Newbie 2

After sailing now for 7 days since leaving Cartagena I have to state that I'm newbie again in sailing. After been sailing since I was 5 years old - I've to learn a new way of doing this. Speed is important, but out here other things become much more important - not to overload the sail plan, try to reduce the risk of damages and so on. And I was forced to find a way to sail downwind with the Luffe without ongoing working on the sails. For that my best tool is the spinnaker pole. I figured out that the simplest way is, to head with a twa (true wind angle) from about 140 degrees and pole the jib out on the same side as the mainsail. It needs a complete new  guidance of the ropes and 2 days of try and error - but now she is running very smooth with this sail plan. The butterfly is not working with this kind of boat - first the whole thing becomes then extremely shaky and the auto pilot is not able to handle the movement. But with the above method it works perfectly.

We approaching slowly the canaries - wind turned to south which makes me to go west for a while, but during this night the wind should turn back to east and later to north east which will allow us to turn back again. Very calm conditions out there, almost no waves (or maybe I'm already so used to it, that I don't feel the waves anymore) and 8 to 15 knots of wind. Weather is sunny, and around 20 degrees during the day.

The mood on board is good and things are really slowing down.

Markus from 30.47.626 N / 13.12.809 W