Hi all,

The two days after departure the winds were light and the waves low. Perfect for all on board to get familiarized with everything there is to learn in the first days. Sometimes I even woke up questioning if we were actually at sea. We didn't make much progress miles wise, which probably had a reason. The date line was not far from Auckland. Crossing the line from West to East means that you go from 180E to 180W on the chart and two days in a row it will be the same day. The onboard time shifts a day back: from UTC+12 to UTC-12. And since we were close to an hourly change we wanted to do it all in one go. But....the 13th was a Friday. Superstition has always been part of a sailors life. If you believe in it or not...two times a Friday the 13th seemed a bit much. So in the end being so slow kept us from that and today it is September the 14th for the second time. The person on board indeed celebrating her birthday is lucky, it lasts for 48 hours. I'm not sure if we get cake twice though.

In the meantime the wind has picked up a bit to 20 knots. This afternoon we did a MOB drill. The first stage was to drop all sails as fast as possible. All sailtraining of the past few days, but also all the
experience the new voyage crew brought with them on board, made that all squares and most of the staysails were dropped in 3 minutes. A very good score. Then we turned around to the imaginary point where we lost the imaginary MOB. When arrived on the spot we dropped a dummy doll in the water and retrieved it as the second stage of the drill. That went all very well. Next time we'll do a full sequence one, but for now it was perfect to get adjusted to conditions with proper wind, waves and a first swell. After debriefing with all we set almost all sails again and sailed on.

In preparation for some more wind predicted to arrive in the morning all safety lines are mounted. The nets were already up. The few voyage crew members that felt a bit queezy or little seasick feel better. The atmosphere is all in all really good.

Groetjes, Janke

📷 Amelie Marchand