FUCK

Alex keeps repeating: You must be the clumsiest women on earth!! I usually don't get what he means? But now it seem to be the time to admit it. Not only have I lost many lighters and packs of cigarettes, my Ray Bans and innumerable amount of clothes and towels in the waters of the harbor. Now this dirty little place is also the home of my precious Blackberry. My Dear Blackberry whom I love very dearly and have (had) a very intimate relation with.

Oh yes, I had already decided that I would throw this, last piece of contact with the materialistic world in the ocean, the day we're leaving for the circumnavigation, but not a single day before it! Buhu.. I rarely, or never, get depressions, but this morning was a heavy one. To wake up and having to realize she's gone. Nothing seem to interest me in these mourning times. Alex offered himself to get the scuba tubes on and dive for it last night when it happened. Though the idea sounded very tempting, I just couldn't let him face the terrible dirt and the dangers down there, 6 meters (20 ft) under our hull in the middle of the night. So I guess I just have to learn to accept the fact.

I'm a slave to my own clumsiness.

Can be reached on email until further notice. /Taru

Back home in Catalunya

We're back home on Spanish waters! The 150 n miles long passage across Golfe du Lion went pretty smoothly. Started with calm sea and around 10 knots of Southerlies, then we caught a 30(!!) kilos mega tuna, slept OK, woke up with 2 meters of waves around us and an established F6 with gusts to 36 knots. Good variation on that one. And can you imagine how glad I am to finally have nonstop service on the wifi?! We have realized a lot of things during this last trip. One is that we definitely need satellite connection through Inmarsat, aboard our boat for the circumnavigation. /T

Two weeks ago

Some more pics of the work we've done on the boat lately:

Propeller painted.

Sanding the rudder.

Painting epoxy filler.

More sanding.

New winches on the mast.

Life lines replaced.

Our life was pretty much running on routine that week. Nothing usual in our life, that's for sure. I think we ate the same dish at the very same restaurant for five nights in a row. Done with the chinese food for a while now.

What a beautiful keel and bottom it turned out to be. So smooth and perfectly painted.

What a fucking mess we lived in some of those intensive days..

Seriously!

One night on dry.

Alex installing the radar.

And back with the boat in the water.

Ready to go!

Almost all missing parts got in place and refitted, now just a few more things to prepare before the Atlantic crossing in November (new sails, Internet, self steering etc), but that we'll take care of once we're back in Barcelona in September. We still haven't had the time to analyze what is the best option for Internet onboard. Iridium or sailmail through SSB-radio or maybe there is other options? Would love to keep the blog rolling during the whole trip so we need to find the best solution for this. Let us know if you have some expert advice. Thanks!

In Menorca

Unfortunately, we had to leave Mallorca without the BlueChart. However we manage it well the old school way with the paper charts until we'll find a shop who has the vision card in stock.

We had a wonderful day today in Mahon, the sophisticated capital of Menorca, and we can much recommend it to anyone who wants a stylish Spanish vacation. Just got back to the boat for a peaceful dinner and we're sitting here under the stars, reading through all the amazing, wonderful emails we've received the last couple of weeks. You guys are amazing for getting in touch. It almost brings tears to our eyes to hear your life-stories that you wish to share with us and all the support we realize we have out there. We wish you all the best and are ultimately glad that you found our blog and want to follow our journey. Thanks so much for taking the time to write to us! /T&A

Happiness is..

.. to be stuck in a German-occupied town and realize that you can find all kind of German delicacies in it. Such as bratwurst, rye bread and german chocolate. Oh Riesen, how I have been dreaming of you! /T

Need to move on

We're stuck in Mallorca because of the delay of the BlueChart that we ordered for our GPS plotter, which should have arrived in the shop here two days ago. We really do want to get out of here now, and move on towards Corsica, but at least we have had some time to take care of other necessities. Such as stocking up the fruits and vegetable section, wash some dirty clothes, organize cables and connections on equipment, bake some bread, fill up our scuba diving cylinders and organize our messy closets. But now we're done and wishing to proceed. We'll give that god damn chart a couple of more hours before we're out of here. With or without it. /T

A small fisherman's town in Mallorca

We found an excellent bay for mooring last night, just next to Porto Petro. We got a nice, quiet sleep with barely no movement on the water, at least it felt like that since we both fell asleep instantly when we went to bed. Woke up around 9ish and dinghied over to this beautiful little town for breakfast and to stock up on provisions. Now we're ready for some hours of sailing up along the eastern coast of Mallorca. Had planned to get to Menorca tonight but looks like we're late after schedule like always so we've decided to dump the schedule totally and go only with what we feel like and where the wind wants to bring us. Hasta La Vista!

The simplest little fish dish

On longer passages it is important to eat steady meals with a lot of carbohydrates to keep your energy level high when time goes by slow. We've stocked up the boat with plenty of rice, pasta and potatoes and luckily the combinations with these along with proteins and fat (fish) are endless. This one is a perfect little dish that you can prepare with any sort of fish you might catch for the day or why not using the left overs from the fish you had last night. The short time it takes to cook this meal, makes it also easy to prepare in rough weather.

Cook your pasta. We prefer tagliatelle but any sort is as good.

Pan fry chopped, red onion in olive oil and add your fish. (I used the salmon fillet from last night.)

Add 1-2 cups of fresh cream or UHT cream, depending on what's available.

Add 1 teaspoon of soya and maybe some more pepper, and/or salt.

When pasta's ready and rinsed, pour it over to the pan with the fish and sauce. Stir and taste, maybe add some extra seasoning of your taste. Add fresh rucola salad and fresh baby-tomato halves. Et Voilà! /Taru

La Rapita

We left Palma last night to get further down South. Got a peaceful and quiet sleep in the small village of La Rapita, and we woke up fresher than ever before. (At least first day totally fresh after the 48 hour fiesta in Ibiza. It's completely clear that we're not 20 any longer.) We have some smaller maintenance to do here on the boat before we can sail up on the South East coast. We're planning to have a day of snorkeling in some of the beautiful calas along the coast and hoping to reach Porto Cristo before sun sets again.

Visited by an owl

Underway between Barcelona and Ibiza, this enormous owl came to visit us. We were heading headwind, motoring, with around 10-12 knots of wind in our face when this bird showed up from nowhere, desperately attempting to catch our arch with her claws to get some rest. Every time she tried, she lost her grip again and got kicked back in the air by the strong wind. It was totally heartbreaking to see her fail time after time while she got weaker and weaker. After maybe ten attempts, her power was gone and she got pushed backed so hard that we lost the sight of her somewhere far away in the ocean.

From Ibiza to Formentera to Palma

We went over to our friends James and Leslie and their Hallberg Rassy 38 last night in Formentera, just outside of Ibiza island. We ended up drinking three bottles of wine and one small of rum so you only imagine how the 12 hour bumpy ride to Palma felt this morning. At least for me.. Headache extravaganza. (Alex doesn't drink too much. Good for him.) Now: late lunch in Real Club Nautico Palma, Mallorca./T

Ibiza

Hi there, we've just arrived in the land of madness! Late after the original plan, but right in time for a friends birthday celebration on Cocoon later tonight. And this is the catch of today. This beast woke us up seven in the morning and right now we're just about to prepare a tuna feast for our friends on the boat in the harbor of Ibiza. Talk to you later.

Finally ready to go

Now look how beautiful she is. Finally ready to hit the sea again after almost a week on dry. Washed and polished in every corner and with her bottom freshly painted. We are running behind schedule so we'll talk to you again soon when we're out on the sea. Just some few more things to organize and refit and then: The 30 hour passage to Ibiza!

We'll bring our video camera with us so we might give you some real life action from our part of the world, later on. Be safe until then. A&T

The world tour boat

Our beautiful arch in stainless steel is finally with us and perfectly installed. This addition gives the boat a whole new world tour look, we can't wait to get the solar panels and the wind generator in place on it. Alex draw the design himself on this arch and it's perfectly custom made for our needs. And so very beautiful where it stands. /T

The conservative world of cruising?

A very lively debate has erupted after we published a link to our website on a few of the big sailing forums out there. One in particular created such an intense discussion that more that 40 people engaged into contemplating on if our blog was good enough as a cruising blog or not. Most of the members writing on that thread was of course positive, glad to see something new and inspiring but there were some among them who called our blog "too slick, fake and self-centered", also "too sexy". Some accused us for being too commercial and even too professional to suit in the "natural" world of cruising. Ha! Some of the members even accused us for charging money through paypal on our site, where they got that idea from is still a mystery. Have you guys ever sen a Pay Pal sign here on this blog? That specific thread on CF has now been removed from the forum and we're waiting for an explanation from it's administrators of why and for what reason it's deleted as we are sure of that we haven't violated on any of their rules.

In the meanwhile, here's a picture for you all out there: Is this also maybe too sexy and fake to suit in the fine world of cruising? (Our apologize for showing the boat in that terrible condition though. This is taken just in between the sanding of the primer and applying of some more..)

It is just fantastic what emails we've received in the last 24 hours. People from every part of the world have contacted us to tell us how much they love what we do and how we do it, and also some few emails were sent by conservative members of those forums urged us to stop writing in forums such as CF as we are "destroying" the "natural" world of cruising. Very amusing indeed.

To all of you other, positive, open minded people who're reading this blog, thanks for reading, we are delighted by the fact that we might inspire some of you out there to follow your dreams. And a very warm welcome to all of our new readers! /A&T

More things up

It did start to rain.. but then it stopped. Phew, at last we could start to mount the arch. Hopefully getting up the solar panels and wind generator tomorrow.

Work under progress..

My hard working man has been up at 7am every morning and worked hard on the boat for minimum fourteen hours per day these last seven days. Soon it will all be done, but I'm afraid that I just heard thunder from a distance, please tell me there will be no rain tonight! /T

Dangerous cooking

While Alex is downstairs covering our hull with epoxy, I'm sitting inside trying to work a bit. That's pretty much how our days looks like right now until we're ready to set off. He's in charge of the heavy, physical work and maintenance on the boat, while I'm keeping up this blog, dealing with partners, working on some other online projects and cooking for my man. We have found our perfect rhythm with this division and the must do's of the days goes by pretty easy with no hassle. Besides of when Alex gets into the galley (kitchen), blends the dangerous epoxy and watertite mixes by the zinc and want to mix it all in the same bowls that I use for the cooking! As we both are very temperamental and passionate people, we scream at each other for one and a half minute like we're ready to kill. But then it's all over. Fast and easy. I go back to my computer or cooking or whatever it might be and Alex gets out to finish his work. That's more or less the only type of drama we have in our lives at the moment. Don't you think we need to get out of here soon? To be too long time on land is no good for us! We're in need of other types of action!

That was not what I wanted to talk about though, but I wanted to share with you the ultimate BBQ marinade which will make you want to light your grill every single night. Simple and easy:

Taru's BBQ Marinade for wonderful steaks

Take a small bowl (make sure there's no epoxy residues!), mix all of these things together:

3 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of chinese soya

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

2 freshly pressed garlic cloves

1 tablespoon herbs of choice

1 teaspoon red-hot cayenne pepper or chili powder

salt, pepper.

Whisk it all together, pour it into a plastic bag. Trow in the meat, make sure the marinade gets all over the steaks. Tight the bag and leave it there for 1-4 hours -depending on how long time you got and then grill your steaks to perfection. Voila! You now got the best tasting steaks in town!

On the picture: Argentinean beef served with potato gratin and an apple, rucola and blue cheese salad.

Let's do this

Here's our beauty on dry after been washed. The old antifouling will now be taken off and time for a new coating and epoxy tomorrow. We both love working under deadline pressure and even though we sometimes might be in the last minute with things, we somehow always make it on time *touching wood*. This is the plan:

We must get back in the water and be on our way to Ibiza, no later than Saturday night this week. Before that we'll need to finish the applying of epoxy and the antifouling paint. The new arch must get installed with the solar panels and wind generator perfectly in place. All new electronics and the sonar must get installed. The same with the radar. New life lines shall be refitted and lastly the cockpit cushions must arrive. I guess we trust ourselves and each other on this but the truth is that as long as we're still in Spain and have to depend on Spanish companies, we can never be too sure on getting things done on time. The mañana mentality is not just a saying, let's just put it that way. /Taru

Tonight's read

Alex came home with this interesting book earlier and while he's connecting our new GPS, Vhf and AIS systems, I'm sitting here in our newly refitted cushions/couch drinking some very, very well balanced Pinot Noir and dreaming my night away with the inviting stories and colorful pictures of this book.

The Pacific passage is undoubtably the part of our journey which we look forward to most of them all. And getting to hear other peoples excitement and joy over their first cruise in this marvelous area makes us long for it even more. After only been reading in the book for one hour, I can already highly recommend it to anyone who's planning a Pacific route, as the book covers everything worthwhile. From the weather, winds and currents to port information, what in the nature of the beautiful islands are good to eat, which animals to watch out for, which routes are suggested and what to do if you encounter with the dangerous sea snake whilst snorkeling and much more. A very well structured hand book for the ones getting ready to cruise in the big ocean which covers almost half the earth's surface. The ocean where we'll spend the first part sailing with only water around us and with no sight of land for nearly a month. How thrilling isn't simply that thought alone?!

I really should go to sleep now as the clock shows 1:40 am and we're going to haul out the boat early tomorrow morning to paint the antifouling, but I can't let go of this book. It makes me feel like we're on our way already.

Now only 96 days left until departure.

Book: The Pacific Crossing Guide, Second edition by Ros Hogbin and The RCC Pilotage Foundation.