Well, we missed a few days, but for a reason. When we went for our 2nd test run on sunday, everything when beautiful. With about 15 knots wind, La Negra was running perfectly and we had nice company of Kim, axels old house mate in Melbourne and two of his friends, Mathew and Paul. After 2 hours we turned around, the wind had also picked up to about 20 knots by then. Close to the harbour we had to do one more tack to enter the port, but than things went wrong. First the fock got lose from the holding, with too much force on the sail it took only minutes till it ripped aswell. Axel had to get it down, for doing so he had to start the motor, which of course in such a moment was running like shit, and also didn't take long till it stopped working completely, so there we were, about 10 nautical miles off the coast by 20 knots wind, no motor and only the main sail and besan sail, which don't allow you to tack. The sun had set by then and it was getting dark. We had of course our friend Mariano with us who was always following or leading us the whole time, but as the situation became more serious he started to panic. Well, after a bunch of crazy maneuvers, he managed to pick up our towing rope and started to tow us home. It took so long for him to pick up the towing rope that finally we ended up almost 20 nautical miles away from the harbor because of the wind and the waves. But I have to say, getting towed through a beautiful mild summer night with thousands of stars is quite nice aswell. Mataró, a city next to Premiá de Mar even had a huge firework show for us. We got into the port at about 2 o'clock at night. All of us tired and stressed, but happy to be safely back ashore.
Our internet connection is a bit bad for the moment, so we don't get around to do a lot of blogging. And Axel is working on the boat from early morning to late night, and Karin is working her regular job form the harbor main building.
Hope to be back with our regular internet connection soon, to be able to keep you updated more frequently!
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