Spinnaker Sailing Towards Africa's Pirate Territory [Ep. 67]

This is real sailing. Find out how we handle a huge spinnaker while sailing towards known pirate waters off the coast of Africa.

#sailing #yacht #spinnaker

We gybe the asymmetrical spinnaker shorthanded, surfing waves at 10 knots during the night to the east of Cabo Verde, Africa on our way to cross the equator. We don’t find any pirates here though, just beautiful sailing!

We are headed for South America, non-stop, from Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Our goal is Mar Del Plata, Argentina, then on to Chile and the fjords of Patagonia, but we are unsure if we will be able to enter or if the countries will be open or closed.

More about us at www.sweetruca.com

0:00 Kate enjoys a beautiful morning ride in the North Atlantic Ocean between the West Coast of Africa and Cape Verde. We are under full sail, mainsail and G3 asymmetrical spinnaker (gennaker).
3:00 Gybe Ho! We gybe the spinnaker doublehanded offshore.
4:26 Curtis tries a singlehanded gybe with the new autopilot driving.
6:41 Relaxing sunset sailing video. We watch the sun set over the ocean.
7:46 Sunset Dolphins! We spot dolphins off our bow and two whales. Kate reels in her fishing pole.
9:52: Where are we? Curtis talks about our location and future navigation and sailing plans as the sun fades away.
11:25 Night Sailing! We are flying the spinnaker at night, pirate style! We are surfing the boat to 10.5 knots. We love offshore doublehanded sailing, but we should probably take the kite down now.
13:44 Fish On! Kate reels in a beautiful Mahi Mahi! Will we have fish tacos for dinner?
14:51 How to Gybe. Curtis walks through a gybing (jibe) our asymmetrical spinnaker on our performance cruising J Boats J/46.
16:09 Curtis talks about how much solar on our boat. We look at the voltage, amps, and watts coming in, and discuss the amp hours used so far while sailing our off-grid tiny home.
17:58 For the Dog Lovers 🙂 Roxy defends the boat from birds! Thank you to our Patrons!

So who is this crazy sailing couple making fun videos to share? Well, we are Kate and Curtis. We both sold up and headed out to sea, with the goal of sailing around the world via Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. We brought our mixed rescue dog along with us as she loves sailing and swimming too!

Our boat is a year 2000 J Boats J/46. We searched for 3 years for our perfect sailboat for sale, when we found it, we knew it was the one. We spent 6 months re-fitting it in Rhode Island and then went for our shakedown voyage in Maine. We stopped in Annapolis for a bit to do some more refit work and offshore modifications, then we set off to the open sea. We went to the Bahamas, Miami, US Virgin Islands, BVI, Grenada, Carriacou, St. Maarten, where we enjoyed outdoor adventures, scuba diving, and have now did an Atlantic Crossing to the Azores where we had a chance to fly our DJI drone (and learned how to fly a drone from a boat) and one of our favorite past times, mountain biking. We have sailed over 10,000 bluewater miles to date.

We watched other sailing channels before we left as well. We even considered van life, a tiny home, or a motorhome / rv. Some of the channels we enjoyed were Gone with the Wynns, Project Atticus, and MJ Sailing. We didn’t really set out to be influencers, but we wanted to return the good karma and pass our inspiration and knowledge along.

Enough of this, we hope you enjoy our relaxing video on #sailingsunday!

XO XO Kate, Curtis & Roxy