Happy New Year 2025!
Dear all,
Happy New Year 2025 from SY L’Envol and crew, greetings from the Pyrenees!
We are currently anchored in Hendaye, Basque Country (on the French side of the border), where the tranquil waters of Chingudi Bay have become our base for our first European winter. Busy travelling the world, neither of us had been back to see the family for over a decade, the last quarter of 2024 finally gave us a chance to catch up!
2024 was also the year of L’Envol’s third Atlantic crossing from the Caribbean via the Azores to Spain and then on to France. First time she had made the jump from Cape Verde to Brazil in 2014. Then, for the second passage out of South Africa in 2023, we had opted for the longer but easier route and sailed to Brazil with a stopover on St Helena Island. The alternative and the most direct way to Europe would have been to head north from St Helena beating into the brisk trades – not our cup of tea. Perhaps it is because of this conservative decision, that after nearly 60 000 nautical miles sailed, a fair part of these in the roaring forties, L’Envol still has her mast up. However, the price we paid for this and the unfortunate consequence was arriving too late to see Christophe’s mother, who passed away nine months earlier.
In hindsight
2024 started off with a four day passage out of French Guyana to the Caribbean and one intense week on the hard at the boat yard in Trinidad. No major repairs, just the antifouling routine, our fifth in 11 years. The hurricane free season had kicked in with sunshine and steady 10-15 knot easterly trades, « boring » and « too easy », we heard a couple of Caribbean regulars complain, but we did not mind at all. Easy sailing has not happened to us often enough and unlike those salts who had been doing seasonal sailing in the Antilles for years, we had just four months to enjoy the place.
After the dusty yard, we were keen to stretch our legs on the green mountain tops of the postcard-perfect arc of islands – a sacred destination for yachties crossing the Atlantic, its backdrop, a paradise, though not exactly lost. If only there had been less of us exploring the nooks and crannies of the archipelago, all seeking the promises of revelry in the same anchorages! If only some of the officials, lording over their tiny harbours, would act less like pirate kings, stalking the docks for late arrivals making sure they could charge their overtime fees, scheduling impossible departure times or making flippant declarations out of grudge. We finally managed to escape the crowds on the windward coast of Martinique and then again on the mountainous Basse Terre of Guadeloupe spending more time there than we had originally planned and loved it. Some of the highlights for us were meeting up with several sailing friends we had made in Brazil, breathtaking tropical jungle hikes, often crowned by a swim in a waterfall, hitchhiking fun with many wonderful encounters and staying overnight in a local home and a monastery when, on two occasions, after an exhausting day in the mountains, we reached the trail end after sunset.
In the beginning of May L’Envol left the Antilles in her wake to cross the Sargasso Sea which, how we soon found out battling our way through the yellow algae, deserves its name. We challenged ourselves to make the trip with no weather routing via satellite, following the pressure on the barometre, interpreting the known weather patterns for the area, the clouds and using the instinct to plot the course around the Bermuda-Azores High.
By day 20 we had another 2300 nautical miles under the belt when Christophe, together with the approaching gale, caught sight of the island of Flores in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. While tackling the light winds almost all the way, with just 4.86 knots average, made it one of our slowest ocean crossings, the last 24 hours became a race with the falling pressure, freshening winds and rising seas. The temperature dropped to 15 degrees, which, after spending years in the tropics, felt seriously cold.
We were in no hurry to get back to sea and stayed in the Azores for a total of two months, visiting six of the nine volcanic islands. A special surprise for us was meeting up with sailing buddies from 10 years ago on the island of Faial. There was some catching up to do!
There was very good hiking everywhere: terrains ranging from ancient cobble stone streets and rusty dirt roads to forest paths leading to waterfalls on Flores, walks on ashes of recently born peninsulas from a 1957 eruption on Faial, near to vertical stairs carved into green cliffs on Sao Jorge, scrambles up and down the lava fields frozen in time on Pico, peat bog landscapes hugging crater lakes on Terceira and goat trails daring us to escape the popular paths on Sao Miguel. By the time we left Azores we had walked no less than 300 kilometres in the archipelago.
Discussions of where to next ranged from Turkey to Ireland and why not Norway, with the final decision made when already five days out at sea – we were sailing to Spain! And so, at the end of July and another 1000 nautical miles later, we sighted the northwest tip of the Iberian Peninsula. Since the beginning of the year we had used just two litres of fuel (including for manoeuvring in the ports), and were feeling pretty confident that the jerrycan we had filled in Australia in 2022 would last us all the way to France.
On and on, we were heading for the finishline, supposedly a wonderful summer sail of 300 nautical miles day hopping along the Spanish coast, which all sounds great. Things did not work out exactly as planned! Our erratic 400 nautical mile track to France is a reminder of a grueling month long endeavour to try to hunt out the slightest breeze in the windless Bay of Biscay, almost all of it right on the nose! In the attempt we used up half our fuel, which is 10 litres, to reach a couple of anchorages when all hope had gone.
Meanwhile, Christophe’s father was following our progress on the map of the voyage every step of the way, and came to meet us when we arrived in Hendaye. Together with his partner Genevieve they had travelled 10 hours from the Alps to give us the first unforgettable embrace and welcome home. The magic of that ecstatic moment of return included going home to Christophe’s family, who greeted us like heroes, sharing travelogues and for ten days enjoying excellent French wine and cheese!
Soon it was time to think what next. We opted for staying the off-season on L’Envol and decide in the spring if we would like to continue our life afloat or turn the page, though whatever and wherever that might be, don’t ask, we still haven’t got a clue! We had felt so nostalgic for European winters when away, but living on the boat with no heating or having to keep anchor watches when riding on a storm every 10 days or so, is tough. However, when the sun is out the Pyrenees provide a stunning setting, the village of Hendaye is a lovely place and we are a stroll away from Spain. We have given a talk to an audience of 80 sailors at the Hendaye Yacht Club, and even made it into the local newspaper, the Sud-Ouest. We have nice anchorage neighbours and being close to family feels great.
And so we have reached the end of the project of sailing our 25 footer around the world. People often asked us how much cruising life cost us, to which we liked to say: less than we thought but all what we had. As to the numbers, then we lived on a shoestring and managed to get by with a monthly budget of roughly 500 euros, of which 30% was funded by 11 crowdfunding initiatives. Apart from that we worked for a total of one and a half years. Help was always there when we most needed – sailing we journeyed into the heart of nature but upon landfall, countless times, experienced the magic of human kindness through the hand of a stranger. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported this voyage. Thanks also to our blog readers and followers for your positive vibes. Stay in touch and check for the updates on the website www.intothewind.fr.
With wishes of health, joy and fair winds for 2025,
Christophe and Carina
More photos from 2024
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La trace GPS du bateau, nos traces GPS à terre (en trek, en stop…) et nos waypoints d’escales dans l’océan Atlantique sont visibles et téléchargeables gratuitement à partir de cette carte du voyage interactive. Sur un fond d’images satellites, vous pouvez zoomer, vous déplacer et cliquer sur les traces et les escales de L’Envol pour obtenir plus d’information.
Article publié le 24/01/2025 depuis L’Envol, baie de Chingoudy, Hendaye, France, GPS 43 22.13 N 1 46.46 W
Envie de nous donner un coup de main ? Visites la page de financement participatif de L’Envol : www.intothewind.fr/crowd-funding/