It sounds very cheesy to say, but I think we had the perfect crossing across the Atlantic. It took us 11days and 10 hours and we had the best time!
We left Brava on 3.30 pm on the 6th of December after a morning spent finishing up some jobs on the boat, baking some Grittibaenz and practicing how to lift a Man Over Board out of the water!
(Photos: a good sign on the morning of our departure, St. Nicolaus Breakfast, Grittibaenz before and after, "saving" Anton, leaving land!, Thomas cruising, a rainwhower on the horizont)
The first few days I felt a bit low on energy and generally a bit agitated and tired, but I think this is just what it takes to get used to the water, waves and night watches. We had prepared some food and made a meal plan for the first few days in anticipation of a largely knocked-out/seasick crew, but all of us except for Anton were feeling pretty good so we did not really have any issues with cooking duties etc. The weather was pleasant, good wind and waves a bit on the side but nothing too bad. We saw dolphins on one of the first days but not much wildlife after that, albeit a few birds here and there, which always caused a lot of excitement.
(Photos: Watchplan, mealplan, chatting in the cockpit, another sunset)
We had shifts throughout the night of 2h each, and during the day it was 3h. This left a lot of time for sleeping, relaxing and, well, eating and cooking. Not much else to do on a boat really. Since the wind and directions and course were very steady we basically had to do no sail manoeuvres and all there was to do was the occasional sail trim and helming. To save battery power we tried not to run off the autopilot all the time but also hand steered for a few hours on each shift.
(Photos: nightshift with a full moon, dolphins!, looking for the bugs in the sweet potatoes, some cooking and looking for food at sea)
A few days into the trip, we could really feel the sun getting much stronger and it got unbearably hot in the cockpit from about 10am until 12.30, when the sun was starting to be hidden by the mainsail. Those hours were hard to be on watch, as the sun was very hot and kind of grilling your back while standing at the helm.
(Photos: cover up and hold your bowl at all times!, helming in a cape, watching waves and laundry day!)
We celebrated halfway-day with drinks and a nice meal and a swim in the ocean!
(Photos: cheers to neptune! treats on halfway day)
Then we did two days of silence, something we had talked about previously. We first decided to just do one day of silence, with only essential speech allowed, such as information about the course when changing shifts, or spotting any animals. During dinner we then broke the silence and briefly discussed how it went, and decided to do another day! That was really nice and really allowed everybody to kind of hide in their own world and just take all the impressions in.
We spotted land on day 11 and arrived in Barbados after nightfall around 9pm.
The immigration/customs/paperwork fun was fairly quickly over with so we headed around the corner of Bridgetown harbour and went on anchor in charlisle bay. We then celebrated arriving with some wine and cheese and went to bed happy but tired!
For more detailed blogposts on the crossing see Tom's Blog here: https://www.sailandsmile.ch/2019/12/17/atlantik%C3%BCberquerung/