Coming home

Travelling for three months now has been an incredible and great experience but I think now it the time for me to return home. Homesickness is almost as bad as seasickness and I have come to realize that I am missing my family and friends in Finland quite a lot. With people and places changing all the time it is necessary to be pleasant. That comes naturally from me but the resourse is not endless. Speaking all the languages except my own and learning all the new places and customs takes its toll.

After lookin over a week for a boat in St.Lucia that could take me to the South continent I thought flying as an option. After looking many different destinations I found cheap flights to Finland (actually cheaper than flying to Peru or any other place I could think of wanting to go) and booked them to be home just before new year.

Big thanks for everyone reading the blog supporting, meeting and sharing with me during my trip.
I have learned a lot and for me it is more important with whom I am with than where I am.

_O

St. Lucia

The first thing I did on my first morning in the Caribbean was using my only American dollar I had in my wallet for the last few years (don´t know where I got it from). I bought Ginger Ale.

Captain of my friend Stefano looked exactly like Sean Connery and played guitar.

Francesco left

In Martinique I saw again the most beautiful boat in the world. Hetairos is made in Pietarsaari for a private client. They sailed across the Atlantic in just 8 days. From Canaries to Caribbean with incredible average speed of 15.5kn. I have started of dreaming about becoming a naval architect designing boats for the lucky ones and of course for myself too. With the knowledge I gain by sailing with various boats around the big oceans  I hope to do better job than the infamous boat of most famous Finnish architect. Actually I would like to design better boat than anyone ever before. Well see if I ever get started.

Hetairos

Art photo by Marianto

Martinique

 In St. Lucia the Caribbean sun is really trying to kill me. I am happy not yet being burned to death. On daytime it is impossible for me to stay longer times in the sun. The general atmosphere is relaxed but it is obvious the island is rather poor. Hellomyfriendwannataximans are quite laid back. I had a nice chat with Seemuel (I dont know the spelling but something between Simon and Samuel) talking about the differences of our countries. We came to conclusion that St. Lucia is poor paradise and Finland is a country for robots, built by robots. Getting to know locals does not come really naturally as quite often we "white men" are seen as a christmas present from the other side of Atlantic in the form of money. Best times with the locals so far were at a small billiard saloon even though there wasn´t much winning involved.

Martinique is very different from St. Lucia. The language is French instead of Caribbean English and the island seems to live in prosperity. In St. Lucia I did not feel very safe outside the marina but we went to local
friday festival anyway. In the marina there were everynight hookers looking for rich white men and they sometimes were rather straightforward in their actions, groping groins and even entering toilets while peeing.. I heard they often were great pickpockets and that HIV is quite common in the islands so was not too interested.

St.Lucia

Passion fruit gelatine 

Marianto stashed some spices to my backbag when I was leaving

Roberto the beachboy

Beach

Bird

Beach resort

Caribbean sunset

Ninfea (Gran Canaria - St. Lucia)

The Atlantic Rally Cruise (the ARC) is the biggest ocean rally in the world with 250 boats attending this year. It is supposed to be safer to cross with many boats at the same time as there will be always help available if things go wrong. To me the chaos of millions boats sailing did not feel too relaxing as there always is the risk of collision. But after the first days the group spread and seeing a boat in the horrizon was an occasion in the end of the voyage.

Our boat was a 53 foot Amel Super Maramu 2000 equipped and provisioned with everything we would be needing, especially for high quality dining. People living together for the next few weeks came from very different backgrounds: an Italian Venezuelan couple with their multinational son and crew from around the world with skills together covering all areas required for the ocean crossing.

Ready for anything

Roberto the Captain is a retired nuclear engineer with excellent skills for fishing and playing card games. Thanks to him I now have a much better understanding for the theory of relativity.

Mariantoinetta as the wife of our captain had the role of fulfilling his wildest dreams in the field of the culinary. Sometimes I picked up good tips for cooking from her as well as handy Spanish sentences. Cono! mueve ese culo!

Robert Jr. is their 13-year-old son who enjoyed getting run over on the wrestling mattress at the end of the boat but also in the field of board games.

Sally came from London to do most of the communication with surrounding boats and excelled also at the field of cleaning dishes.

Francesco is the Italian bad boy who quit smoking, and was summoned when the generator caught fire.

My special skills in the kitchen granted me four times the honour of preparing food for the lucky diners.

Spectacular spectators

Thomas came to say goodbyes just before the start

Mariantonieta and Sally were mostly behind the cameras

Too many boats on the sea

Starting line

Fruits preserve better in nets

We had some problems with Amel system second gennaker

Sailing

At the sea the days followed each other with great similarity

-waking up and eating corn flakes

-altering sails if it was needed

-few games of checkers

-taking a nap

-waking up when we caught a fish

-reading a book

-dinner

-playing cards

-another nap

-some excercises or measuring strength with Robertito

-evening snack

-sleeping / night watch

2-3 hours divided in watching stars, excercising, listening music, thinking and plain relaxing, 

although on the rougher nights the time was used on observing the wind strengt/direction

other boats, possible squalls and altering sails depending on those elements.

The celestial activity peaked at the third night when I counted 9 flying stars and one huge meteorite that lit the sky. With each flying star I kept wishing various wishes but mostly for longer and thicker eyebrows. My wish is still yet to be granted

Madonna de barbuta

picture for my mother

Sailor warriors

We are hoping to get the prize for the best fishing.

1 Sailfish which we accidentally let it go as it was too small anyway, around 8kg

1 Wahoo, 5kg

3 Bonitos, 3-4kg

19 Dorados, 2-8kg

Biggest fish

Same fish

Same fish

Solar extravaganza

Training mattress

training mattress

Modelling for Armani

San Francesco

After 17 days we arrived at St. Lucia and the crew prowed the last requirement of being a true sailors by absorbing great amounts of rum.

Direction further

Las Palmas

When we arrived to Las Palmas we still had no idea who the captain was going to take as crew to Cap Verde. We landed, bought some food and headed to have meeting with the other intended crew of the ship. During shopping we found out that the expenses of the cruise were much higher than what we originally had thought. So far I have been paying for food something around 10e a day, for this boat expenses were over 17e. At the meeting it turned out that the other crew was as loosely informed as we were. The Italian guy had acquired a boat already and the girl from belgium was not too eager to join. It was up to us to decide if we wanted to join the boat. As the atmosphere was a bit tense, captain obviously quite indececive, language of boat was France and expenses a bit too high I decided to jump the boat. Thomas did the same after me and boat ended up with just two person going to Cap Verde in the end.

Night at the beach

We slept the night in the boat and next morning had early start in the harbour meeting with all boats in order to join. We made few contacts with promising boats and it was already late evening when we finished the days work. In the city was WOMAD festival going on and after some dinner we headed to the festival. Music was great but people seemed to be mostly interested in getting drunk. We did not find any place to sleep so at 4 in the night the best alternative was the beach in the north peninsula of the city. Night was not cold but some small drizzles did occur.

Morning view

Beach hotel

In the morning I felt quite tired and after a small lunch and chilling in the park we tried to find internet access for searching accomodation. After failing in that we decided to head to a squat house which the belgian girl had recommended.

Stone on beach

Auditorium

Surfer

La Tomatera was buzzling with life although they said there had been much more people before. They had recently introduced a set of rules in order to organize the house a bit. We were allowed to stay for one week as the previous guests had just left. La Tomatera had interesting mixture of people living in a community kind of resembling a large falimy, including mostly artists, hippies and lunatics. I felt comfortable there and was looking forward to the soon to be occupation of another nearby house for the community.

Entrance hall

Toilet with water

Alice in wonderland in Spanish

Livingroom

We spent one evening painting the walls

Night vision

Thomas plays guitar much better than flute

My fingerprints in the wings

Someone added rainbow arch for dancing couple

My favourite drawing in the house 

Everyone were still sleeping when I headed for the boat

I got a email of one boat i had been hoping to join and they welcomed me aboard. It was quite hard decicion for me to choose between luxurious passage overseas and possibility of being a part of building the community. I chose the passage as I knew it would be hard to find as good one later.

For long time I have concidered myself as an excellent chef but When I had my first lunch in the boat it was the first time ever I have questioned my skills in making food. The standards our boat has in cuisine are amazingly high. The olive oil they brought from Italy is by far the best I have ever tasted, the guava marmalade was truly incredible and wine also top notch. Mariantoinette is professional chef and that can not be missed.

In the last few days we prepared the boat for the passage and trained a bit lifting the sails. Next sunday starts my first big ocean crossing.

The ARC starts on sunday