Transatlantic: Day 4 [Day 25]

The pace may have slowed a little, but we are still moving along very quickly! In our slower pace, we are still covering almost 100 miles per day. At this pace, we should make the passage from Bermuda to the Azores in under 18 days, but we know it is a long trip and everything could change. In the meantime, we are enjoying the fast pace and good winds.

While we may be rather far from land, we were graced with a visitor today! A seabird was relaxing in the distance and Maddie was able to capture a photo of him with her telephoto lens!

Seeing reminders of land based life is comforting out here, even though we only left land a few days prior. The memory of land will fade quickly as your reality is all around you and dry land is merely a figment of your imagination, a dream about a past life, a fleeting thought.

And by the way, there is a Hurricane only a few hundred miles away!

Transatlantic: Day 3 [Day 24]

While this is the 3rd day out from Bermuda, it is also our 24th day of the Atlantic Crossing. I wasn’t really sure how to describe the timeline. Should I number the days as a total from the time we left the United States to the time we made it to the Azores? Should the clock keep ticking until we make it to mainland Europe?
I decided to break the days up into the different legs, and put the total clock in brackets. This way, you can have a rough idea of how long it had been for us while also seeing how long each leg took.

Once again, in stark contrast to the first leg, we covered well over 100 miles in 24 hours! We greatly enjoyed the wonderful speed we were having, but it was proving rather difficult to carry out the basic daily activities. Cooking, cleaning, and bathing are all more difficult when the boat is surfing along at over 6 knots. While it may be a roll filled cruise, it is wonderful to have such great speed!

Transatlantic: Day 2 [Day 23]

We are off! We left Bermuda at 6pm the day before and put Bermuda directly to our stern as we made our way to the Azores. This time, we did something very different compared to every other time we leave land behind us.

We didn’t watch the land (or city lights) fade away over the horizon!

We left Bermuda and set our course for the Azores. We were focused on going forward and only looked ahead as we made our way from land. The sun set shortly after we left Bermuda and we began our night watch. At no point did we look back!

Why didn’t we watch land disappear behind us? Because we were moving forward! When we attempted our ocean crossing a year prior, we were still wanting to cling to land. The thought of losing sight of land seemed frightening and fearsome, but this time, losing sight of land meant getting to where we are going faster!

You can’t cross an ocean if you are still close to your home port!

Bermuda is located smack in the middle of the Westerlies, and when the Westerlies are blowing, you can cover some miles quickly! When we sailed to Bermuda, we had no wind and were covering 50 miles a day (on the good days). This time, we made over 100 miles on our first day!

Transatlantic: Day 1 [Day 22]

After being in Bermuda for a few days, the weather improved and we were ready to leave the island chain and venture out into the ocean once again.

Leaving Bermuda was a bit of a production. First, you have to get everything ready to go before you check out of the country. Once you clear out, you have 60 minutes to leave their waters!

The issue is we needed to raise and dismantle our anchor, deflate the dinghy, remove the outboard, as well as all the regular “setting the sails” activities to leave. To accomplish this, we set the stern anchor with its rope rode and retrieved the main bow anchor. Once the bow anchor was unbolted and disassembled (and stowed) we could then begin to get everything except the dinghy ready to go.

After everything was complete and we were laying to our stern anchor (fed around to the bow chock), i then went to shore to clear out. Upon return, I deflated Sophia in record time so that we could vacate the anchorage and avoid a hefty fine for overstaying after checking out.

It was a lot of hassle and hurry, and then we were out in the ocean sailing away without any cares. Ocean crossing is so much more relaxing once you are out there!

Talk is cheap, why pay for it?

Cruising is awesome! It takes you to new places that you never even dreamed of experiencing. You wake up in a new land every time you set sail, and you get to choose where you want to go next. This feeling of complete freedom is quite nice, until you decide you want to communicate with your family and friends from places you have long since left.

The moment you travel to a new country, every call to your homeland will be a long distance call. When you begin making friends in all the countries you visit, calling each of them will also be long distance. Long distance calls, especially when you are roaming is insanely expensive! What if you could do this all for free?

WhatsApp is a free app that uses data to do a voice call and texting. Is data free? Sometimes.

If you are on roaming data, it will be very expensive to use WhatsApp. If you get on a free WiFi, then all your interactions on WhatsApp will be free!

The calls can be long and the text messages numerous, but you won’t have to pay a cent!

When we head out to sea, we put our phones on Airplane mode and leave them there until we are back in our homeland. While out, we simply get free WiFi from cafes and restaurants. When we get online, all our messages come in and we can make calls as needed. When we leave the WiFi spot, our phones go silent once again (which is actually a very nice thing). There are no random calls in the middle of the night that could wake you from your sleep, or someone texting you early in the morning.

You are in a different country and nothing could happen that needs your immediate attention. But what if one of your new local friends wants to hang out? Well, they can always knock on the hull and talk to us like normal people would. The dinghy tied to the boat is a great clue to anyone wondering if we are on the boat or on shore. If the dinghy is with the boat, come on over because we are home, if the dinghy is not at the boat, give us a call, we might have WiFi.

WhatsApp is one of those great features of a smartphone, allowing you the connectivity to your friends and family without all the cost of these conveniences. Next time you travel overseas (by plane or boat) give this app a try and enjoy the freedom of communication!