Lille Ø is our cruising sailboat, a 1979 Amigo 40. A Swedish-built boat with a Danish name, a Finnish crew, and sailing under the German flag. Follow our adventures as we explore the coasts of the Baltic Sea and beyond!
Winds have been remarkably consistent, and so the boat has been mostly left to its own devices, sailing us towards Polynesia. The slight downward trend in wind speeds means that we’re now flying full sail.
As right now we rely 100% on solar for our power, the constant battle is keeping the panels clear. Our nightly visitors have a tendency to leave gifts.
Life in the trade winds is different. We are not so frantically looking at the weather anymore, a single checkup a day seems to provide all the information we need. The boat moves more as the waves come taller and closer together. Moving inside has become a task of planning 3 points of contact at all times, which is easy enough in a small boat. Cooking and doing the dishes has become task requiring skills in acrobatics too. Sleeping is an action of wedging yourself tightly in with pillows, so you don’t roll around but get a good night sleep. Skills we haven’t needed in a while. The boat sails itself beautifully, the humans inside need to adjust a bit more. Now, at least, we have time to do that!
Overnight the winds kept picking up, and by morning we finally found the trade winds around 5°S. At 5°30 we caught a favourable current, and turned our bow towards Marquesas. Now it theoretically should be sailing in a straight line for the remaining 2900NM.
With new moon approaching, the nights are starting to be quite dark. But at least this affords us a nice view of the Milky Way.
The wind has kept constant for the past 24 hours. Only small puffly clouds spot the sky, so the batteries are full at 2pm. We run the watermaker every day and we keep the tank full. Excess water is then used for fresh water showers or like today, for laundry. We aim to be somewhat civilized so that other boats first see us, not smell us.
As the calms are now hopefully behind us, the birds have stopped visiting. They still try to land on the aft panel, but at this speed, the runway is too short and the landings are unsuccesful. At night the swallow tailed gulls hunt around the boat making their gurgling sounds and the white fluttering shapes keep disappearing and reappering from the darkness.
What a difference a day makes! Around 8pm we caught an easterly breeze and could stop motoring, and around midnight the wind was strong enough for the windvane to steer.
Night was cloudless, and the only challenge was a trawler that crossed our bow, the long trawl lit like a string of Christmas lights.
The lovely conditions continued throughout the day, and we’ve been able to enjoy leisurely ocean sailing on a beam reach without having to touch a single line. These are not yet the trade winds, but it feels we’re on the trail to find them.
In the morning, Suski caught a tuna, providing us with some new variation in the menu.
As the night fell, we motored on hoping for wind. In the early hours of morning it came, suddenly and fast. 20kn out of the darkness. So we rolled out a sliver of genoa and sailed! Since then the wind keeps disappearing and reappearing randomly. The sky is grey and the seas confused. So to keep up the morale, we motor the in betweens because drifting would be just too umcomfortable. Neither of us is sleeping well with the constant changes in conditions. At least we are making solid progress now.
Quite a huge difference with the forecast, where it was supposed to be sunny with light but consistent wind.
We finally hit the proper convergence zone, and so the night went with fickle winds, heavy rain, and some thunder in the distance.
What a difference the hard dodger and the new backdrop make in these conditions! One could sit on watch outside, and stay perfectly dry!
By midmorning the sky cleared, and we could actually enjoy some sailing with the wind on the beam. Now approaching dinner time we reached the next calm patch, and this time we decided to punch through it under engine power.
The night was windless. At first we were slowly sailing. By the midnight watch change, the wind died completely. As we both were awake, we decided that it was time for some motor maintenance aka motoring time. We have decided to run the motor for an hour or so every week to keep it happy on the long passage.
After the 1.5 hours of motoring Lille Ø slowly drifted towards NW. At dawn the wind picked up to 4kn, which ment that we could again choose the direction we were going, not the current. As the night draws closer, we are enjoying 6kn of wind, which at this point feels like a lot!
The bird of the day was a brown booby sitting at the aft solar panel.
We’ve been at sea for a week, and the days are starting to blend into a continuous stream of watches. Sleep, sail, sleep, sail.
Conditions remain light and very comfortable as we ghost our way to the southwest. Beam reach, and the boat just glides on the blue ocean. We had two brief visits from dolphins at night and in the morning.
This was our slowest day yet. Wind has been under 5kn for most of the time. At night a frigate bird decided to use the aft solar panel as its sleeping spot. In the morning it left and behind it a very thoroughly pooped panel. The panel got washed, and soon after two swallow-tailed gulls decided that aft panel is the coolest place to hang out. We seem to be popular with the local wildlife.
At noon, with 3 nautical miles to equator, the wind picked up and we were able to hoist the mainsail too. Suski went to bed and was woken up before crossing the equator for the audience with Neptune’s court that had assembled for the line crossing ceremony. Neptune raised water from the deep and both Suski and Bergie were doused properly and thusly accepted to Neptune’s court as shellbacks.
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Now we are sailing further SW in search of the trade winds that are at the moment 5°S, so a few slow days are still in ahead of us.
