After a solid week of sailing through the deep blue sea, we arrive in St. George, where the harbour master welcomed us with a few shots of rum. It was time to connect with the cyber world, updating facebook pages, organizing provisions, and preparing the boat for the upcoming weeks on the open ocean. In between we had a swim with humpback whales to capture these amazing creatures in one of our web episodes.
It was also time to say goodbye. Boujma, Camille and our experienced French camera crew had to leave the vessel for the annual photo shoots in Maui.
On a good forecast we decided to leave Bermuda and head towards the east. Everything went according to schedule. We collected plankton samples in the most effected areas of the “Atlantic Garbage Patch” and shared the data with our associated environmental partner organizations.
1000 sea miles away from the next coast, we came into our first big storm where I learned a lesson from Mother Nature. While battling against the waves I accidently went too far downwind and got the wind from the other side. The catamaran suddenly did a 180-degree spin; the mainsail suddenly swung around and broke on a few spots. Even though we could manage to fix the sail, the damage series continued. A few hours later the headsails enrolled and ripped into several pieces, the engine stopped working and all of us were seasick and tired. With one sail left we made it to the Azores within 15 days and got welcomed by a perfect clean north swell that provided powerful waves. It felt really good to finally surf waves with a tiny board instead of a 22 ton catamaran.