Trinidad

Fernando de noronha- an absolutely remarkable place. The whole island was created in a vulcanoeruption and is swammed with life, its a marine natural park and have more than one peculiar fish.

And then we started on our 1800 nm leg. As Im weiting weve pu about 1200 behind us, with the 3 first days filled with a favourable current of almost 4 knots we managed to get up to SOGs of 16 knots (although mostly lingering around 14), we were just flowing over the oceansurface. Today we passed outside of the Amazonrivers opening, which unfortunately meant we spent the day sailing through alot of garbage accompanied by a rather unpleasant smell and I made the not so wise choice of having this as my laundry day..

But lately weve been struggeling with unfavourable very unstable winds, well, what doya expect in the doldrums? According to my pilocharts we should have pretty favourable conditions but it is also a tricky area. Yesterday we figured we entered the NE tradewinds, but seemed we got thrown out of them (or rather, we were mistaken). 

Caught quite alot of fish though, so food is not a problem and the watermaker is toddeling around quite alright so no problem there either, and I guess I was just naiv making timeschedules under sail.

On the first of june at ? we crossed the equator! I was quite shocked as I woke up without tar and feathers and with all my hair still intact, guess my 2 sailorfriends are going too much buy the gentlemencode to acctually go through with all the threats that theyve been giving about the initiationrite. 

5/06 

Ive been travelling with Sticky Toffee for 22 days now, in the beginning it was terribly hard to get used to the fact that barely anything is manual and that Ive got 2 very experienced sailors with me which summed up too meaning practically no real workload for me, add to that a lack of structured routines and it is easy to slip into a very lazy mode. But, as time passed Ive realized that I am learning alot everyday. Not only are they extremely patient with all my questions and on top of that great teachers on the teoretical part, Im also learning a lot just watching how they handle different situations. I even get 2 sets of knowledge since they have two totally different ways of working (I can ask captain 1 (mr American) a question and get the completely opposite answer as if I were to ask captain 2 (mr Englishman) and that would be true whether the question concerns sailing or cooking or anything.

Today we reached our preset fuel-limit of 25%, so from now on its only sailing. Today we spent most of the day toddeling around at about 2 knots, but in the evening the speed went up and since then weve been doing around 8-10 knots. Still got about 440 miles to go to trinidad and there I will find out whether I have to cheat and take a plane up to Antigua to meet up with the Canadian that I am suppose to go with to europe, We got hurricane-season starting soon, so he wants to get his ass out of there as fast as possible, or if he found someone else in which case Ill continue with Sticky. 

Todays nightfall might have been one of the most beautiful ones ive seen in my life. It started out with the horizon beein filled with little cummulus clouds and a beautiful rainbow moving on to a red sunset (red sky at fall of night-sailors delight) where we even caught a Tuna that ended up being sushisupper and ended up at a starfilled night with thunderstorms in the horizon and a moon lighting everything around us up. I guess Ill loose quite a few of my machopoint right here but with all of these wonders around is it strange if my eyes got a bit (just a little bit I swear) tearfilled?

8/6

Now weve done a little bit more than 3600 nm, which is more than an atlantic crossing. Ive been wondering how it would feel once we arrive in trinidad, worried that Id just wanna get on  a plane and not see the ocean for a while, but what I feel is that at this point it would acctually be harder to stay on land than to continue with the crossing. 

For me it does feel a little bit wierd though, I know Im on my way home, but, how come it is taking so long, its not that far right? In a world where everything is espressofastfoodjetplane most of us never had the oppurtunity to acctually experience the full distance between A and B. Brasil and Sweden are not 10-15 hours apart, they are 1-2 months apart. (And the world grew to take its original size once more.

One sideeffect of taking the long way home is that sometimes it is hard to remember that I am travelling, that I already arrived at my goal so to say. It is easy to get lost in daydreams about home and ever so easy to feel those waves of homesickness come over you. I do long to get my mothers embrace, go swiming with my father and sit up and watch movies all night with my brother. I have oh so many friends that I cant stop thinking about (many of which I might not even have met during this time if I was still in sweden but these feelings rarely work that way, after all, Ive only been gone for four and a half months, indeed these feelings contain no logic). And then we arrive at the subject of food. The food that we are eating here is amazing, fresh fish, sushi and lots of salad every day. This apparently does not stop me from longing for lingosnsylt, flädersaft, lakrits or Sophias vegan meatloaf. sigh. or Snus. Im feeling like Pippi Longstocking when she screams out "utan snus försmäktar jag på denna ö". 2 more containers to go and they gotta last for a month, you do the math. 

So, Sweden might be cold, dark, and terribly boring at times, but it is also pretty wonderful.

9/6

And so is Triniadad apperently. So much nature and filled with piratecaves along the coastline. Add to that very nice people and a beautiful set of marinas. I just got  a ride through all of the different marinas by a man who works restauring boats. Only problem is understanding their dialect. 

So I ended up staying on the German boat. The canadian already left when I arrived so new plan is trottle around in the caribean for some days and then move on to the azores.