Day 1 - Leaving Mindelo

Today's the day and we're finally leaving the harbour of Mindelo Cape Verde for the big adventure of crossing the Atlantic. Everything is stocked up and ready but we are a big group of people who want to cross together, which makes starting much more difficult. Whenever there is a big group like this, some person does something, the others wait, get bored, and soon another person goes off, using the time to just do another thing before inevitably, after the person left to do their thing the other one returns, and the one who everyone was originally waiting for is back, but now somebody else is gone doing their thing, and the cycle repeats.

First Cedrick has a shower, then Rebecca goes into the city to get a package delivered, then Jules takes a shower, then I get fish croquettes, then Christian orders lunch, and so on, until eventually everybody is back from their chores at the same time and we go to our boats, really getting ready to leave. The plan was 12:00 now it's already 15:00. We are taking pictures of the group before leaving. Look at those happy crazy adventurous souls. I like our group of neighbours and fellow sailors.

In total we are leaving together as a group of 5 boats. There is the Belgian couple, Lola and Jules, on the Rivre e Vivre, the crazy French Solo sailors, Cedrick on his IO and Sara on her Django, then the Ostfriese Siggi, with his small dog, also solo sailing, and finally us 3 on the Tarpan.

Two out of three crew members of the Tarpan are from Berlin. Isn't it fitting that this boat still has the old place of registration there? Is this fate?

By the time everything and everyone is ready to leave the sun turned golden. A beautiful time to leave, though a bit late in the day. Instead of 12:00 as planned it is now 16:00. But this is boat life, there are always delays, always another thing to fix, to get ready, to wait for, to do, to make sure of.

But now we leave. For real. Somehow my brain still can't process it. We're really going to cross the Atlantic, all of us, together, at least in spirit, probably only in sight for the first couple of miles before the winds bring us to different places because of the differences of currents, winds, boats and so on.

We blow the air horns while leaving the harbour, a mad grin on everybody's face, waving to the people still there in the Marina, our friends and neighbours. Somehow it feels like leaving home sweet home to venture out into the literal unknown.

Once out of the harbour we set our sails. A beautiful diamond butterfly combination of two foresails. Pure luxury, because it's easy to sail, rather forgiving in its demands for the direction of the wind and still quite fast and basically perfect for sailing with wind coming from behind. The trade winds should come from behind most if not all of the way and so maybe we can leave this same sailing combination up for the entire time. Let's see. The giant diamond filled with wind is a sight to behold. Our ship, like a giant butterfly upon the waves; we set our course and are off toward the horizon. Off towards the ocean, towards the sea.

The destination is Guadeloupe. We changed back and forth from Martinique to Guadeloupe a few times, but in the end the whole group settled on Guadeloupe for God knows what reasons. Both islands are terrific and beautiful and the idea of reaching there fills the mind with pictures of blue turquoise waters and white sand beaches. But we are still a good 2000 sea miles (about 4000 km) away from that.

The sun is beautiful on our way out and seeing the other boats setting sail and the mountains of the island slowly disappear behind the mist in the distance is wonderful too. Do you see the IO in the first picture?

It's official now. We are sailing! And we are way on our way towards the other side of this great big pond, the Atlantic. The radio is chattering with the voices of the other people, all on their little boats, all excited for this adventure, all happy to be leaving and to be leaving together. The idea is to have company while sailing, to sail with the knowledge that should something happen to you, the next souls are not too far off. And this feeling of community and a shared goal and purpose, of helping each other out, should the need arise, is beautiful, comforting, something I'll remember and take away from this trip.

Other people make our time worthwhile. It's the same insight from "Into the Wild". People make up this world, and happiness, without others, if it can't be shared, is worth nothing.