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Atlantic Sailing. Cape Verde – Grenada

The entire Cap Verde - Grenada voyage took us just over 16 days to complete. A good performance in our opinion. However, of all the sailboats in the Viking Explorer regatta that would sail to Grenada, the catamaran Jalemar with the experienced captain Jacqueline from New Zealand was the fastest. With hired crew, she completed the crossing in less than 13 days! THAT is an achievement! When we later ...

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Cape Verde

The sailing to Cape Verde took longer than expected, just over 7 days. After struggling with light winds, we finally gave up and motored for the last days. However, the crossing itself was very pleasant with sun during the day, starry nights with mareel glinting around the boat. We were also often visited by dolphins at night. A small black bird that we believe was a Cape Verde storm petrel appear ...

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Departure!

Last night at the harbor in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria! Christer's brother, Lennart, has made himself at home on the boat. The solar panels are mounted. The boat is washed and filled with both diesel and drinking water. The last fresh perishable goods are carefully stoved away. Tomorrow morning starts the sailing towards Cape Verde together with the other boats in Viking Explorers https://www.facebo ...

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Preparations on Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

We reached Las Palmas on Gran Canaria on December 1st. Several of the total of 25 boats that, like us, will cross the Atlantic in January were already in place at the pontoon that was reserved for us, participants in the Viking Explorers Rally https://www.vikingexplorersrally.com/ . Of the 25 registered boats, a large number are from the Netherlands and Sweden. Other participating boats come from ...

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La Palma

Before we left for Sweden, we left Anastacia in the marina at Santa Cruz de La Palma. We had reserved a place for her for a month. After 3 weeks in Sweden with many visits from family and friends and intensive work with wallpapering, painting and flooring, we were back at Anastacia. We had to leave after a week so we took the opportunity to explore the island by car. The f ...

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Tenerife

After the visit to Fuerteventura, we set off towards the southern tip of Gran Canaria to meet the Åkerlund family from Trollhättan, who were at Meloneras. We therefore sailed to the adjacent beach of Pasito Blanco to visit them. We also recognized the boat Black Pearl of Sweden https://www.facebook.com/BlackPearlofSwedentobecontinued that was anchored in the same bay as Anastacia. There we spok ...

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Fuerteventura

Our first stop on Fuerteventura was the village of Gran Tarajal. Known for its murals and sculptures. We trudged around and looked around. There were hardly any tourists here and there was a calm over the place. We stopped at a small sport fishing shop. We need fishing gear, we said to each other... The guy at the counter didn't know a word of English, but with my (Malin's) Italian in combination ...

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Lanzarote

We anchored for several days off Playa de Papagayo on the south side of Lanzarote. A nice beach, well protected and with fantastic water. We needed to catch up on some work. Among other things, find a suitable port location for Anastacia during the time we will be in Sweden. Not quite easy as most of the ports on the Canary Islands are fully booked. In addition, the easterly wind (Calima) gave us ...

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Madeira

After the visit to Porto Santo, we sailed to the larger island of Madeira. We got a place at the marina on the south-eastern part of the island, Quinta do Lorde, and arrived at about the same time as our Swedish boat neighbors on Aurora. This is the island of flowers! If you come here in the spring, it will be a spectacular scene of colors from all the flowering trees and plants. Now, at the begin ...

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Porto Santo

After careful studies of the weather and wind forecasts for the sailing to the Madeira archipelago, we expected to arrive after 3.5 days. Full of anticipation and well equipped for a multi-day crossing, we set sail one morning. The wind was supposed to come from the northeast and give us a pleasant crossing. However, after two days with a steady south-westerly wind, we began to despair. We had bee ...

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" Sail through the good days, and on bad days pick a spot of blue sky to steer toward. "