Miss Bossy

Piriapolis

2010-11-08T12:57:00.000-02:00

The weather gods were kind to us, or setting us up for a fall, as we sailed down from Punta del Este to Piriapolis in about four hours.
Entering the harbour in Piriapolis was quite straight forward and not only the officials from Hidrografia were waiting to show us where to berth but there was also a number of cruising skippers ready to lend us a hand as well. The docking here is med moor style however, the one size fits all approach means that the mooring buoy is offset from the wall so as to allow 70 or 80 footers to comfortably tie up. After a scramble to find a line of sufficient length, we were all tucked up on the end of the northern pier, just inside the breakwater entrance.
Piriapolis has an active boatyard with a travel lift capable of taking up to a 7.5m beam which combined with reasonable pricing makes it far more of a cruiser destination than anywhere we have seen south of Salvador. It was quite refreshing to see a large number of cruisers in one spot with all the attendant chances to meet new people, share a beer, barbecue and tall stories.
With the weather indicating a bit of a blow over the weekend, we spent the next day turning our standard mooring lines into a cat’s cradle and for the first time breaking our very long sea anchor bridles, the only lines we had long enough to attach us securely to the bow mooring buoy. Thank God we did. The bit of a blow that was forecast turned into a couple of wild days where we had sustained winds of 50 kts for around 6 hours and rarely dropping below 30+ kts between Friday and Monday but by Tuesday the weather had cleared, the sun had come out and all was good with the world.
The town of Piriapolis is more like a large village obviously designed to cash in on the tourist trade between December and February. This means that there isn’t much going on and only a few restaurants and bars are open during the week out of season, although in the short time that we’ve been here, we’ve seen more and more gearing up in anticipation of next month’s tourist influx.
Of the dozen or so other cruising boats we’ve spoken to, most seem to be heading south to either Chile, the Falklands or Antarctica. This has caused much confusion on our part as is difficult for us to reconcile why people want to move to places where they have to wear more clothes than heading to parts of the world where you can wear less. But we nod and smile and remind ourselves that it takes all sorts to make a world…
Currently the plan is to spend another four or five days here before heading to Colonia, where we will settle down for Christmas and New Year’s before heading back to Brazil. From talking to the other boats here, we’ve decided that reports that the Argentinean authorities are making life difficult for foreign cruisers have, if anything, being understated. So we may pop across to Buenos Aires on the ferry from Colonia but Miss Bossy will be staying firmly in Uruguayan waters.

Punta del Este

2010-10-27T09:57:00.001-02:00

Oh my God, it's cold here.!While the temperature gauge barely moves between 13 and 17 degrees we have been frantically searching storage compartments for the one or 2 sets of cold weather gear we thought we better take just in case...It must be a funny sight, seeing us sitting playing cards dressed in complete offshore foul weather gear.
Hence in the early hours of Sunday morning, divining from gribs, synoptic charts, incomprehensible weather reports in Spanish and the sacrifice of a goat, that we could make a quick trip down to Punta del Este, we decided to set off. Unfortunately, as it was Sunday morning, it took us until almost 9 am to rouse the necessary officials to complete our port check out paper work and get underway.
A side note on the Falklands and Brazil inshore counter current: at various times of the year, there is a cold water current that essentially sets N/NE along the coast of South America from the Falklands as far north as Rio. The planning information we had gathered indicated that rates of about half a knot are most common and while there was a footnote that higher rates have been recorded we had accepted half a knot as the price of going south in spring. The reality has been that while we might have had half a knot in Rio, by the time we'd reached Rio Grande it was closer to 2 kts and then has been between 1 and 2,5 depending upon weather ever since.
So the combination of the now be-damned Falklands and Brazil inshore counter current, winds on our nose, as opposed to the forecast wind on our beam, and the late start, saw us preparing to round Punta del Este about 2 hours after sunset instead of 2 hours before.
Attempting to discern visually the cardinal buoys and channel markers against the backdrop of Uruguay's answer to Las Vegas, was somewhat of a challenge. However, we finally entered the mooring field outside the harbour whereupon deciding that discretion is a better part of valour, we hooked up to the first buoy we could find and promptly went to bed.
The morning saw us parking the rib at the dinghy dock adjacent to the yacht club's launch in the company of three gigantic sea lions who we were to learn, regard this parking area, as both their bedroom and sun deck.
After completing the now familiar dance with the navy, customs, immigration and port authorities we declined the ports generous offer of charging us twice the already expensive rate of a berth as they were obviously expecting two to three hundred vessels to arrive in the next 48 hours...
Punta del Este itself is clearly a high end tourist destination in season (mid dec to mid feb) and while around 30% of places were open and there were a few out of season tourists, the prices reflected the fact that the entire town has to cash up in less than a quarter of a year. So after enjoying an excellent meal at El Secreto Restaurant, stocking up on DVDs at the large American style mall and deciding that we much rather be plugged in to shore power where we could run the heaters, we checked out yesterday to head for Piriapolis this morning.

Welmome to Uruguay!

2010-10-24T10:00:00.002-02:00

It seems to be Miss Bossy's curse that she's never quite quick enough to get in to a strange harbour in daylight. Yet as darkness falls and there's no chance of making port, she then seems incapable of slowing down enough. The irony of sailing...
So after reducing sail to little more than a hint of canvas, as dawn broke we started to enter La Paloma harbour, our first port fall in Uruguay.
Naturally, as we made our way in to the well set up berthing areas behind the breakwater, the wind kicked up to 20 + kts, giving Miss Bossy Actual an excellent opportunity to yet again demonstrate her surreal berthing abilities to the cast of thousands of awe struck Uruguayans lining the pier. Both of whom, instead of applauding, did help us tie up.
Checking in to the country was probably the least painful experience with officialdom we have thus far encountered. A very pleasant and helpful naval rating bemused by the combination of Portuguese, Portunhol and sign language had our paperwork filled out, stamps affixed and gave us directions on the quickest way to get to a bar in town.
Unfortunately, at this point, our visions of idyllic Uruguay which had so far seem to have been confirmed with our ease of entry, withered and died on the vine. La Paloma itself is, I'm sure, a vibrant beachside resort for both months of the Uruguayan not freezing cold season. However, as said season doesn't commence for another 7 weeks, perhaps one bar/restaurant in six was open for a few hours a day, making the windswept main drag feel like the set of a post apocalyptic movie.
Three nights later, having availed ourselves of the excellent free broadband to stock upon TV, we departed for Punta del Este.

Rio Grande

2010-10-16T11:15:00.001-03:00

After waiting and watching a succession of lows rolling up from the south west, we were starting to think we may never be able to leave Porto Belo.

Finally, with a 3 day weather window forecasted, and 370 NM to go, we didn’t want to miss a minute of it so we left Porto Belo on Tuesday night in light SW winds on the hope that the forecast would be right and it would turn E/NE on the early hours of Wednesday, which it did for a few hours, but then swung back to the SW. However, with the best chance in three weeks, we decided to push on.

We’d plotted an offshore track, passing on the outside of the Florianopolis island but a few miles pass the point of the island the sea was pretty heavy, with the wind on our nose. In order to avoid a bumpy ride, we turned back and decided to go through the channel instead. We knew the bridge that links the continent to the island had a 17 m clearance and our mast is 15,5m high, plenty of room. But when we were about to go under, the gap certainly looked way smaller! We thought we wouldn’t make it! After executing a very rapid stop, backing off, discussing it, re-checking the charts, the tides and the lagoon owners’ manual, we convinced ourselves that while it looked like we wouldn’t make it, that was parallax error. We squeezed in, just…

Once clear of the island, it gets quite shallow and in strong winds the waves get big. We headed offshore looking for deeper water, and a balance between a good wind angle and the swell direction. As the wind increased gradually, we were able to cut the engines and were making good speed. Alas, the forecast winds of 20-25kts, soon turned into a near gale and then a gale. We had been caught by an unforecast trough, giving us a sustained 28-33kt wind gusting to 38kt from the NE, that lasted for over 36 hrs. High winds, high seas, the anathema to cerveja sailors like ourselves. But we were running downwind with the wind, and at not too bad an angle on the swells, so Miss B took it in her stride, giving us between 7-9 knots with the main dropped, and only a scrap of jib rolled out.

Thank God the wind dropped on the last 80 miles, the sea subsided, and we got in the Rio Grande channel in calm conditions around 2am Friday morning. After contacting the pilots, we snuck into the breakwater between huge cargo ships and tankers, and puttered 10 miles up the river past a never ending series of commercial docks and fishing boats into the town proper.

The Oceanographic Museum dock where we were planning to berth was full, so at 5 in the morning we dropped anchor, and waited a few hours in the channel, before contacting the Rio Grande yacht club, where they were very helpful in moving some of the smaller yachts around so they could fit us in.

Quite a ride.

Lessons learnt and in some cases re-learnt:

Gribs and forecasts are often up to a force understated. It was a good call to leave early and accept mildly bad conditions early, so we were sure of our arrival weather window. We love single line reefing, and our mantra of ‘reef early and reef often’ kept us from a potentially messy situation. Finally it was again hammered home that the boat is far more capable than the crew!

We’ll probably leave next Tuesday to La Paloma, in Uruguay, 185 NM south.

Porto Belo - with the sun out!

2010-10-05T13:33:00.000-03:00

Last sunday the bar was finally working so we went all the way there, which took us about 8 seconds, for some garlic prawns and a beer or two. We met Edgar, the owner of the bar, called Balanco do Mar, along with his son Eric, and the reception couldn't be better. We sat there for about 5 hours drinking, eating and chatting away wiht them and some other great people that came along in their boats. It was a good sunday.
The plan was to leave Porto Belo this morning but the sun is finally shining and the weather window would only allow us to get a bit more south then we would have to stop and be stuck again waiting for another window. So stuck by stuck we decided we're better off here which we found out is actually a great place to be, now that the sun is shining ( for how long, nobody knows). It unbelievable how much better places look with the sun out!!!
So we'll wait for a 3 or 4 days weather window and we should go straight to Rio Grande, which is 370 NM from here.
Tonight, we're having Eric and Aline over for drinks :-)

Porto Belo-SC

2010-10-02T09:13:00.001-03:00

Cute little place, we’re anchored in a beautiful bay called Caixa D’Aco that has 2 floating bars and clear waters. But with the weather the way it has been, no nice place is nice enough (and the bars are shut!).
We’ve been sitting here since last Tuesday and still need to wait until Tuesday week for the wind to turn.
The good thing is that on our way back from Uruguay, it will be summer …

Sao Francisco do Sul

2010-09-27T12:08:00.001-03:00

After an overnight at Ilha dos Porcos we stopped in Ilha Bela. Beautiful place and it’s definitely worth a better look on our way back up from Uruguay. The yacht club is good, friendly and gives a 4 day courtesy for foreign yachts. Finally we got the rib engine fixed and left on the morning of the 24^th to our next stop in Ponta do Vigia for another overnight. Our next run would be a bit longer this time, around 30 hours until Ilha do Bom Abrigo still in the state of Sao Paulo, but as the sea was being so kind to us, once we reached Bom Abrigo we decided to keep going, skip Ilha do Mel in the state of Parana and stop only at Sao Francisco do Sul, already in Santa Catarina, where we are now.

We were once again trying to quit smoking and as we ran out of smokes last night at sea and decided to quit quitting for the time being. Any smoker can imagine how desperate we were by the time we got here.

The yacht club doesn’t sell smokes and the only little market that does is a 20 min walk in a gravel road and obviously it was raining. But that wouldn’t stop us! We did the walk and on our way back on the wet and empty street, I was thinking why couldn’t we meet a good soul that felt sorry for us walking in the rain and offer us a ride at which point a woman in a car asked for directions to the yacht club and gave us a ride back!!!

Right now we are just waiting for the tide to turn and should leave to our next planned stop, Porto Belo, 12 hrs away.

Ilha dos Porcos

2010-09-20T08:47:00.001-03:00

Sabado tentamos seguir viagem da Praia de Cajaiba onde estavamos ancorados mas o vento estava diretamente contra o nosso curso, e o mar muito agitado quando tentamos passar pela Ponta da Joatinga. Decidimos voltar e esperar ate o dia seguinte que, segundo a previsao do tempo, as condicoes estariam melhores. E estavam mesmo. O vento virou pra E/NE e apesar das ondas e da chuva, passamos sem problemas e ancoramos na Enseada de Palmas, na Ilha de Anchieta (tambem conhecida como Ilha dos Porcos), ja em Sao Paulo. Bem na praia ainda estao as ruinas da prisao que existiu aqui na ilha ate meados dos anos 50.

O plano e seguir viagem hoje ate a Ilha Bela, passar a noite la e tentar consertar o motor do bote, que ate agora nada.

O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo!

2010-03-01T10:56:00.000-03:00

We’ve been in Rio for a month and a half now but been too busy and too hot to sit and write. After weeks between 38C and 40C, today is raining and the temperature dropped to 22C. A bit of a relief but this weather just doesn’t go with the city! It seems wrong!

In our first 3 weeks we didn’t leave the marina since there was lots of catch up to do with family and friends and one of the things we’ve learnt is that sailing with a hangover is not a pleasant experience. But just before carnival we decided to get back to our element and take Miss Bossy for a ride.

We found a great spot to anchor off just an hour or so away from Rio: Itaipu. Calm waters, beautiful beach, nice swimming, sea turtles, and if you don’t want to leave the boat, Bruno from Pli On Board, one of the bars by the beach, brings you everything by rib. He even picks you up in the morning to go to the beach if you want or let you tie your rib to his buoy. And that’s not all! He makes sure there’s a table booked by the sea, no matter how crowded the beach is and cooks you breakfast! All with a big smile :) The good and old Brazilian service! I’m yet to see it somewhere else in the world...

Right after carnival we set up a trip to Buzios with some friends but the weather didn’t cooperate. Some got sea sick, visibility was poor, the sea was choppy and what should have been a nice and pleasant day turned out to be very uncomfortable, so we turned back and took shelter in Itaipu. We thought about staying there overnight and resume the trip Buzios in the morning but the sea sickness of some didn’t get any better, so we came back to Rio. In the morning we heard that a Canadian sailing ship sank off the coast of Rio and a 38 feet power boat disappeared with 2 people near Marica, when coming from Buzios to Niteroi...

With the good weather back on Saturday morning the weekend wasn’t completely lost as we went to Itaipu again, and it was a great weekend. We got back to Rio on Sunday night.

We’re looking forward to have the good weather back.

Cape Verde

2009-12-11T11:45:00.000-02:00

After the incident with the spinnaker halyard and some exercise trying to pull the sail out of the water in a bobbly sea, here we are, in the city of Mindelo, in the Island of Sao Vicente, Cape Verde. (We now appreciate the ‘para’ bit of the parasail, pulling an upside down one out of the Atlantic gives us an appreciation of the volume or air it can hold.....)

The idea was to go straight from the Canaries to Brazil but we are actually very pleased we did stop here. Lovely place, great weather, friendly people, cold beer and live music bars! In many aspects it resembles the Marvellous City ( for those of you not familiar with the term, this is Rio de Janeiro’s nickname for obvious reasons...)! Not to mention they speak Portuguese in an accent very much like the Brazilian one! Tilson, the guy that fixed our spinnaker, actually told me they themselves like to call Cape Verde ‘’Brasilzinho’’, which means ‘’Little Brazil’’. Nice!

We were planning a very quick stop, enough to get the work done, but as we were marginal at best to make to Brazil by Christmas and this place is way too nice, we’re staying over the weekend and plan to slip off on Monday the 14^th.

The marina is quite new and has a very different vibe to any of the marinas we stopped at previously. It’s not just the excellent facilities and very friendly and helpful staff, it’s also the fact that every boat here is, in effect, a transoceanic cruiser. Every boat that arrives here has already travelled hundreds of miles offshore. They all have stories to tell and are generally a quite friendly group. A for instance, whenever any of the yachts depart, they are seen off to a cacophony of fog horns and trumpets, not just from the yachts in the marina, but from the harbour master, commercial ships, fisherman, and even people on the beach as well.

This is the only marina in Cape Verde and the guys at BoatCV quickly replaced our Spinnaker halyard and all our other lines as well (it seemed the best form of insurance) and they finished in two hours a job that we’ve seen take a day and a half in the UK. Their motto seems to be if someone made it, we can fix it, and watching them work on the inevitable breakages that occur on ocean passages, we believe it.

Having visited here we wish we had a lot more time to spend around these islands. They will certainly be a stop in future trips.

I had seen reports that Cape Verde had some problems with security and that it was expensive. We have seen absolutely no evidence of either. Food and drink is the cheapest we have seen since the small island tavernas in Northern Greece, and the repairs we had done were better priced than either Cartagena or Santa Cruz. This is definitely the best stop we have made, and is even better for being an un-planned one.

Of an afternoon, local guys go from boat to boat offering their fresh catch of day and yesterday we got some lobster for a snack.

I must say I felt almost a second of compassion before throwing the poor thing alive in boiling water but what I kept telling myself is that it would do the same to us if it could!! ( Lame excuse, but there you have it, it helps me sleep at night! ) Well, it can’t! And humans don’t taste that nice anyway, so I heard...

We didn’t have a pot deep enough so we did a bit of a mess on the boiling process but it turned out perfect! We also didn’t have a lobster cracker to help and get those best bits out but a pair of pliers did the job.

There was a private party going on just across the marina, the inauguration of a new club, so we sat on our deck, cracking our lobster with our pliers, having a beer and watching the concert. Not bad, huh?

Before

After

It got a bit cold after a while though, around 25 C. Well, you can’t have everything I suppose...

All in all, with the new marina, safe anchorages ( you can park your tender at the secure marina dock for around £2 per day), the new clube next to the marina with a huge swimming pool and poolside bar, many restaurants, all who seem to try and outdo each other with live music, and the charming people, this place has got to take off.

On our way....

Gibraltar to the Canaries

2009-11-20T11:43:00.000-02:00

It’s time to discuss gremlins...Gibraltar to Tenerife was our first real long stretch without the ability to hit a friendly port within 48hrs or so, so naturally it was the stretch on which we had the most ‘incidents’.

The first was the Morrocan fisherman and their fishing nets....... These are nets that seem to run around 1500m floating on the surface, and are generally guarded by one small fishing boat. Some are lit with flashing lights, some have a light at one end, others in the middle. Add to this that they lay these nets across merchant shipping lanes and you start to get the picture. Using radar and guesses, we avoided ten or twelve of them, while listening to fishermen pleading with merchant ships to turn North or South of their individual nets, always without being able to identify either their location or the ship they were trying to plead with. In the end while dodging one net, a fishing boat approached us waving us off, guessing he was protecting his net, we turned away from him, right into an unlit net. Luckily, just as before our keel popped over the rope it was spotted so the props were stopped before they could become fouled, although in the next two hours that it took to get clear, many’s a time I wished we had done what the merchant ships seemed to do, and that is give up and assume that the line cutters work and stem full speed ahead.

All this was occurring in very calm conditions, the next day we had a bit of a blow which continued well into the early hours, at around 1am there was a loud crash which turned out to be the stay of the main sheet where it attached to the rear of the boom deciding that it was time to retire. After an hour or so of swinging around at the end of the boom in a brisk wind with a 3 or so metre swell, we were able to get another line through the stays and get the boom back under control.

Around the same time the following night, after doing a quick deck check and grabbing a coffee, I flicked on the deck light again for some reason, only to see our Parasailor streaming out of its deck bag and over the side of the boat. A very quick dash secured the end of the sail, and after we got the boat hove to, the workout commenced. Let it be said that a 15m x 7m sail that has had the chance to fill with water in its sock is not the simplest thing to haul back in. Luckily the sail itself didn’t catch on the keel, but some of the lines did, so they needed to be cut, and later repaired. Needless to say, the sail now lives in the forward compartment not the deck bag J After that, a cold wet crew was looking forward to a hot brew, whereupon Miss Bossy actual discovers halfway through boiling the kettle that the gas bottle while still very heavy is empty.... Luckily we have a generator and an electric oven and electric kettle, however that meant no steaks for the rest of the trip.....

Finally the sea state subsided and the winds shifted so we could deploy the Parasailor, that worked fine, but it seemed that the early morning gremlins were not to be outdone, as the topping lift decided that what if was good enough for the main sheet stay, was good enough for it as well and it snapped in two with barely a murmur, luckily the main was up on the second reef, so not a big drama, but it was something else to repair.....

So, we had a great start, calm condition through the Straits, after which the wind died, then two days of wind right on our nose with moderate to heavy swells, followed by another few days of very light winds, but downwind at least. And something to make every night watch memorable.

In all some nice lessons learned ( we now have two massive gas bottles), some practice in exigent repairs and a belated but safe landfall in Tenerife.

Getting there...

Gibraltar

2009-11-05T11:43:00.000-02:00

In order to get to Gibraltar in the morning, we left the marina in Benalmadena around 20:00 last Saturday.

Thick fog appeared mid-morning, and local lore says it would clear by lunch-time, naturally it didn’t.

We thought about waiting for it to lift but we are already way behind schedule and apart from the fog, the forecast was alright. Being only 12 hours away from Gibraltar we made the call to leave.

Visibility was extremely poor, so extra care was needed when leaving the port and it would have been hard to enter Gibraltar under the heavy fog curtain considering the insane amount of shipping traffic. So it was a night where there was absolutely no wind, dead calm seas and 10m visibility. The radar and the AIS got a great work-out, as did our fog-horn. Fortunately, around 4 am, it did lift eventually and we were able to make our way into the marina without issues.

We’ve been in Gibraltar for 4 days now but coincidentally every stop we made so far has either been on a Sunday or a public holiday, so everything is shut (in Spain, everything is shut between 12:00 and 17:00 every day anyway!!!). Again, as seems our luck, not only did we arrive in Gibraltar on a Sunday, but the Monday was a public holiday in Spain, so we had a two-fer.

The parts we bought to be delivered here in Gibraltar - Bimini top, cockpit cushions, Parasailor and Lazy Bags - all arrived in the region, but there was a day or two of phoning and running around before we could locate them all and get them cleared into Gibraltar. All worked out in the end, and the work started this morning. We’re also having adjustable legs installed on the salon table so it can be lowered into a double bed or lifted into a table. Nice!

When all the work is done we’ll start planning our passage through the strait , which due to its geographic characteristics needs a bit of calculation so as to match the time we leave with a suitable combination of tidal stream, currents flow, wind direction and strength. With all that , we don’t believe we’ll be able to leave Gibraltar this coming weekend as previously planned which could delay our arrival to Brazil a bit more. Probably Monday or Tuesday, better safe than sorry though...

The city is quite nice with lots of live music bars, good restaurants and is itself a big duty free shop too and for that reason, you just feel like you HAVE to buy something! We got a waterproof (for obvious reasons) video camera to document our journey.

An interesting thing: hitchhikers. Some people go from boat to boat offering themselves as crew asking for a ride to the other side of the Atlantic! One of their marketing techniques seems to be trying to advertise the fact that they won’t waste any water by washing either their clothes or themselves (!!!!!!!!!!!!), Alas, Miss Bossy's team is complete...sorry...

We still haven’t had the chance to go up The Rock, check the Siege tunnels, feed the apes and all the basic tour, probably tomorrow if the weather is good.

See you when I see you,

Malta to Cartagena

2009-10-11T09:41:00.000-03:00

After 7 days at sea, we’ve finally arrived in Cartagena this morning. So far this has been our longest ride and I’m pleased to say that 4 days ago we crossed our 1000 miles mark!!! We should have arrived yesterday late afternoon but the wind died on us - the last 24 hours we’ve been averaging on 4kt only.

So a fun filled trip, we left with Force 5 winds, a 1.5m sea and a weather report that said the wind and seas would drop to Force 3-4. Within an hour we had Force 3 winds and 3m seas, that were building when we decided to pop into Mgarr Marina on the northern Maltese island of Gozo. On leaving (take 2), we had a forecast again of slight seas and moderate winds, within two hours we had 20-24kts of wind, and late that day were in 4m seas, you have to love weather forecasts.

We’re very happy to be here and the plan is to stay for a week. We’ve got some things to do apart from having fun though.

First job will be to clean the outside of the boat. It’s FILTHY!!!!!! Salt stuck all around since we’ve been washed by some big waves, bird shit everywhere and God knows what they have been eating to shit like this; and let me just say that apart from some big tankers and cargo ships we saw when crossing the shipping lane, we’ve been pretty much alone in the middle of the Med, so there’s loads of room for the birds to perform their business, but NO, they do it right on top of our boat! And what an aim!! Could have been worse, I’m glad we weren’t on deck at the time...

Cleaning the outside of the boat, apart from the cockpit, is a bit tricky with the motion. We can always give it a rinse but a real good decent scrub has to wait until we’re in port since none of us is willing to go overboard in the name of tidiness.

There’s also the rib. It was punctured by one of the solar panel brackets that broke as a result of the rough seas we’ve got on our second day. Not a biggie but I wish it hadn’t happened.

On the bright side, we are definitely glad that Miss Bossy saw us through the sun and rain, the calm and storm and here we are, safe and sound, the three of us:-)

Off to get breakfast now on terra firma. We would have a beer to celebrate our successful passage but it’s just 9 in the morning. Ah well, it’s past 12 somewhere in the world...

See you,

Meeting Miss Bossy

2009-09-19T22:29:00.000-03:00

Today is the 19th of September, we’re anchored in Vlikho and we should stay here until tomorrow while Scott does what he does best: make things work. So I decided to take the time to write a summary of what has been happening since we arrived in Greece to get Miss Bossy.

Well, we flew on the 29th of August and we met Miss Bossy on the day after. At the time she was called Catzmaiborne and we had the pleasure to meet Phil and Suzzy, the owners. They bought her new from Ancasta on the Southampton Boat Show in 2003.

Phil and Suzzy took the time to show us the boat on which they have been living their lives for the last 6 years, tell us some of the adventures, funny stories, interesting people and wonderful places that they had the chance to see throughout their journey.

We fell in love with the boat at first sight. The love and care that Phil and Suzzy have given her was clear from the most pristine engine bay we have ever come across to the affection that they talked about her.

The survey and sea trial were scheduled to the 3rd of September but by then, something extremely bad would have to come up to put us off. Well, it didn’t. She passed both the survey and trial with honours.

It was Friday the 4th when we took possession of the boat and baptized her as Miss Bossy. It was also when our belongings arrived from London. Well, half of it. So we had to stay and wait for the other half that came on Saturday morning. I confess that looking at those 20 big boxes averaging 30 kg each I thought we would slow down the boat with so much weight and also, where on earth were we going to fit all of that??? Well, it was a lot of work but somehow everything fitted nicely and we still got loads of room to spare. Nice:-)

Since then, we’ve been wandering around the Greek waters of the Ionian Sea, sharpening our sailing skills, meeting great people and having a wonderful time. Meanwhile, Scott has been installing new bits and pieces of equipment that he swears every single one of them is a must have. As soon as they are all in place, we’re setting the course to our first great journey all the way across to Brazil.

Catch you later,