Link to our other sailing adventures

Departing Soon
Date: Monday, January 07, 2002 8:22 AM

Hello,

Gale and I are part of a crew of five sailing a brand new Amel Super Maramu 2000 (length 53' - see http://www.amel.fr/) from the Canary Islands to Bequia in the Caribbean, about 2700 miles. The owner is a friend of Gale's brother, Bruce. Bruce sailed across the Atlantic on the owner's previous Amel sailboat and encouraged us to accept the invitation to do the crossing on his new boat. The boat, named "Twowowie", was built in La Rochelle, France and launched last November, but the delivery skipper hired to get the boat to the Canary Islands has been delayed by bad weather and the holidays. He was still stuck in Spain last week with gale force headwinds offshore, about 5 days sail from the Canaries. We think he left Spain last Thursday.

Gale and I are now leaving Indiana on the 9th and plan to return on February 1.  Our friends, Charles and JoAnn, with there 4-year-old boy, Andrew, are moving into our house to take care of Gus and Haley while we are away (thank you, Charles and JoAnn!).

Lowell, the boat owner, has rented a satellite phone and I got the data kit, so we hooked the sat phone to a laptop. Seems to work well. Send and receive airtime, both voice and data, is $1.84 per minute, so we won't be web browsing and I'll limit the size of the messages I download and send. Feel free to email us questions, comments and anything else you like, as long as it's not a big file.

Take care, Kirk and Gale

The Adventure Begins!
Date: Thursday, January 10, 2002 2:56 PM

Hola,

We have arrived on Gran Canaria Island, position latitude 28 degrees North and longitude 16 degrees West. Gran Canaria is one of the Canary Islands, a chain of islands in the Atlantic Ocean just 40 miles offshore from Morocco (see the attached picture file). The Canary Islands belong to Spain, so the language spoken here is primarily Spanish.

We left home Wednesday morning, flying from Indianapolis to Chicago, then across the Atlantic to Madrid (the capitol city of Spain), and finally to the Aeropuerto de Las Palmas on Gran Canaria Island.  We then had a 30 mile taxi ride and arrived at our destination, the seaside town of Porto de Mogan on the southwest side of Gran Canaria Island, on Thursday afternoon.  Click on this link http://www.internetmogan.com/english/pdmogan.htm for information and pictures of Porto de Mogan. What took us 1 day to travel by air will take almost 3 weeks to travel by boat!

Lowell Blossom, the owner of "Twowowie", met us at the taxi stand and helped us move ourselves and our seven bags of luggage (lots of books!) aboard.  Our position will not change until next Monday, when we expect the northeasterly trade winds to start blowing. The weather here today is mid-70's temperature with occasional showers and a light and variable breeze.  In the meantime, we will be buying and storing provisions (groceries), learning about the boat, getting over our jet lag and enjoying the sights and sounds of Porto de Mogan. On Monday morning, if the weather permits, we will check out of the country and set off across the "pond".

Time for a siesta...adios amigos! Gale and Kirk