two adults sailing Odin is a bit too little, so when I sent
out my mail asking if some of the Norwegian boats would want me I
immediately got several replies. So here we are together with Safari and
MaggyV on our way to Dublin. However, at the moment it looks like we are
heading back in to the Bay of Biscay again since we have to go east for a
while to avoid a big low west of us. It is a wonderful experience sailing
other yachts and especially larger, faster ones in which I can stand up tall
cooking dinner and not loose my balance behind the huge helm. I was so
fascinated my first night watch the other night about how Odin did 8-9 knots
with 3 reef in the main and 4 reef in the genoa in 14m/s. Amazing! It is
also fun sail together with other yachts, a sort of mini regatta where we
trig each other to gain speed and have fun quiz on the VHF. Skipper Lars
likes racing, so do I and I am definitely on the right yacht, a X-yacht! We
will do our best to win the mini regatta to Dublin. I will tell you more
about my experiences on this little side adventure of mine asap. I will blog
as often as I can and until we reach Dublin, Maria will post my position on
www.cantare.se. See it this way dear readers, now you will get two
adventures in one to follow!

Love from First Mate Sofia, now temporarily onboard Odin.