Occhi Indaco - Burned freckled bums and broken rudders

After a completely calm day with no winds at all, the night showed itself from a completely different angle. It was actually a lovely night to start with, not as foggy as it had been the night before. We still kept an eye on the radar all the way out to 24 nm for these tricky squalls … oh boy they are tricky. We saw a few spots here and there but nothing to really worry us as they soon dissipated. It got a bit greyish and foggy and a big squall went in front of us and we just had to adjust course a few degrees to avoid it, a little rain and mild breeze passed us. We went on trying to zig and zag our way between the squalls. At one point we thought we were going to thread the needle between two storms but then, of course, they merged together leaving us in the middle. And it was pouring. read more...

Occhi Indaco - Big Squal and Burning diesel

It’s just past midnight and we have been sailing for 12 whole days now. We have finally reached calm seas, but maybe a little too calm. We have had to put on the engine and have been motoring for the last 6 hours. The forecast does not really give us any hope that it will change any time soon. We are heading a little south to see if we can find any sailable wind. We really hope this will be our only night of motoring. The engine has kept our crew awake with its rumbling. Yesterday evening it was a bit windy. Crew was on deck - one playing the guitar and having to secure the music with laundry pegs. Throughout the evening we were ahead of Skye blue but alas, they passed us and we ran into terrible squalls. A double whammy. Right around 22:00 we registered on the radar 3 fronts that seemed. read more...

Occhi Indaco - Squalls, balls and waterfalls

Today is Thursday December 1st. It’s a little after midnight UTC -2 . It’s a cloudy night and pretty gusty. Directly above us we can still see the stars but unfortunately the moon is shrouded by large ominous clouds. We are passing Skye Blue on our starboard side. They are only a mile out so we are constantly getting a collision alert from the Vesper. We have put on the radar and see that we are sailing directly into a squall. We already felt the wind gust up to TWS 26 kts from this particular cloud, and have furled the staysail in to be safe. The main is reefed down once. It is at moments like this when you sail into storms that you feel very small and insignificant. We crossed our halfway point just before noon on Tuesday. We celebrated with a bottle of champagne - a nice bottle of. read more...

Occhi Indaco - Chaotic seas and yummy desserts

It is already our 8th day at sea (it’s Monday) and constant long nights have tired the crew. We have decided to change the boat time today so we are now UTC-2. The last two days have been messy… winds and waves have been everywhere and crew watch shifts have been completely turned upside down while we have combated the ever changing conditions. One crew member has been sick which has also had an effect on our watch schedule. Yesterday we decided it was a day off so no chores. The crew took advantage of the time to relax and it was very quiet on deck. Chores aside, there was a lot of cooking as the freezer also decided it was its day off- we needed to prepare many foods that had thawed. It was a great excuse to make a delicious 😋 banana cake, a carrot cake, and apple crumble. None of. read more...

Occhi Indaco - Almost a normal day at sea

Now it is already day 6 or rather just 00:35 and the weather is much better. Yesterday was the first day where we had a more normal day. Nothing broke (dare we even tempt fate to say that!) We still have a few issues that need attending but nothing critical so it has been postponed for later today. Our slightly battered crew had a nice time untangling fishing lines, reading books, watching movies, exercising, relaxing,making flap jack, doing laundry, massaging, cooking , dolphin watching and we even saw a shark. We had the water maker going so all our bottles for water have been refilled. As a treat we also have a soda-stream so we are able to make fizzy water. Our project in making yoghurt is not really working out as it should, but we will probably try again. Our freezer is going out. read more...