North Atlantic recap

Date: 24.03.2024
Geographical Position: 38°43.8′ N 032°34.5′ W
Etmal: 179 nm
Total: 10404 nm
Ship: Regina Maris

The day everybody was waiting for finally arrived! Today, we reached the Azores which means, we finished our North Atlantic crossing.

11 days ago we started our journey at St. George’s, Bermuda. The wind and weather conditions were perfect to sail and the Regina Maris made an average speed of 9.0 knots under sails. After 30 min out of harbour we saw the first wales with a view on the coast of Bermuda.

The marine life

This crossing we saw much of the marine wildlife. We had many whales, some humpback whales and pilot whales. One time they were directly next to us and jumped out of the water and landed with a loud splash on their backs.

Also we had a lot of dolphins. They like to swim with us for a while at the front of our ship, the bow. One day, we had over 50 dolphins swimming next to us on starboard side, that was one of the most magical experiences of the crossing.

The most special animal we saw, was a man of war (portugiesische Galeere). It is some kind of jelly fish with a thing that looks like a fin on its back. They’re white and you can see them very well in good weather

Weather conditions

Leading on to the next topic I want to tell you about: The weather conditions we had.
Some days we had surprisingly good weather with almost no big waves. Unfortunately that also meant no wind. So we had to motor a bit.

But if there was wind, there was much of it. Some days the wind was so strong in the sails that we had a constant heeling of 10 degrees. Sometimes that also exaggerated into over 40 degrees.

Shortly before we arrived on the Azores, we had no wind and no waves at all. Perfect for a little swim stop.

So all tasks like school and watch were abandoned to dip into the freezing cold water. The most memorable moment for me was when I did a backflip from the bow sprit into the freezing North Atlantic.

After we all had to get out again, we realised it was so cold that all of us had red skin from the temperatures. Sadly, then we had to go on with our daily tasks.

What all of us put in a lot of stress were the applications for the handover we are going to have the last 12 days of our journey. We had to write two applications for two jobs we really wanted to work in while the handover. And hopefully one of them we will get then at the actual handover.

What happened today?

Today we arrived in the harbour of Horta, Azores. After we safely docked, we went for a little walk around the harbour. There we met another school ship, the Thor Heyerdal. Their project is called Klassenzimmer unter Segeln. Unfortunately we couldn’t see their ship from the inside because they were preparing to leave for tomorrow.

Back on the Reggie we had dinner and now everybody’s busy with writing letters that our medic Paul takes with him tomorrow when he leaves for Germany.