Exciting passage up the coast from peninsula de Marau, straight shot to Recife. We chose to ride just ahead of an incoming system. For the most part, we had great sailing. Then the squalls starting catching up making for an exciting day and night. Dodging ships in lumpy seas with extra strong winds. Yeeehaw! T’was a doozy. Happy to be safely anchored in a marina as the storm approaches…

Had a great sail up the coast of Brazil, since this is against the predominant northeasterly trades, we waited for a cold front (late May) and rode the southerlies. The strategy of leaving a day before the front paid off, motored 18hrs in calm seas, then we were ahead of the front and got mellow rain. Winds blew SW then clocked to SSE so we managed a broad reach the whole way, mostly 15-20kts breeze but blew steady 30kts for nearly 12hrs at one point, we were under 2nd reef main and 1/2 genoa and full power. Lumpy seas but overall great ride. Happy to now be in Abrolhos!

We left Langebaan lagoon near Saldanha, en route to Luderitz. Had a smooth 3 night passage, with mostly winds at our back, flying wing and wing or spinnaker most of the time. Arriving in Ludertiz we experienced some catabatic winds that accelerated to 40knots!! Glad to be safely anchored, and ready to explore the dunes!

We stopped at the most incredible uninhabited island, Dassen, for the night. So reminiscent of California Channel Islands. Bull kept forests, TONS of birds flying overhead, mama and baby humpback whales swimming around, cormorants & white pelicans sunning themselves and so many penguins you could see hanging out on the beach, a couple curious ones even swam out to our boat to check us out! So cool!!! Would have loved to spend more time there but unfortunately not only is it forbidden to go to shore, we also had to get to Saldanha bay for a scheduled haul out. So it was time to carry on…

This was one of the only times in my past 10 years sailing that i was flashing back to my previous life as an ICU nurse. The overnight passage left us all with very little sleep, highly jacked up on adrenaline. The night started dodging container ships around point agulas, then around 2a our hydraulic steering hose blew a massive leak and we lost steerage several times as it continued to trouble us until 5am. We were going thru so many bottles of atf as we attempted to repair the rupture…With pink atf fluid everywhere it was reminiscent of open heart surgery… but we managed to stent out hydraulic hose using a Jerry rigged hose on top of the hydraulic one with so many hose clamps holding it in place to contain the rupture and allow us to make it thru the night. Despite the chaos, once again the kids slept thru the night like champions and the following morning was gorgeous and calm with whales and dolphins as we limped our way around the cape of good hope into Cape Town! Definitely earned our arrival!

Stoked to be here!! What an arrival thru the Knysna heads.

Oof… it’s been a very bumpy ride with strong head winds as we slowly crawl and bash our way up the coast. Despite the slog, we’ve had quite an eventful morning with seals, dolphins AND humpback whales visiting us and saying hi 🤩!!

This was our first time properly sailing Nesi! Wow, what a great sailing vessel!!! Smooth like buttah (for the most part). Leaving Seychelles we were surrounded by squalls with torrential downpours, needed to motor to get out of the doldrums, then by day 2 we were in the trades, cruising along with sunny skies. As we neared Madagascar the winds intensified upwards of 30knots, tight on the nose. We decided not to do any stops along the way as the weather was quite unstable with conflicting weather models. Grateful to have arrived safely and swiftly, sheltered in the beautiful northern Madagascar before the strong winds filled in. We did the crossing with a lovely family from Australia who are trying to get as much blue water experience before their custom boat splashes… we had 3 toddlers all aged 4 aboard, and 6 adults. Our reels kept us quite entertained with lots of hook ups. 2 large bill fish (one the line broke, and the other we were able to successfully unhook), a massive barracuda, and a double wahoo hook up! 🙌🤩🎣 we made loads of fresh loafs of bread 🥖 thanks to our new sourdough starter gifted to us before departure from our German friends. 🥰 Issues underway included windlass malfunction, many lures lost, water pipe that broke and drained the water tank, large wave knocking the dinghy loose from its support, misaligned rudders that needed to be aligned underway at night, and a propane leak at the top of the propane gauge. Overall, not bad for a difficult passage. Most importantly we all had a blast and we actually made it out of Seychelles with Nesi (and ALL our belongings!) - we were finally given our 8 boxes that had been held up in customs (the ones we shipped from Tahiti in January, as well as our 2 spearguns that got confiscated on arrival to Seychelles, on the day of our departed Seychelles… talk about a last minute departure gift 😜 On day 2 of our passage we got notice that our new solar panels had finally arrived and cleared into seychelles (only a couple days too late 🤪) grateful we were able to source some used panels to carry us thru for the time being… Looking forward to more adventures in Madagascar 🇲🇬🙌🤩