A windy day, a typical journey of variable weather so common at the island. Now sunny then hail, rain follows and by embarkation time in the afternoon its sunny again. Europa is moored alongside the central jetty at Port Stanley, with decks, cabins and rig ready, well provisioned and with her fuel and water tanks filled up. All ready to take us on a sailing adventure of over 40 days in Falklands and to the southern coasts of the remote South Georgia and Antarctica.
It wasn’t the easiest journey to arrive here, Falklands are lands where it is not difficult for scheduled flights to get delayed or cancelled, and where planes don’t fly very often, with one or two per week landing at Port Stanley… if you are lucky with the weather. Sure some of the Voyage Crew have been already around for a few days, a few others just came today a couple of hours before embarkation. One still to arrive.
Aboard, coffee, tea and some treats were ready, check-in procedures on the way, and some time to hang around on deck getting to know each other. Before dinner it was time for our first meeting all together with the Captain and his crew, an official welcome on board and the firsts bits of information about the doings at EUROPA.
More details were to come later on during the first familiarisation talk and safety walk around the ship. An explanation of the ways of living aboard, to our tasks during the trip, an introduction to the trip we are about to undertake and a brief overview of the planned itinerary. Just the first of the many lectures and instructions that will follow from tomorrow onwards. The night will be spent alongside and departure time is set for tomorrow morning. To where? Well, the first idea is to spend a handful of days visiting areas on the East Falklands combined with a couple of days trying to sail between the different spots. Then the open oceanic waters of the South Atlantic await for us. By then we should all be able to steer a given course from the wheel at the Poop deck, conduct a proper lookout from the Fore deck and for the ones willing to, climb aloft to help with preparing and setting sail.
