Crew in La Rochelle night before leaving
Nane and Axel -
Axel is project management guru from SAP Germany
Nane runs her own travel agency in Hamburg's Netterfeld shopping center They brought most of the boat stuff from Hamburg to la Rochelle and Nane helped with the initial equipment of the boat. Axel stayed on board until Malaga, where Nane joined for one more weekend.
Timo
Was “just” on board for the first week(end) but being the first “captain” of Summerwind since I own her. It was his job to move Summerwind from Les Sables D Olonne to La Rochelle and to help with the hand over. Timo is IT guy with well known reputation in Finland and runs his own company. He is also partner of Cruising Catamarans OY and owned a Lagoon410 by his own
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Harri
Harri is experienced sailor and was colleague in a project at Nokia where we were working at that time. Harri helped for 3 weeks and it was really good to have an ocean proved profi on board. On this photo you see Harri in excellent mud actively practicing finish humor. His generation of Fins don't understand the young guyes like Kimmo Raikonnen so openly expressing there emotions in puplic.
Wolfgang
Wolfgang is independent IT consultant, bon vivant and most important good friend of mine. His inimitable talent is that he can fix thinks – just give him time and he comes with solution. He joined cross Biscay and fixed the dingy engine (we forgot to open the fuel tap), deep sounder (Available menu was in France and the dam thing was beeping every time a wave was lifting the boat, what was all the time) and the crew with the first warm food after stormy night in Biscay
The whole trip started relay scary - Nane and Mia were suppose to bring our rental bus from La Rochelle to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Ok, you got it, right, 2 blond girls, automobile, strange country, Paris airport. Explain that to homeland security and you are arrested on the spot. This is scary stuff. Till today Axel believes the whole thing only went right because of charming good looking France man helped ... and truth being truth, I can also not see any other explaination the car arriving without scratch in time at the drop of point.
Shake down started in La Rochelle
"That's the story of the story of the trip: I wrote it with commitment and passion; optimism and objectivity but it’s gone. Possibly a computer virus attacked my computer and wrecked the story. A buggy program (Microsoft I guess) didn’t help and mystic power failure (check X-files) adds to the total disaster. No kidding – the story is sucked into space. Could be of course, I just lost the file. So here is what I do – I keep looking … in the meantime you have to live with photos"
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it
Wolfgang and me to pick up Dingy 1 with Dingy 2 - not exactly in best shape (us and Dingy 2)
Nice and clean before leaving
Leaving La Rochelle under engine with 3 days smooth forecast. We wanted to play save which worked out well for 1 night. Second night, thunderstorm, wind only 25 knots west south west but waves absolutely freaky. I was somehow fascinated but some crew members suggested to go nearer to the cost – and as we were not familiar with the boat I agreed. Which was a big mistake, weather got better the next day but south west turned to west which gave us nice headwind. It was almost impossible to round Capo Ortegal. We arrived in La Corunna after 72 hours and 407 nm. Crew suggested to rename Summerwind in "Constant-head-wind"
As you can sea it was not that warm. In the background you see Spanish North West coast. We used both engines to motor against the head wind
Axel mid Biscay: ... "All Journeys have a secret destination of which the traveler is unaware"
Summerwind in La Corunna city harbour. La Corunna, Old city center, smoked ham, wine, great
Wolfgang after cleaning up (the bottle)
Manoeuvre gulp - 1 bottle of Gin (in the first 30 minutes ... )
First day sightseeing - time to leave, isn't it
Trip to Porto - some wind on the first day. We were on a schedule so we had to leave out many great locations
First real sun - look at the boys. As Samantha would say: These are guys, they don't talk they fight. They can't help it. It's all that crazy testosterone, God bless it.
Here it is - the end of the world - Capo Finis terre
so will we fall down - end of the world and so - better have a drink ...
while Axel is on the helm ... look at his face, what is he thinking about ...
Famous bridge in Porto - if you approach Porto without map - here is no Marina, you are too far, you are a bad skipper and your seamanship is lousy. Sightseeing tour with boat is NOT appreciated from your crew. They don't like it. They want to have the ugly industry harbor and have there bottle of Gin. I liked it - does anybody give a dam?
Going south from Porto I made maybe the biggest mistake on the tour, but it is a typical one. I knew I should have gone first west before making south but you always think you can short cut. We had the typical Portuguese north wind force 4 and sailing was fast and great. Then the North turned into a North west and accelerating. As we were to near to the coast we were in the surf zone, waves were extremely high and speed ed the boat up to – this is no joke to 25 knots (The average speed this hours where 8 knots, so you can see that the boat was accelerated and then stopped). I took all sails away which slowed down the boat but made the trip unpleasant. The wind turned into West North West and I will never forget 02.00 AM at night Nau dos Corvos at Cabo Carvoeiro 39º24' 9º30' in screaming west being pressed onto the lee shore. We made the passage between Cabo Carvoeiro Farol da Berlenga and the situation became better but we decided to continue to Sines instead of going to Lisbon. This would give us an excellent starting point for a trip around Capo de San Vicente and spare us a night trip to Lisbon Marina. Prison rats would reject this food - but at that moment it was better then 5* Buffet in Kempinski Surfing the waves
Summerwind in Sines