Ipanema - Blog from the Ipanema

Dear all,   The Team from Ipanema is enjoying the rally to thefullest. Of course we have our hiccups and challenges. We had to do somesailrepairs because of not too successful manoeuvres. We saild through a squallthat rinsed the ship and made us go north for an hour or so. None of the issueshave seriously slowed us down. We lost some hours with speed because of atwisted gennaker that demanded that one of us had to climb the mast. As we writethis mini blog everything is up and running. Fingers crossed.   We heard there is snow in The Netherlands. What aperfect contrast with the sunny weather here on the ocean 1166 Nm from StLucia.   As 'Sinterklaas' is already in The Netherlands, we sentour partners the following message (it only makes sense in Dutch)  Ver van alles en. read more...

Ipanema update

We turned to the West!We finally hit the tradewinds... The first few days after the start were "mixed" from a weather and wind perspective. We choose to follow a more South-Easterly route, because that was said to bring the wind earlier... Not sure if its was the right decision; it is hard for us to compare our position to the others. We do not see any other boats anymore.Crew and boat are doing fantastic; everything still works thanks to a mildly conservative sailing approach. The skipper is definitely held back by his crew a littleHighlights yesterday: a 4 men "party" on the foredeck trying to rescue the gennaker (that was spun around the forestay). When it was successfully pulled down, we all were covered with sail. And at the same time, looking over the stern, we saw a whale. read more...

Ipanema - Hello from the Ipanema

Dear all,   It was a good experience to prepare ourselves for thecrossing of the ocean in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. We have met many nicecrews, got useful advice and we appreciated the interactions with the staff ofthe World Cruising Organisation. Our final week in Las Palmas was very typicalfor an ARC team. We had our ship lifted out of the water to clean it from allkind of plants and animals that had started living on the underwater part of theship. New antifouling made it look super and we hope the antifouling willprotect us from new stuff that will slow us down.   We also did the last maintenance, bought new spare partsand worked on safety items that were verified by the experts from the WorldCruising Organisation.  Various shops and the mercado (market) at Las. read more...

Ipanema - First blog: ready for departure

We have been working to make Ipanema and ourselves ready for this great sailing event. We will do some posting of progress here. Three hours beforedeparture we want to thank our partners, family, friends and colleagues who have helped us to make this possible!   We will keep you posted!   Best regards from captain and crew from the Ipanema   Martin, Roef, Robert, Piet and Henk. read more...