some chavayot 4u
to begin with, we were 4 crew members on the boat. the south african skipper, another s.a woman and us two israelie couple. it was a perfect combination of male-female and there was great atmosphere all along. its extremely important. the weather and the sea conditions were extraordinarily good all the way. winds up to max 30knots broad reach and swell up to 3m but mostly 50cm-1m swell. our skipper said it was his easiest crossing ever. even the squalls we met were'nt really the serious ones and most of them did'nt even hit us. whenever we thought about bringing the shampoo out the squall would already pass infront or behind us. the dayly routine gets comfortable after 4-5 days. watches 2.5h on 7.5h off are very easy. food was great. we cooked in turns so there was a good variety of cooking styles. we read a lot, played a lot of 6besh, scrabble and card games. whyle the others were busy calculating speed and days i was'nt bothered at all with our eta. like i said i could have gone on much longer... the thing i feered most were the showers and that was perfectly satisfying too. we had 4 sweet water jericans and every 3-4 days or when ever we wanted we could sit on the sugar scoop, wash with buckets of salt water and rinse with a littre bottle with holes on its lid to shower with. the boat had 800littre water tanks and we managed to complete the crossing including all the cleaning in the end with 200littre spare. as for the sails, most of the way we had the a-simetric spinaker up, going up to 9knots and from the carribeans on, the head and main sales. i think we avveraged 7-8 knots speed. auto-pilot held all the way, nothing much to do on watches but meditating which was fine with me - i just love the pitch dark moonless night watches. seeing st.lucia so close by without stopping was a little dissapointing but it was the skipper's descision and nothing to argue with. the other woman had a birthday on the way and we gave her a surprise party with chockolate mouse that i made at night and it was a real celebration. i don't know what else to tell, you're wellcome to ask questions. already now i can't wait to go sailing again. my relatives in Florida are great and I got to meet my nephew who gets deported to Iraq next month by u.s. army so the timing could'nt be better, but still, i'm totaly inlove with the cruising life style and the adventures had just began. we're going to search for the next boat going south and in need for crew, hopefully through the carribeans but whatever comes will be considered.
