Oskars sailing blog - Blog

The Finish line (well, not for everyone)!

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 21:27:00 +0000

Woohoo! Yes! We have officially completed our – No! Wait up, Hold ya horses! I must start from the beginning, mustn’t I?

We left Mindelo with the idea of a real calm, windy sail; but as always, we were not able to rely on the weather forecast (once again) because the lovely scene soon turned into rough weather for 5 continuous days! For me, it was quite horrible, and I think my Mum can relate because both of us were just downstairs the whole time feeling sick!

Just after my sisters birthday (quite a shame, because it would have been quite fun for us to celebrate her birthday with good conditions), it calmed down and we were able to re-commence our schooling, which I was actually excited about!

Unfortunately, my fishing charm wasn’t really interested in this passage, so we only caught one fish that died struggling on the deck (as we hadn’t gutted a fish for a long time, I had to look away).

Now I think I reached the part where I can tell you that we have… Woohoo! Yes! We have officially completed our circumnavigation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think my Dad will tell you all the statistics on his blog, but I can simplify it: the numbers are big and we have done a lot!

The rest of the passage was quite enjoyable and we also had a great time in the 3-day motoring when I was able to catch a Portuguese-man-O-war (the most dangerous sea animal to swim the seas)!

When we arrived, I was truly stunned that we had finally made it to Europe (both politically and geographically) and also quite mournful that we are so close to the end of our trip. The island we were in was called Faial and we really thought it was beautiful and was most breathtaking.

30... 29 ...28, you know what, I think it’s no use counting!

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 19:38:00 +0000

So you probably thought that our passage was goin’ to be all smiles and happy times, right.

Well, you’re wrong.

First, we were meant to have a pure 30 days on passage with the swell coming from the side with 3m waves and an average of 15kts.

Second, (yep, I’ve only just started!) we were finding problems with the watermaker on around the third day and from then on we had to use salt water for washing up! Our daily limit was something like 12l altogether (including washing up, showers and drinks! Funny, since the average UK citizen uses 10 times more: 100l!!!!!)!

And just as we went through all of this: disaster struck!

Now, now. No shouting, Oskar will read the story for you soon enough if class 2B would just quieten down a little!

Yep, after the first couple of days we were reasonably well and we were making good progress and we were satisfied with the course we were headed to the Azores...

But, as you all know, there is never a dull moment in sailing, and something bad was BOUND TO HAPPEN!!

You know what, I’m not going to go into all my Oskar descriptions about blah, blah, blah, but I will tell you what happened to us: the forestay on the front of our boat broke. We were sailing along as happy as could be until we heard a massive, loud BANG! Next thing we know, the forestay ripped of the metal and broke! Soon Dad was out and Raul, I and Dad were getting the sail down and making sure that we tightened the haliaurds because we definitely didn’t want the mast to fall!

Azores – here we come! Oh,right! Another 20 days?!

Fri, 27 May 2016 00:05:00 +0000

Sorry guys that I haven’t posted lately but I decided that I might as well, because we are leaving on a 30 day passage soon to the Azores (if I will have to say this again, well, we have had engine problems that mean we can’t go to the Caribbean and we must make it across the massive pond to the Azores) which involves lots of puking and… well, I don’t think I should go on talking about that kinda thing!

So the engine actually took 36 days more than we expected.

Not good.

O.K! I will go on to further descriptions… As soon as the engine parts arrived, we took immediate action over trying to get this stupid thing working.

That also meant that we were able to get out of the way of Retifica (no offence) but I really think that we were just purely glad to not have some lazy dealers involved in our engine affairs.

So we were lucky to have a local mechanic who was prepared to do some of this “fixing”. It took him another 7 days maybe to get the engine humming smoothly which soon got everybody on our boat screaming gaily.

And that was it. Well, we did a test where we went out on the river for 2 and a ½ hrs and had no problems with anything.

Sorry about this short post, but I have to go do some cleaning on the boat.

Hear from toi in 30 dias.

(HA!HA!HA!)

Town Hopping

Fri, 13 May 2016 14:42:00 +0000

Well you all probably think that after our big adventure in the rainforest that we would fly straight back to the boat and leave, right?

Well, you're WRONG.

As our engine parts suddenly were expected to arrive in ANOTHER 10 days, we were unable to do anything about the engine until the 5th of May - and we were NOT going to stay in that stinking and boring marina for another 10 days.

We cancelled our flight and the next thing we knew was we were in a river boat that was going to take us on a 2 day trip all the way to a town called Santarem with 600 other people on the same ship. I have to say, this boat trip was truly awesome. I know, I have been on a boat for 2 and a 1/2 years and I still find river trips really cool. But this was really stunning and the scenery was also just beautiful.

After 2 full days of travelling downriver, we finally stopped in the town we were aiming to get to: Santarem.

We were planning to stay there for around 3 days but as there was litterally nothing to do, we only stayed 1. Soon we were on a bus that was zooming all the way to ANOTHER town which supposedly had quite a few lovely river beaches and treks.

This time we were lucky and we DID find quite a few interesting things to do from our hotel.

River time: Amazoni

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 21:25:00 +0000

After two flights packed with awesome screens and movies we finally arrived in Manaus, biggest city in the amazon.

Now, I'm not really going top go into details about our first two days in the city, but, as you probably already know, they involved museums and touristy stuff.

After another two nights of sleeping in our third apartment in Brazil, we left on a boat that took us to a bus that then took us to a boat that then took us to our camp where we would be sleeping in for the next 4 nights (in hammocks)...

All I really have to say, is "WE ARE IN THE AMAZON!" and that is that.

So we then spent the next 5 days doing some really awesome rainforest activities that were totally WICKED: football with the locals (where we lost every single time in about 30secs), Caiman spotting, Piranha fishing (we caught a few but I ,personally, wasn't too lucky), Hiking, Sloth spotting (believe it or not, we were succesful), dolphin finding, poisonous tarantula holding and camping out.

Check all of the photos from these activities on my photographer blog.

Other than that other massive list of activities, we also did one activity that lasted the whole time we were in the amazon: the scenery. You might call the amazon wild or even exotic, but on top of that you MUST say how utterly beautiful the amazon is: snaking and zigzagging side to side through the country of Brazil, with stunning scenery and flat crystal pure water that its so attractive that you want to dive in and never leave.

That is the Amazon

River of January

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 17:35:00 +0000

As we flew straight into the place of dreams we knew that we were entering a land of awesomeness. Oh, and I can tell you, it was solely awesome!

So you can probably imagine how exited we all were to be able to visit Rio. We literally were prepared to jump out of the plane, but NOOO! We were too glued to the screens on the plane.

Over the course of the next 7 days we were sightseeing and just relaxing in our apartment, blasting the AC.

We got to see Christ the redeemer atop the Corcovado, museums around town and we were able to have acces to the most wonderful food in Brazil.

Also, we went to the legendary Copacabana and Ipanema beaches where we were able to have 5-6 meter waves crashing on top of us.

(If you want to see photos of these things, go to my sister site.)

As you can imagine, we were also the Sun’s little loafs of bread that were being baked under the heat of the Tropic of Capricorn sun.

Sorry about this late, short post. Thanks…

Old friends: Forta

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 17:10:00 +0000

Old Friends: Forty

Hi there guys!

I am now going to pick up from the las post and carry on with my blog about Brazil in general…

When we came back from Olinda, we had the next thing organized (as you can probably guess, we are very organized travelers), which was some more travelling on land!

As we had some friends here in Brazil (Fortaleza), we decided that we would go visit them and then fly either to the amazon or to Rio. But with my title, you can probably guess where we ended up.

So we were on the plane the first thing in the morning and then OFF we went!

When we arrived in Fortaleza we were even more astonished by the amount of heat that was gazing down upon us from the sky: somethin’ like 35-39 deg. Hot isn’t it? We then spent the next few days with our friends in their apartment…

One of the days we went to the beach and we were going to do some kitesurfing, but (as always) there is normally a problem with something that has a sail (AHEM!)

Finally, we left them and flew directo (sorry, gettin’ a little messed up with my Portuguese) to Rio and into the real Brazilian style

Partyland: Brazil

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 19:02:00 +0000

Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of m-

BAH! Lets get that rubbish over and done with, shall we?

Where was I last? Hmmmm… Ah! Yes! We were in St Helena weren’t we? So I’ll NOT go into more details of the passage shall I? I doubt it will do us very much good!

When we arrived in Brazil I was very much astonished by the amount of the heat taking place where we were staying: Joao Pessoa. Some of you geeks might of already done the research on this, but if you haven’t found out yet, I’ll tell you: we were entering the city with the highest crime rate in the Brazil and the 10th highest in the world.

To be honest, I will ACTUALLY tell you the truth: we weren’t really in the city, we were 21km away from the city itself. We found ourselves a 30 berth marina in a town called Cabadelo.

As some (I hope most of you) of you know, we had a BIG problem with our engine so as soon as we had WIFI, Dad was contacting all the people in Brazil who had anything to do with Volvo starter engines. In the mini marina we were staying in, every evening at 5 O’clock there would be a boat that went downstream with random people dancing and singing crazily.

After just getting in tune with all of the latest gossip and stuff we all sort of agreed that we wanted to get up and get outside (all of you Frank Turner fans will know what I’m talking about.)

So we checked the guidebook and in the next few minutes we knew what we wanted: Olinda.

Atlantic Ocean - Again

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:48:00 +0000

So, you can probably guess: we are doing the second half of the South Atlantic crossing…

Might sound a bit heroic to you but not in the slightest appealing to me, you see: Why did the boy cross the ocean? Not because he wanted to get to the other side, but because he had to.

So now you can kinda guess how I felt, I was just on shore getting rid of my jelly legs when my dad came round and said, “Come on, chaps! Let’s get movin’, the sea is waiting!”

Yup, that’s me in the corner groaning (again).

So the first few days of this passage were spent getting used to sea life again and just pouring over book after book. Although I was not so happy about this passage business, it did bring quite a few exciting things for me: such as a little something called “Night watch”!! I actually really loved it! I would spend the first 45mins to 60mins of the night with Raul.

I know, I know! Don’t worry, I was tied down to the boat with a life-jacket on me. And yes, I AM trustworthy!

Even though we have been on passage 14 days, we have not caught 1 single fish, and we have had two lines out (sometimes even OVERNIGHT!!)

So I guess I’ll be saying goodbye for now!

St. Helena

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:51:00 +0000

WOOHOO!! Yes! BRING IT ON!

We finally arrived in St. Helena: the island in the middle of nowhere!

When we were coming in, we were awestruck by the volcanic beauty of the actual island! Especially the evening light, which was giving a very astonishing glow to the island itself!

We arrived in Jamestown in the early evening. Most of our yacht friends were already there to greet us in the port, but as it was getting late, we couldn’t go into town.

However, the very next day, we went out to visit the town which was very easy (as it is home to only 840 people!) and see most of the sites in Jamestown.

Even though the whole village/town is tiny, I really love all of it! I think it is a beautiful little town that actually could win some competitions under the title of “the smallest”.

Over the course of the next three days we managed to go up the 699 steps (known as the Jacobs Ladder, which I later slid down), go to the fascinating historical St. Helena Museum, go on a van tour and see Napoleon’s houses and the oldest living animal to roam the planet (a tortoise named Jonathan who is 180 years of age) and go on a snorkeling trip to a mini island not far from St. Helena itself. Jolly Good! Don’t you think that in those days we managed to do a lot of stuff? Those were probably the days were we managed to do the most touristic things in a long time!

Soon we were able to do one of the things I really wanted to do: do a hike! Except I wasn’t even half ready to go: you see, after spending 13 days on a boat you can’t really go out and do a 10km hike just like that. You have to be PREPARED!!!! So, yes. For about 3k, I hitched a ride on a random car and crossed the finish line just like a hero! Well, the other members of my family did not really think so.

Sadly, as Thursday drew closer, the more tense things got: like everything was in a rush. Dad had to go to the vegetable scrum, we had to go to the hotel to do a little internet and just run around like maniacs with ticking bombs in our pockets