Kamouraska, seen here on the hard in Estepona, Southern Spain. We carried out an extensive re-fit shortly after we bought her in Gibraltar (Dec.92) in preparation for extended cruising and crossing the Atlantic the following year.

 Puerto Calero, Lanzarote (above left) our first landfall in the Canaries, after a passage of 700 nautical miles from Gibraltar that took  7 days, 4 hours. The huge area of salt pans on Lanzarote can be seen (centre), and the port of Arguineguin, Gran Canaria  (above right) during a southwest blow. As it strengthened The swells came over the larger sea wall (to the left in the picture) and all yachts had to move into the inner fishing harbour. Arguineguin was great fun and it was here that our friend Bob Brambill joined us as crew for the Atlantic crossing, flying out from England. We celebrated Bob's Birthday in fine style, plenty of "Jim Davidson", see photo below. 

The spinnaker pole we were waiting for arrived from England and after farewells to other boats heading off including Franc and Isabelle on "soulmassage", Bernard, Anna and family on "Amicizia", we decided it was time to go. We left at the same time as Dave and Nancy Cherry on "Janeve", a concrete ketch optimistically described as "High speed masonry" by Dave, who after a few rums one night renamed Kamouraska; Kamasutra. We left Arguineguin 24/11/93 at 10.30am bound for the Cape Verdes Islands. The journey took 750.33 miles and lasted for 7 days 14.5 hours, Two incidents are memorable on this trip. Firstly the masthead block supporting our twin jib headsail shattered causing us to run over the sail, Bob was winched up the mast in a bosons chair and replaced the smashed block as the seas and winds were calm enough not to make it dangerous. The second incident was quite worrying at the time as our hydraulic wheel steering sprung a major leak at one of the worst possible times. It was about midnight, huge seas, pitch black and we had to turn to port across the swells, avoiding an enormous rock with 2.5 knots of tide pushing us on, it was a fine juggling act with Bob searching the horizon at the bows for the alleged light on Passaros (the rock), Kerry handling the sails and myself trying to steer and fill up the hydraulic system at the same time. It all worked and we anchored in Porto Grande, Sao Vicente at 0100 hrs. Shaken and very definitely stirred!!! 

We were apprehensive when it came to leaving The Verdes on 8/12/93 as we knew this was going to be our longest voyage to date, some 2,100 miles and 20 or more days at sea before arrival in Barbados. We made everything ready aboard, food, water, fuel etc. Checked the engine thoroughly and headed off. 3 days out and I caught a sizable dorado (30 minutes from the sea to the dinner plate!) this was without doubt one of the best meals of the trip, having no refrigeration aboard the fresh foodstuffs run out very quickly. It soon settled into the seagoing routine of watch on watch off and all was well on board. The worst thing about the trip was the constant rolling of the boat (this is unavoidable when sailing downwind) and it makes cooking/working below quite a chore...
The next thing to liven up the trip were flying fish, these kamikaze little fish literally fly all over the place and we were all hit at some time, night watches were favourite. Bob even had one go down inside his jacket one night...
The last third of the trip the seas were huge; long rollers about 5 metres high (see "Photos 1") and at one time we hit over 10 knots sliding down one particularly large roller!!! We only saw two or three other yachts on the whole trip and spoke to the Skipper of supertanker "Effysus" sailing from Venezuela to South Africa. We arrived in Barbados on 28/12/93 at 0650a.m. tired, very happy and somewhat surprised to actually be in The Caribbean.  

A Tropic bird, one of our regular visitors in the last week at sea.