Underway


When you are reading this, we're somewhere in between Menorca and Sardinia. As we do not have Internet aboard our boat yet and the wireless dongle from Vodafone will stop functioning some miles after the Spain's coastline, we will only be in touch through our SPOT tracker. If you want to see how the trip is proceeding, check it out here. (sometimes it says there's a problem with the server, but just try again later if that happens).

We have in total around 245 nautical miles to go to the Northern part of Sardinia, so if everything goes well, we will make the landfall in Italy late Friday night/Saturday morning. There's a strong north wind expected with gusts to 25-30 knots. We're looking forward to the longest crossing we've done together so far. See you in Italy!

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!

Last night's meal

Who said cooking aboard must be canned meat and pasta? I see this cruising life as a wonderful culinary challenge and want to make the best out of our diet for each and every day. The amazing thing with always visiting new places is the broad variety of fresh produce and greens you can get hold on. For me it would therefore never get boring to cook, and even less so with the always new, inspiring environments we run across. All the different colors, smells and atmospheres gets me inspired and urges me to create! If there is one thing I get true satisfaction from is to feed the people I love with wonderful, culinary creations.

I guess this dish probably would be hard to get together in rough weather underway, but I'll save those recipes for you for later on if you're interested. There's a lot of creativity to use in that area as well.

Anyway, this meal is what Alex called "the best food I had in years", so try it you as well if you have a change. It really is super easy.

What you need:

150 gram veal per person.
New potatoes.
Snow peas.
1 red onion.

Mix together the marinade and leave the meat inside for min. one hour. Wash the potatoes and boil them with salt and their own skin. While they're boiling, heat up a pan in where to fry the meat. The pan should be at moderately high heat. Put some oil in it. Pan fry the meat 1-2 minutes on each side. You can also put them on the barbecue if you prefer. When the potatoes are almost finished, put inside the snow peas in the boiling water. Cook them along with the potatoes for the final 3-4 minutes. Cut the red onion and sprinkle it over the meat along with the snow peas and serve it all with the gravy from the meat. Add some extra water in the pan when the meat is removed if there isn't enough gravy.

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

In the spotlight

Check out what Sailing Anarchy, one of the worlds largest sailing forums, have to say about my sexy woman and our blog. Thanks SA, great article./Alex

(scroll down on SA's front page to find the article)

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!

Our location


If you guys want to know where we're located; click here. Our exact location will be easy to find, just by clicking on this icon, down on the right on the blog's sidebar ↘ With our SPOT satellite GPS tracker, we'll inform a couple of times per day our new location so that you can follow our journey around the world, step by step.

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.

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.

Let's become friends!


We have started a Facebook group where we will update with news regarding our circumnavigation and where we'll publish private pictures that you wont find in this blog. Become friends with us here.

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.