Started foiling this year and finally found an afternoon to practice. A lot of falls. Knees scrapped to the bone, but managed a few foiling runs. It’s magical. It’s fun to suck at something and know that 10,000 hours later I’ll forget what it was like sucking.

It’s a bit surreal, we’ve completed 6,700nm in the last month. It flew by. If anything, gave Ray and I the taste to keep going. Confidence in this boat, and respect but also courage to head deep to sea. Ray is getting off here, we’re both flying home on Friday for the weekend. I’m blessed that I’ll be able to attend my friends funeral. Then back June 2nd for last leg direct to the Chesapeake to complete her maiden journey. Bucket list ✅

A large clan of spinner dolphins hang in the bay. We were heading back from a snorkelling session and they joined us and showed us their stuff.

470nm from St Helena and the clouds have settled since yesterday. We have to sail pretty deep to keep our heading to the island but we had some fun puffs this morning. Surfing down swell at 20kts like there’s nothing to it. Ray and I played our first match of Windigo. A sailing game created in 1968 that we found on Etsy. Serendipity connected us to that game, likely the only one left that isn’t collecting dust in someone’s grandparents attic. We’re looking forward to a few nights sleep at the island. With our speed, and swell directions it’s noisy and I’ve had trouble getting more than an hour sleep here and there.

We’re 4 days into the first leg of our 8,000nm passage. The first stop is St Helena. If the wind gods would have stayed happy we would have been there in another 3 days…but alas the wind has died off and we’re huffing and puffing into the asym. We’re in the groove now, eating well, and having a great time. With 4 onboard, the watches are decent. 4h during the day and 3 at night. It means that you have every 4th day without a night watch. No fish yet, well a huge one and took and almost all our line and that we lost. Our sushi kit is waiting patiently. The boat rocks, has great power but the sail plan makes it easy to gear down quickly. We love the Genoa and Code wing on wing for easy night sailing. Treat surface area is as big as the asym! We’re halving a hockey watch party tonight, Ottawa vs Toronto in the playoffs. It’s going to be late, but our South African crew are keen to drink beer and cheer with us.

The inaugural first leg of our adventure. Arrived in St Helena just as the sun was setting and managed to get the drone out for some nice pics of the dramatic southern cliff. The wind filled in as we arrived and had some epic surfs above 22kts (video below). We had 2 days of lighter winds and wing-on-wing down wind sailing with the code and Genoa. It’s a great combo and stable. But not that sporty 😆 Crew is in good spirits, and thankful for a few nights without night watches and some exercise on land. There’s a lot to do in St Helena, Jacob’s ladder, hikes, diving, fishing, and all the Napoleon tourist stuff. I’d like to try my new wing foil gear, but the anchorage is behind large hills and likely not the best for wind and it’s swelly. Just north of St Helena is where the trade winds kick in, as my friend said, it’s where god put the “On” button for the wind. But it’s looking light until next Monday so we will likely stay here until then. Looking forward to leg 2 to Fernando, likely a day or so longer than this leg. But looking forward to wingfoiling with the dolphins once in Brazil.

Last major problem resolved, water mater now works. We’re leaving Monday. It’s taken us a month to commission, test, fix. What a great place to be stuck commissioning than Cape Town. We almost don’t want to leave.

Sail maker and rigger onboard to tune every last detail. We always learn a lot when they join and geek out with us. Departure planned for a week from now, water maker is not happy and we need a few more fixes. Then off we go! Can’t wait. Feels surreal.

Had a bit of everything wind wise, from sun to fog. Wind mostly behind us, until around Cape of Good Hope and then on the nose. Fantastic crew and good memories. Now for a few weeks in Cape Town to fix and buy things and off again on the crossing.

If you can’t repair it, maybe it shouldn’t be on board. Last 10 days have been so fun, learning from the incredible team at Balance/Nexus St Francis. We’ve commissions everything, my spreadsheet had 352 rows, crawled into every corner and broken everything we could and then fixed. I’m going to miss this team. A lot. Photo shoot tomorrow and then off to Cape Town on Thursday. Sporty forecast along the south coast of Africa, time to see what she can do in big seas.

It’s go time. A week or so of commissioning and we’re off to Cape Town to finish provisioning before the 8,000nm jump over to the USA. I’m very excited, overwhelmed, and nervous. The boat is looking stunning and starting to feel like home. I’m getting this vibe that she’s tired of being at the dock, she wants to sail! Soon baby, soon… we’ll be off. PS: if you’re in St Francis or Cape Town I’ve got tons of SeaPeople souvenirs. PPS: a new feature called Voyages is launching in SeaPeople soon! Can’t wait to show you!

Spent the day checking and tuning the main boom locks and lower shrouds. Got the load sensors hooked up and calibrated. Then pulled out the code and pointed downwind and loaded her up. A nice easy 20kts boat speed was fun! Tomorrow we fix the hydrolic furler and setup Genoa and start instrument calibration.

We got extremely lucky, weather gods liked us as it was a full sun and 10kts. The south ocean is usually in a bad mood. We hoisted all the sail except for the code which we will do tomorrow. We got 10.5kts in 10kts of breeze. She’s a Ferrari 😆

The African sky welcomed us beautifully on the walk from the factory to the port. It was special, dodging trees, dagger boards clearing a few grass knolls by 1 inch. The Nexus/Balance team know what there doing and the whole village came by to celebrate with us. Lost for words. Next milestone, sailing this beast. Hopefully next week.