We continued beating into headwinds and big waves, finally reaching A Coruna with a few days to spare. On the 10th of December, we welcomed the new group of trainees onboard. We spent two days getting to know each other, doing groceries and of course, safety briefings, training and getting to know the ship. Then a weather window came through, one that I thought might take us all the way to Madeira. We had planned to coast hop a little, but between the Orcas and all the crazy weather that had been coming over, we decided we all just wanted to head south and chase the sun. An 800nm passage to start of with is a good icebreaker. The winds as we left were calm and from the north but a high swell was still persistent and it didn’t take long before half of the trainees were standing at the rail feeding the fish. Over the next two days, the ocean calmed down a bit. The night watches were mostly spent watching the sky as countless shooting stars fell around us. On the third day, the wind and ocean behaved themselves very nicely, and we enjoyed a calm and lovely day at sea. By now most of the trainees had gotten over their seasickness and started getting into a rhythm. Chatting and having fun with each other, while learning how to navigate life at sea. This was the calm before the storm. We had seen a bit of wind in the forecast when we had left. No more than 20kn on a beam reach. Nothing unusual, but as time passed the colours changed from orange to red and then to purple. No turning back now. Guppy can handle it, and we just have to deal with it. As the wind started raging through the rigging, the waves rapidly built again. We sailed through the night on a double reefed mizzen en our inner staysail/stormjib. I didn’t see our apparent windspeed go under 35kn and it regularly tipped in the upper 40’s. Guppy was like a train on rails, taking on every wave and wind gust like a champ. Racing forward, averaging 8-9kn and regularly shooting over 12kn. Life onboard was wet, and the chores got a bit harder as we launched from one wave to another. I was, however, deeply impressed with how the group was handling this. They were helping each other, having fun over their hard tasks, tiredness and seasickness. Somehow, these harder times make bonding easier. I loved seeing how they battled through this together. It also made our arrival in Madeira even sweeter. We found the sun! It shone brightly on our faces as we opened the hatches and let the fresh air flow through the boat. We are ready and looking forward to all the adventures to come 🙂