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Tuesday Nov 19

We have enm in Mindelo Cape Verde since we arrived early Friday AM. We are actually in the lead. One other cat arrivedbefore us but theirhandicap is greater than ours so, technically, we are in the lead. The other boat protested their handicap , but they lost their protest, and even had their handicap increased because they are using a new larger spinnaker. They are very serious about therace andare furious.

 Our Russian Csptain is also very serious about it. He is determined to beat them even though they have a faster boat.

Mindelo Cape Verde is not Europe like the Canaries. It is very much West Africa. The island group is made up of volcano formed islands. We travelled to another island by ferry and rode up winding steep roads to the top of one mountain to see the craterof a large volcano. Fortunately it was sleeping.

It is verywindy here. The marina hasfloating docks and the wholething is constantly rolling and pitching in the swells.

We will leave tomorrow to continue the raceto Saint Lucia. Weill not have email or internetduring the crossing so our bog will not continue untill then.

Tess will tryto updatefacebook today.

It has been a great adventure.

Sent from Samsung tablet

Saturday 16

The start was spectacular with the 47 boats in the rally and spectator boats and cheering people on thebreakwaters.

We had an exciting downwind sail with 30 + knts of wind on the stearn. Great conditions for this boat. Windfell off some as we neared Mindelo Cape Verde. Blew outour large spinnaker the day before arriving. Did just as well with staysail and jib.For my sailing friends, surfing down 10 ft waves at one point we hit 16 knts.

We made a night landfall just before midnight Thursday. Quite beautiful approaching theislands in the moonlight. Our capttain was somewhat tense as hehad not been here before but with alleyes on deck everything went well.

I was notableto get our sat internet to work while at sea. I will continue to work on it. I have been chosen to figure itout. Everyone else gave up. I will continue totry. I am sending this using my phone hotspot. I can use this while I have cell connection atthe marina here. I havemany stories of the boat and crew. We were able to catch mahimahi andtuna and mystery fish. Some ofthe folks on theboat eat thefish raw. Notme. Ha..at least notyet. Watches 2 hr on six off. Notbad.

Will send more later. Will be here until Wed.

Harry

Sent from Samsung tablet

This is second test

Sent from Samsung tablet

We have been here in Las Palmas for six days. The days have been full. The World Crusing Club, the sponsors of the ARC, have held seminars on a number of sailing topics such as emergencies, rigging, trade wind sailing and like topics. Tess and I have attended all of them. Trying to soak up all the knowledge and experience around us.

The captain and the cook have been working hard to have the boat ready and stocked. Now we are anticipating the start of the rally. We will sail tomorrow 850 miles to the Cape Verdes island group. We ill be there for 4 or 5 days before continuing to St Lucia across the Atlantic.

Sent from Samsung tablet

We traveled for five days south to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. The crew were young and entergetic. They, and we, coped with the rolling ship as best we all could. The ship had a tall, heavy rig. The winds were from our stern, sometimes greater than 35 knots. As a matter of explanation for the non sailors, this is a setup for lots of rolling in ten foot swells. We were almost thrown out of our bed on several occasions. Plates and glasses frequently went flying. The crew and passengers took at in stride and it added to the sense of adventure.

All of the crew and passengers were interesting. There were germans, russians, and dutch. We were the only Americans. All were quite entertained with my efforts to confirm our position with celestial navigation. Even the Captain got enthusiastic and helped me with "shooting the stars".

We arrived at Las Palmas in the late morning and anchored in the harbor. Tes and I and our luggage left by dinghy from Chronos. We did not know where Enigma was in the harbor or even if she was there yet. I tried to call the Captain of the Enigma when we got cell phone service in the harbor but I got no answer. Matt, the mate on the dinghy with us, steered past the breakwater near the fuel dock and, by golly, there the Enigma lay. We hailed the Captain, said goodby to Matt, and boarded Enigma.

Sent from Samsung tablet

I am now testing our email from the boat with this message

Sent from Samsung tablet

We spent five days in Madrid. Had a great time there. We stayed at an apartment instead of a hotel. That was a better way for us. There was more space and we had a full porch overlooking an interesting street with lots of local color.The apartment was centrally located and we could walk everywhere we wanted to go. I tried out my spanish at every opportunity. 

 

We travelled by train to southern Spain when we left Madrid. Saw lots of mountains and miles and miles of olive trees. La Linea, next to Gilbraltar, was were we were to meet Chronos, a 150 ft sailing ship. Tess has posted more detail previously. I will be continuing the blog.

Chronos did show up as planned. She was a beautiful ship. There were a total of fifteen guests and eight crew. We left La Linea the next day and made an unscheduled stop in Cueta on the north african coast. The crew had stopped there before arriving at La Linea to drop off a boom for some repairs. After retriving the boom, we were back off into the Mediterranean. The ship went through the Strait of Gilbraltar. We said goodbye to the "rock" and met the expanse of the Atlantic. We turned south toward the Canaries. We felt like Bogart and Bergman as se saw the night glow of Casablanca on the eastern horizon. 

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My spouse has been negligent with keeping our  blog updated. So I must step in to fill his shoes.  His excuse is that I have been posting on facebook so there is no need to update our blog.  

The rest of our stay in Madrid was filled with more sight seeing. The last day included a visit to the royal palace and chapel.  

We are now in La Linea de Concepcion.  We arrived two days ago by train from Madrid.  We traveled through olive groove country known as the Andalusa region.  There were 1000's of acres of olive trees. The landscape was pretty barren otherwise.   Only a few small towns dotted the route along the way. We did travel through some rugged mountain terrain that reminded us of Montana. The train traveled on the side, and through tunnels in the mountain.  We arrived in Algeciras, the largest port city in europe, and took a taxi to La Linea.  We have spent three days here so far counting our travel day exploring the area.  

Yesterday we walked over the border to Gilbraltar.  It was just down the street.  The Rock of Gilbraltar looks like every picture I ever saw of it but bigger.  There is an old Moorish castle on it that up to 2010 housed the Gilbraltar prison.  You can ride a tram to the top but my husband was not interested.  He decided to forgo any wild ride adventure for the Atlantic. Gibralta is a little more upscale than on the spanish side of La Linea. Gibralta, being a British territory, had many local pubs. Lord Nelson was our choice for fish and chips and beef and ale pie.

Tomorrow we board the Chronos for the first part of our sea trip.  We checked out the marina where it will be docking to make sure where we needed to go.  It was not here yet as of 5pm.  I do hope it doesn't forget us.  We don't actually leave the dock until the next morning.  I don't know what kind of internet connection will be available.   We will do our best to keep you all posted.  We will arrive in the Canary Islands on Sunday.  We should have good communication there.

I promise that our next post will be the words of Harry Creekmore.  I know you are all looking forward to that.

Logging off for now.

Tess

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Day 2

Slept until noon. That's 5 am central time in the US.  We both slept for 12 hours. Yesterday was a very long day.  Hopefully our biorhythms will kick in soon. However we headed out the door re energized and ready to go. It is a rainy and cool day today but with umbrello, camera and euros in hand we headed out for some more exploration of the city.  We took a nice stroll in the Parque de el Retiro. This would be an equivalent to Central Park in New York but on a smaller scale.   We actually ended up here in error because my husband was reading the map and insisted that we were going the right direction.  Is this not a universal man thing.  Lol. We ultimately became very familar with the central part of the city.  Later today we will try to figure out how to get pictures posted on the blog in order to make things a little  more interesting.  We are still trying to do the best we can with spanish but find that body language, pointing and gesturing seems to be a universl language. We are still all cave men at heart.  That is about it for today. Check back in with us tomorrow.

Sent from Samsung tablet

Finally arrived in Madrid about 10:30 am. We had a delay in Atlanta because the first plane just plain broke....just what one wants to hear when they are flying.  The good news is that the second plane worked just fine.  

After settling in the apartment that we booked we found that we still had some energy. Not bad for two old folks after no sleep all night.  We are staying downtown in the older district of Madrid. It is quite quant with lots of restaurants. In fact there is one just a couple of doors down that has a flamingo dancer show every evening that is definitely on our agenda tomorrow. We took a nice stroll after we settled in and took in a couple of popular spots. We started at the Plaza de Santa Anna for some good food and wine and then to the Plaza de Major, A popular and historic location. Although our spanish is not very good everyone has been very nice, helpful and tolerant of us Americans even though most do not speak much English. Harry of cource has been trying to fit in in his usual manner of trying to fit a square into a round hole approach.  His success rate is amazinly good.  So he is having a great time. 

Accordingly to one waiter Barak Obama is very popular here. Just saying that I found this interesting. 

 We also learned in this short time that whenever and where ever you go you must have Tapaz. I will leave it up to you to do a google search of this.  So far Madrid seems to meet or exceed our expectations.  We can't wait to do some more exploration tomorrow.  And for those who know me well, to take a lot of pictures.  Will keep everyone up to date the best we can.  Stay tuned.

Tess (aka Glendora)

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On the road

We are in Atlanta waiting for the flight to Madrid. In Nashville got a "precheck"pass so we didn't have to take our shoes off. That was good but both our bags were over 50 pounds so we got stuck with the charges .

Flight to Madrid is about 9 hours. I think wine and sleep will work. Will update. When we arrive and have Wifi.

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We will be leaving in two days.