I met Didier the other day when I saw a tiny little boat at the end of our pontoon here in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Walked over trying to eliminate my suspicion and in fact it turned opposite – my suspicion substantiated while listening to his story.
Didier had finally thrown the lines but by chance he turned up in Las Galletas, where we met him again while visiting our friend Rainer from SY Geronimo. The trip over there took him almost 24 hours and he decided for another stop in the South of Tenerife to wait for more favourable weather before heading over to New York/United States.
It is a crazy adventure and hard to imagine for an outsider what it means to cross the Atlantic Ocean in such a tiny little paddling boat.
I love Didier’s paintings!
Fair winds…& Bon voyage Didier !
It was getting late last night but fascination and excitement took over having some very nice QSOs around the world. A snapshot from the HAM Logbook:
2200 UTC, 7163kHz, LSB:
– DL7MDB / Stefan / Madeira 
– DL7MEF / Franz / Augsburg 
– KE1Y / Rolf / New Hamshire 
– HK3JCL / Lothar / Colombia 
2300 UTC / 14162 / USB:
– V3CWB / Mike / Victoria 🇦🇺
– K2UQT / Tom / New York 🇺🇸
Although the propagation forecast was not that promising for these connections it worked surprisingly very well. On the 40m band (7MHz) I took little help of WebSDR Lisbon but the 20m band (14MHz) was extremely clear in both directions, Victoria/Australia and New York/United States. I was literally speaking sitting in the middle of Mike and Tom but that is perhaps a matter of perspective. 😅 Nevertheless I got R5 and S7 reports from both of them. R5 stands for “Readability”and means “Perfectly readable”and S7 stands for “Strength”and confirms that my signal was received “Moderately strong”.
Stefan came in with R5 and S9. Being based in Santa Cruz on Madeira, it was a nice coincident to connect the two Santa Cruz between Portugal and Spain. The connection was loud and clear at both ends, which surprised me as I am hiding behind some 900m high mountains towards the direction of Madeira. Perhaps the signal travelled the long way…who knows?!? 🤔
The testing will continue.
Fair winds…
Okay-lah…to speak in the slang of my Asian friends…this photo flavours an interesting and perhaps frowning welcome here in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Not sure how google is going to translate that sentence. You find out. 😅
Anyway, following a warm welcome with Jutta and Willi over a cold “Einlaufbier” my busy schedule included the engine oil change upon arrival and its completion before sunset. It was tight and cleaning the mess needs to wait until tomorrow.
Good night & fair winds…
The wind died not in line with the weather forecast but so be it. Apart from the fast speed ferries between the two major cities on these islands, there was one fishing boat and that’s it.
One of my trials during this trip was also to attach small tiny little photos to the logblog entries to make them more fashionable. It all depends on the Pactor connnection you can catch at a certain time from a certain location but in principal it works. There is a limitation of 180kb per mail in order not to jam the frequencies.
Tenerife is now coming up in the mist, another 8 nautical miles ahead of us and I better stop now and take sharp lookup to prepare for landfall.
Jutta and Willi from SY Leonie are expecting me as per my ETA announced.
Fair winds…
We are approaching the TSS between Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Not much traffic though and in about 4 hours we should reach our destination for the day. The weather is beautiful, some wind for motorsail but no jet effect so far. These jet effects, also called acceleration zones, are famous for 30kn winds out of nothing. You can first see them coming on the water surface before they hit you shortly after. At least these are sailor´s fairytailes spreading around but I cannot judge from own experience. For sure they exists. We have got changing conditions between 3 to 15kn wind, mainly from SE direction but it shall change after lunch to a more nothern direction. The ocean is taking some long breath today. 2.5m wave height at a period of more than 15 seconds. This long atlantic swell is fantastic. Sometimes you feel like sitting on a rooftop bar watching down into big dales.
A lot of HAM activities during the passage. Obviously I did another test on the equipment and the result was very positive. I believe the additional counterpoise put in place together with Lothar/EA8DES has a positive impact on the overall installation. I could talk to Uwe/DF5AM, fellow sailor Ralf/DM3RH/mm from SY malwieder, Uwe/DD1HUR/mm on his boat in Torreveija, etc.
Together with Lothar I am also exploring the HF Chat Funktion, which can be very usefull providing reliable connnections under difficult atmospheric conditions. It is basically a SMS Chat for HAM boys and girls but works via HF worldwide not depending on any telco sim card or wifi network.
Time for another cup of tea now.
Fair winds…
