Yes, we are still here.

Yes, Slapdash is for sale.

We expected to be in Barbados before Christmas. After bashing the ARC people and their crazy deadline it figures that they would get the last laugh by enjoying the last good weather window for 6 weeks. We expected to leave right after the LPG wizard topped off our tanks, but by then storms in the northern Atlantic were pushing swell at us from the northwest. Four boats that left the day before our planned departure date returned to harbour with tales of the gnarly conditions. We decided to just let it pass and take the next window, but storm after storm just kept creating the same scenario; wind from the NE and big swell from the NW. Initially this really bugged us; we were getting up every morning and checking the weather hoping for a change. We didn’t want to be stuck in Las Palmas, and the day-to-day status kept us from having much fun. That all changed when we decided to just stop fretting about it and changed our mindset from ‘we’re leaving tomorrow’ to ‘we’ll leave when we have a good window’. It changed the daily disappointments to a weekly event, much better, and since then we’ve really enjoyed our unplanned time here. Jaime has been making use of the free bikes every day. They have a system of city bikes and once you have registered you can walk up to any bike stand, SMS the bike number, and the lock magically pops open. When you are finished with your bike you just lock it back up in one of the city bike racks. They have one right here at the marina which we have put to good use; Sight- seeing, grocery shopping, little errands… perfect!

View at Picasa 05-Dec-2011 08:59, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 3.2, 6.7mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 80

We managed to clean up our pre-departure list. It’s the first time that we actually completed every item. Invariably there are several things that just get erased or carry over forever, so for the first time since we left the whiteboard is clean.

Then some Swedish neighbors pulled into the slip next to us in a cool little purple boat that they had rescued, rebuilt, and sailed here from Sweden. See if you can find out about it online. It’s the famous Tua Tua Suecia and has a cool history. One that they grudgingly tell to Swedish old men that knock on their hull at 7am to ask about. Repeatedly.  Anyway we didn’t know it at the time but the Swedes would become good neighbours and great friends. They eventually had a total of eight guests all converge on Las Palmas from Sweden and always extended an invite to their numerous social events. Since our friends and family have been weak in the visiting department lately we were happy to hijack theirs.

View at Picasa 23-Dec-2011 10:49, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.1, 6.53mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 800

Jaime and I have a bilateral agreement regarding Christmas. She does stuff, I don’t. Our spare cabin ended up with tinsel, a little tree, stockings, and gifts. In return I get to complain about Christmas and how stupid I think it is. We did however get invited over to the rowdy Swedish main event and, although most of it is a blur, I do remember some excellent sausage (our friend’s dad used to be a butcher) and a lot of people being very merry with silly hats. The next day we had an international contingent on the Slapdash which included (but was not limited to) an out of the ordinary Scot, a charming Pom, Sicilian Horse Head stew, Swedish Glogg (accompanied by a couple of Swedes), phone calls from home, and herbal remedies. The party wrapped up sometime on Boxing Day and, although nobody was hurt, the cockpit needed a good hosing out the next day. A marina in a bottleneck kind of location like this one is an interesting place to spend Christmas. Travelers with pasts as interesting as the countries they are from are far from home and hearth which results in a big merry melting pot. Even I had fun!

View at Picasa 14-Dec-2011 10:04, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100

View at Picasa 26-Dec-2011 00:53, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 80

View at Picasa 26-Dec-2011 04:35, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 2.8, 5.247mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 160

Our new friend Will rounded off the unconventional holiday season by coming out of retirement and agreeing to tattoo Jaime and I onboard Slapdash! This is the ‘out of the ordinary Scot’ I referred to above. Besides having some incredible stories massed over decades of adventure travel, he also happened to be a highly sought after and acclaimed tattoo artist. He started doing private sessions only a few years ago before getting out of the game completely. He had all of his gear on the boat though, so we suspected that although he claimed to have been retired, his heart may not be into it. We ratcheted up subtle hints into obvious overtures and before we knew it we had an impromptu studio set up on our boat! Will is old school and his classic machine sounds like a Gatling gun. You could hear it on the next pontoon, and we had more than a few people stopping by to check things out. Over the course of two days he finished off the work on my back before adding significantly to my right arm. Jaime spent most of a day tying two pieces on her back together. We are completely stoked on our new pieces and couldn’t believe our luck. Here’s this guy we really liked that also happens to make beautiful tattoos, who then comes out of retirement to design a couple of pieces for us and then did the work right on our boat. Will is a true artist and not some guy who bangs out Chinese Menu symbols for tourists at a beach parlour. Needless to say we are pretty stoked.

View at Picasa 21-Dec-2011 06:38, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 2.8, 5.0mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 160

View at Picasa 25-Dec-2011 08:46, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 2.8, 5.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 160

You may have noticed that the Slapdash is officially for sale. We have taken a soft sell approach, only advertising on this website so far. Selling the boat at the end of our circumnavigation has always been a part of the plan but we wanted to get the word out to potential buyers early. Even so it did have a finality to it that made us hesitate, so we appreciate all of your the nice emails, condolences and encouragements. Sometimes we forget how many people are on this trip with us, so when your emails came pouring in we were really touched. Thanks for that. We have a bunch of ideas on what to do next and selling the boat doesn’t mean that we are going to disappear into ‘real life’ anytime soon so stay tuned.

Our IsatPhone Pro people introduced a data package recently. I connected the phone to our laptop, and with a little firmware upgrade am now data ready.  Roger got us set up on a client that sends and receives emails for us. This is neat for a few reasons, one of which is that we should be able to send blog updates and photos during the crossing. We’ll be in touch with friends and family who used to have to wait and worry about us until we made landfall to know we were safe. We will also for the first time ever be able to receive weather information while offshore. If all else fails there’s still the newsfeed on our homepage which we will update frequently with position reports. Thanks to Roger for helping to set this up, and to IT guru Shannon who has kindly offered to make sure the posts are getting onto the site okay and troubleshoot the glitches. Also a big thanks to Jeff (you may remember him from the Jamaica and New Zealand logs) for putting down the pencil, joining us in the 21^st century, and being our weather guy. We will now hold him accountable for any unsavory conditions met along the way.

We had two exciting pieces of news today:

1. The neighbour Swedes we mentioned earlier (Pontus and Malee) will be crossing the Atlantic a couple of weeks behind us. Their original (unacceptable) plan was to stay here the season. We would have been sad to leave them behind, so are pumped that we will get to log some Carib time with them after all.
2.  Our long awaited and much overdue weather window has arrived! Slapdash has been passage ready for weeks so we’ll be able to react on short notice. We should be able to leave tomorrow, so the next time you hear from us it should be through our whiz-bang gadgetry  from the high seas!

So that’s it. We have over 5000 kilometres to sail before we can sip on our first of many Caribbean Rum drinks in Barbados, so we’ll be at sea for a few weeks.   Check here, on the homepage, for newsfeed, and the Slapdash facebook page for updates.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

View at Picasa 11-Dec-2011 02:22, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 7.57mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80

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