Saying goodbye to Madeira

If I could choose one single super talent I would like to be able to stop time. At least that's how i felt yesterday when we stated that almost 3/4 of the trip has passed. Living in the moment has made me totally lose all sense of time. I know when it's Sunday since we get eggs and bacon for breakfast, but around Wednesday I'm back at square one. Realizing that Christmas is in less than 1 month is hard as-well walking around in a t-shirt with the sun burning in your face.

Today I had the day off, thanks to the captains decision to stay in Madeira until Sunday. Thankfully, the sun was shining already at the line-up which helped a lot with getting energy into the system and ignoring the fact that it was 8 o'clock in the morning. I made a deal with my friends Nils to rest until 9 and then go take a walk. So i laid down in Martas knees and closed my eyes for a second. Big mistake! When Nils woke me up from my nap I had lost all the energy I had in the morning. But a deal is a deal and I dragged myself out of the sofa and up on deck. The sun was still shining and we ended up walking for two hours, getting to know the city. On our way home we spotted a catamaran in the port, and Nils told me how he planned to build one. I thought it sounded really exciting, and we started ventilating all sort of things. Let's say next summer is pretty booked up, since we are now planning to work at Gunilla with maintenance work, build a catamaran and buy a Stortriss. We came back for lunch but left the boat again right after with a bigger group. The original plan was to visit the famous cathedral, but it opened at 16 so we sat down at a cafe in the old city. It was placed right beside the fruit market and we decided to give it a shot, but agreed all together that we wouldn't let each other be tempted to buy anything from the woman who fooled our friends yesterday to buy fruit for 800 Swedish crowns. It worked out well, even though the woman came up to us and tried to give us taste tests all the time.

For dinner, the chef made incredible homemade falafel that we enjoyed in the dining room. Suddenly our chief officer Leo stood up and asked for our attention. As a spontaneous reaction we all got nervous knowing that corona can put us in tricky situations any second, but Leo calmed us down informing that he was holding a weather presentation later tonight if we were interested. Everyone encouraged him to do so, and we agreed to meet up half an hour after dinner in front of the tv. Said and done, we gathered together with uncountable cups of tea and blankets ready to find out what our future days on the sea were going to offer. Leo showed us pictures of how the wind was moving and explained that there was a storm right outside Madeira, but hopefully we would managed to sail at the borders of it. If not, we would end up in 43 knots of wind, in average. A nervous laugh spread through the audience, revealing a combination of excitement and terror. I guess we'll just have to mentally prepare and go straight into beast mode no matter what happens. The day ended perfectly with a massage from the electric neck massager that William bought earlier that day. Tomorrow we are leaving Madeira heading towards Portimao with our beloved Gunilla, or as Marco calls her, The drunk turtle.

Caroline Jendeby NAS2023