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Atlantic Crossing

arrive on December 17. With our Southerly 35RS, the third smallest boat
at the start, but by far the heaviest of the three, we decided to try our
luck in the South rather than risking no wind by going too early towards
the West.
2.1 Along the coast of Morocco
The start was fairly quiet, with a 11 knots wind. Some boats hoisted their
spinnaker. At the end of the afternoon we entered the acceleration zone
between the Canary islands, and the
wind strength- we were surrounded by ened significantly, we
took two reefs fluorescent arrows: it for the night. We took it
well because the was dolphins, playing wind rose to 25 knots in
the middle of the night, with strong
gusts and rapid around the hull. We changes of direction; we
were in the vor- could hear their breath. tex area in the South of
the islands, and the vortices caused us
some violent unintentional gybes and luffs. First bruises for Christine who
put on her lumbar belt.
On the VHF, the Spanish coastguards were speaking continuously, day and
night, making us really punch drunk, and we were impatient to leave this
area. Many messages warned us against migrant boats spotted between
the Moroccan coast and the Canaries: we should not approach them and
report them to the coastguard. Other messages were addressed to the
cargo ships to let them know that there were sailboats everywhere! Dur-
ing the night, I put into service our Hydrovane windvane, which will have
kept the helm almost all the time until the finish line. The water had
green and yellow fluorescence in our wake: we never tired of observing
this magical phenomenon.

On the morning of the 25th we met Kia Ora, who had obviously chosen to
immediately head West. We put our water turbine in the water, which
immediately began to recharge the batteries. We did 117 miles in the first
24 hours. Not too bad, but we could still improve our settings. The wind
eased during the day and we released the second reef, which we took
again when the wind strengthened at dusk. It eased during the night, we

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