14 days and a few hours after leaving Mindello, Cape Verde, Ernestina arrived safely at Port St Charles, Barbados on Sunday 29th December 2019 with crew all well, but exhausted.



The first few days out were surprisingly rough with conflicting wave-trains making a very uncomfortable sea-state. This combined with getting into the routine of the watch-system made sleeping difficult at the start of our passage.

As the days and nights passed we settled into the routine. Our watch-system shifted slightly each day so that that we all got to see sun-rises and sun-sets as well as being “mother” every 4th day. “Mother” gets to cook the evening meal; with Amanda’s excellent victualling and menus and help in the galley we were well fed throughout the trip.

In particular, Christmas Day was a fine feast. We hoved-to for confit duck and potatoes roasted in duck fat followed by Christmas pudding from Lucy’s mum. Christmas crackers and fairy lights all around the saloon completed the atmosphere. Then a quick mid-Atlantic dip for Nick and we were on our way again.

Our main problem was the failure of the auto-pilot part-way in to our journey. We got the manuals out, identified the fault code and had a few sat.phone calls to an engineer in the UK. We were however unable to fix the problem so we had to hand steer 24/7 -normally on this sort of trip the auto-pilot would do a significant amount of the steering. The first few days of heavy seas, when we perhaps over-used the auto-pilot,  probably took their toll.  Nevertheless, the  crew all stepped-up without complaint and made their watches on time, every time.  

As we made progress to the west the wind came more from the east and we unpacked the spinnaker for daylight sessions. It took a few broken lines before we figured out that the jaws at the end of the spinnaker pole had a rough spot that was chafing. We improvised a solution using a soft-shackle which worked well and we had several very good spinnaker days.  



In terms of wildlife there were flying fish everywhere and we saw dolphins of various sorts several times, but the highlight was undoubtedly the pod of Orcas. Quite a few sea-birds too, some surprisingly right in the middle of the crossing.

Overall a great trip - challenging at times and hard work but very glad to have done it.  It seems unreal to be sitting in the shade of a tree a few yards from small waves breaking gently on to white sand looking at Ernestina out in the bay.

We hope to make it to the New Year party at Barbados yacht club courtesy of Lucy’s friend Tino tonight and plan to leave Barbados for Grenada on 2nd January. 

Happy New Year to everyone,

From all aboard Ernestina,

Nick. & Amanda,

And Lucy

And Andy