new plans: let's go to Barcelona

we have a new plan, plan is to start sailing in sept-oct to Barcelona.
We will do it in about 6 trips.
Goal is to stay ahead of bad weather.
Total distance: 760+470+830+600+820+700=+-4200 km

Would like to arrive march-april in Barcelona.

Each trip is between 400-800 km.
We can always decide to change the route and do more distance in 1 week.

Who is interested to participate?
Costs are transport & food (-:

Boat = Dragonfly, for longer trips I recommend to be with no more than 4.

The total trip.

all fotos dragonfly trip Denmark to BE

if you click on this slideshow you can see the picasaweb folder

thursday night & friday morning pics

Jan's invention: 3 sail setup, lets get the last knot

best we have done was 8 knots speed measured on GPS and wind was around 3 knots.

normal

discussing

status update friday noon

we are cruising since yesterday morning 5.00am, haven't been on shore.
Through the night there was not a lot of wind but we managed to do an avg of 7 knots.

Slept all ok, always dream a lot more when sailing.
The boat is ofcourse never quite but it was very piecefull.

The boat is not big but very doable even for longer trips where 4 people sleep, maximum is 6 but that I don't recommend for longer trips.

Is now 13.00h
Still 25miles to go to Ijmuiden. Wind dropped quite a lot and we have wind from the back now.
Jan & Rupert are playing with all kind of sail combinations.
Now they are trying out the spinnaker, more fotos later on.
Estimated arrival time 19.00-20.00h

Some first fotos.

4.00am in the morning

sunrise was quite nice

fotos Thursday lovely afternoon 20 may

status update thursday 20 May

Satelite internet doesn't work, damned.
So have to wait till when we are close enough to shore to send a post out.
Sending video's wont be possible today.

Thanks to Jan's trick we are still going quite well. Only 6.5knots now but there is almost no wind.
We will sail through the night trying to get to ijmuiden tomorrow in time to have a party with whatever dutch guy who wants to join us there (or belgium).

Looks like we will have to use the engine at a certain point in time, wind is dying on us.

This morning was exciting but not easy.
We left Tuxhaven with 25-28 knots of wind.
We had to motor for 3 hours against the wind trying to get out next to a very bussy shipping lane.
It was cold and way too early (5.00am).

Once out of the Elbe we got nice waves (3m) and good wind. The boat was doing great.
I was steering trying not to get sick. Jan took over around 10.00am and I went to bed for a couple of hours trying to sleep while the boat goes up and down 2m.
Got seasick again. Why the hell do I like boats, they allways make me sick.

Jan, Mario & Rupert were battling the wind we were still going a little upwind and had to tack.
We are tacking a full day know but its not completely against the wind, we just can't go parrallel with the cost so always have to tack to go back into the sea and loose it again.

I felt bad till 15.00h or so, wondering why I  like boats.
Jan has a smile on his face for the full day already and is constantly tweaking the sails, I think he recognises linux in it, needs as much work to keep it going.

In the afternoon between 15.00h & 19.00h we didn't make that much progress.
In the morning we had an average of maybe 12 knots in the afternoon I don't want to know.

Know we are doing well thanks to Jan's trick.

Right now Rupert is coocking again, we always get lovely english specialties, .... )-:
It's quite funny though we bought all our food in denmark and now we have to figure out how to cook it.
Most of the things we want to cook need ingredients which we don't have or don't understand.

Anyhow we drunk some whisky cola's to forget our misery (-: and everything looks bright again.

Our ETA for Ijmuiden is now 18.00h tomorrow, hopefully we make it, we will just keep on going through the night taking shifts.

Regards

Rupert, Mario, Jan, Kristof