First week of our Atlantic crossing West to East

One week into our crossing to the Azores, time for an update! Until know we haven’t been able to write a blog. Miguels updates on predict wind are short. I guess this shows that we are still trying to get into a routine, adapting to life at sea. The start of our crossing was completely different then leaving Mindelo in January. We left together with our friends from Flyer. We had a very pleasant sail, calm waves, nice winds. It felt like going on a short daytrip. Sadly, after 1,5 day, Flyer realized they had problems with their engine. We where close to them, so we sailed towards them and drifted next to them for a couple of ours, whilst Miguel and Oliver were trying to figure our how to solve it. Unfortunately, they couldn’t, and Flyer decided to go back to Sint Maarten. It was such sad moment to see the light of their boat getting smaller and smaller and quickly dissapair completely. We hope they’ll be able to fix their engine soon!! We really enjoyed sailing together and where looking forward to do this crossing together so it took some time to adjust to our new reality: Sailing ‘alone’. Although we know another Dutch boat one day ahead, another Dutch boat 3 days ahead and 2 boats one day behind us, leaving Flyer behind was tough! But we continued. The sailing itself has been going pretty well. We try to go as much east as possible, but we can’t go too far: the waves are coming from the east and we keep on slamming into them. Painful to hear and feel, so we adjusted our course a bit more north, which makes for more comfortable sailing, with good speed, best so far 136nm in 24 hours. We get weather advise from Julia, she helps us find the westerly winds we are looking for. I (Saskia) am slightly seasick, but as long as I am outside I am feeling well enough to do my shift and enjoy my surroundings. Miguel takes good care of the boat and of me. The days are hot, but we already feel the nights getting colder. It is nice to see that the days get longer again! We have been through the first squalls and also saw some lighting in the distance. Luckily it stayed far away.
I feel I write a bit ‘messy’, my head still feels a bit cloudly, maybe I should blame that on the waves! It gives you a bit of and idea of what is going on, we’ll update more later!
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