We were stopped by the police on the water and refused permission to go on land like a lot of sailing boats around us with even babies on board. Some sailing boats are going to sail back to Europe against the winds. I was here in a discussion group on vhf with the Dutch boats and they say if you go on the same will happen now in south -America and the Caribean. You will not be allowed on land and have to stay on anchor at sea. So this will probably become a long journey. We are waiting now for the maritime police to come back if they can provide us with some hundreds of liters of drinking water and if we get that or not we row this evening on to French-Guyana. We don’t have other options so we have to see what happens on the other side of the ocean in 3 to 4 weeks.
Team apple pie of oceanrower.eu is rowing from mainland Europe to mainland South-America with the aim to break 7 world records (fastest crossing from Europe to South-America, fastest 5-persons team from Europe to South-America,First blind rower from Europe to South-America (Shane Ryan),first 2 ocean rowing crossings within half a year (Ralph Tuijn), oldest person to row from Europe to South-America (Predragh Tripkovic), first person to row 5 times from mainland Europe to South-America(Ralph Tuijn)).
The winds stay in our favour as far as we can see the weather and off course how long before can weather forecast be accurate but so far it looks like the prevailing winds are here and let’s hope the trade winds are here to stay and keep stable for at least another Month.
Our speed was increasing some for the first days of the week but after three days it started to drop. While we where at a fourth of the crossing exactly on the same time as our oceanrower.eu team 4 nations world record of 2017 with an Estimated Time of Arrival of 48 days and 4 hours. At a third our ETA has increased with 25 hours to 47 days and 3 hours. It sounds fast but compared to this fastest part of the crossing and team 4 nations it’s not. At 1/3 of the crossing the ETA was 45 days so 2 days faster and after 1/3 our speed is decreasing.
As we where probably not doing good enough one of the Irish studied my paper charts and thought with his lack of experience in ocean-rowing that he founded the best and fastest way for the crossing. Let’s row to Fortaleza, 1000 miles east of Cayenne. A route that’s 200 miles shorter. That’s about the only thing he was right about forgetting that you have to cross the equator with all counter currents and winds round it and not forgetting the trade winds and currents that we profit from all the way to Cayenne. So yes a bit shorter in distance but a lot longer in time and far more uncertain. It started to look a bit like mutiny when he started to ask the other rowers about his plan while I was sleeping. I’m the skipper so as always we navigate still to Cayenne.