ARC 2023 - follow our voyage across the Atlantic

Whales, reef sailing, starry skies and community. Follow the crew aboard the Excess 15 catamaran named White Lotus across the Atlantic. Here are their updates from the trip.

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Las Palmas, Gran Canaria

The day before departure

Almost two years ago, we started talking about embarking on an exciting adventure - sailing across the Atlantic. Now we are finally here!

We've been here in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, for a week, making countless visits to various shops, planning everything from cleaning supplies to food and snacks, and attending interesting seminars on topics such as constellations, provisioning, and sextant navigation. The questions we tried to answer are How many eggs do we need? How many peppers can we eat in one kilo? How much fruit do we eat? What fruit will last in the sun for three weeks? How much can we fit on the boat? It has been an incredibly rich week together with wonderful people who all have the same goal in sight, St. Lucia in the Caribbean.

Our boat is an Excess 15, a 50-foot catamaran named White Lotus. The crew is ready and we are looking forward to an exciting adventure together with our skipper Sebastian and our first mates Ronja and Felix.

PS, For those who are curious, we can reveal that we bought 500 eggs...

Greetings Malin & Marie on the boat White Lotus

The start day is here

Day 1 of the trip

The day we have longed for. The excitement was at its peak when the sun rose on the morning of the start day. When the last preparations were done, we cast off towards the starting line. It was crowded with boats at the harbor mouth and lots of people cheering along the quay. The atmosphere was great when we passed the race committee and they played ABBA.

Finally, the starting gun went off and we slowly sailed across the start line. After a few hours of slow sailing we gave up and started the engine, but luckily the wind came back and sailed into the night. A magical spectacle of shooting stars, stars and planets greeted us as we left land behind.

Everyone is incredibly excited to sail the boat and a cheer erupted when Sebastian said we would set the tack. Since then, we have raced forward and the crew's clear competitive instincts have shown. Now we hope for continued favorable conditions and a new wonderful starry sky while the hunt for our friend boats continues.

Calm & fish

Day 2

Wow, wow, wow now things are happening! Yesterday, Monday afternoon, full action erupted on the boat when the genoa fell into the water when the halyard broke. But with quick and professional leadership from our crew, everyone in the crew helped out and we got the gennaker up on deck. Fortunately, the mast was already prepared for a new halyard and Christian volunteered to be hoisted up to replace it. Everything went well, the night was calm and early morning we put up the genoa again.

During Tuesday morning the winds have changed from quite strong to almost calm and it has been a cloudy day with rain in the air. But what does it matter! We have caught our first fish, a dolphinfish and we were joined by wonderful dolphins playing in front of the boat. We also enjoyed a good lunch of potato and leek soup and banana pancakes for dessert. Now we'll see what the afternoon and evening have to offer. The atmosphere is great!

Close to running aground at 4000 meters depth

Day 4

Wednesday was a calm day, so calm that we took a dip in the sea. Surprisingly warm and comfortable and a very happy crew! Several of our wishes and expectations are already checked off in these few days. :-) Towards the afternoon the winds came back and we could set our genoa again.

The night was fantastic and we had fun figuring out what time it was with the help of the North Star and the Big Dipper. We could see the Milky Way with all its billions of stars. It was magical!

Today, Thursday, something incredible happened! In the middle of the afternoon we almost collided with four sperm whales!!! Unexpectedly they appeared right in front of the boat, who expects to have to slalom around whales in the middle of the Atlantic?

To further boost the already high mood, Ronja surprised with sponge cake and quizzes. And the winner is... Sten and Felix!
Now the preparations for another good dinner together with happy friends at White Lotus begin.

Today in the morning at 8:00 Swedish time, after 752 distance south, we have finally set course west and are heading straight for the finish in 7-8 knots. Soon we smell the palm trees and rum punch.

Straight towards Saint Lucia

Day 6

7.00 it happened ! We changed our course and are now heading for our final destination St. Lucia. The morning offered a beautiful sunrise and those who were supposed to go to bed couldn't resist staying on deck and enjoying. As if that was not enough, we were offered very good eggs and bacon for breakfast.

Before lunch we took the opportunity to train on the foredeck, worse training places we have been to 😊.

The afternoon has been spent cleaning, cooking and Fia with a push.
Now we are loading for Friday cozy with Bruce Springsteen in the speakers and the wind in the back.
St Lucia here we come⛵️⛵️

The sea is challenging

Day 7

After yesterday's calm, today we have challenged our genacker or maybe it was the genacker that challenged us. In the morning when we put the genacker, the rope to the sock followed up. Those who were sleeping were awakened and together we took down the sail until we got hold of the rope and could do it again and do it right. Afterwards we had a well-deserved breakfast.

A couple of hours later it was time again. The sea challenged us with its waves and the Genoa was hanging on. In the end it won and wrapped itself around the forestay, looking more like an hourglass than a sail. The hero of the day, Sebastian, managed to overpower the genoa and in the end it spun back, luckily without any damage.
In all the drama, we also managed to get water into one of the cabins so the boat looks more like a drying rack than a catamaran...

One of the challenges of the trip is that the halyard to the genoa, i.e. the rope that holds the sail up, is chafed up at the mast, which means that there is a risk that it will break. We have already tried the maneuver of picking up the tack from the sea once, so we don't need to do it again. Some creative people are trying to come up with a good solution, we'll see what happens.

Since the apples are starting to sing their last verse, we took the opportunity to make a crumble pie for the coffee. Our biggest problem is that we don't have any vanilla ice cream...

Record days on the Atlantic

Day 8

We sailed a total of 204.9 nautical miles. Cheers and jubilation erupted of course!

Towards the morning we had reached the halfway point of our journey and the night shift decided to offer the rest of the crew freshly baked scones and luxury porridge which was much appreciated. As usual when there is already full activity on the boat, it was enjoyed. It took three fishermen to conquer the beautiful yellowfin tuna of over 60 kg. Everyone on board got involved and we created a "fish factory" that cut the fish with a saw and knife, packed over 25 kg of meat in bags and froze. We have a lot of fish to eat! Of course, the freshly caught fish was served for lunch along with mango and chili. It doesn't get any fresher than that, there is no restaurant in the world that beats this.

Of course, halfway must be celebrated more than with a luxury breakfast so in the afternoon we toasted in champagne and boat-baked cinnamon bun sugar cake.

Halfway also means that we get new sheets and towels, a much appreciated feature especially from those who did not close their hatch and got the cabin full of water... ☺️.
Now we sail into the Atlantic evening with music in the speakers and dinner being cooked in the kitchen. We look forward to another wonderful dinner with good friends.

Our blue fine genacker

Day 9

We are very excited about our blue fine genacker. When it is up, the speed increases drastically. Of course we are very careful with it, so every day we take it down a few times to make sure that everything is in order. If we may say so ourselves, we are starting to become really cooperative and fast. Today we took it down to repair several small holes with spinnaker tape so now we hope it will make it safely through the night.

But of course that activity was not enough on board today. While working on the genoa, we heard a bang. It was the swivel at the top of the mast that broke. This time it was Felix who did a fantastic job of going up the mast and fixing it. Once down, he was of course met by applause and cheers. It was really wavy when he was hoisted up and down. The hero of the day!

Now you might think that the calm settles for the day, but no. We saw that the fasteners on the bowsprit were loose. The threads were worn out so we could not replace with new screws. But once again Sebastian, Ronja and Felix did a super job and now the bowsprit is safely attached to the boat again.

Our stowaway Sune, the head from the tuna we caught yesterday is currently hanging in the stern as a trophy and the crew has different opinions about how long he should be allowed to ride along. We will see which side wins.... To be continued 😉

No rest, no rest

Day 10

No rest, no rest on White Lotus. During the night sailing we heard that something fell from the mast. When it started to get light, our skipper Sebastian went for an inspection and saw that the block we had previously put up to avoid chafing on the halyard to the gennaker had fallen down. And not only that, he also saw that the halyard was very worn. So once again, down with the genoa, remove the chafed part, out with spare parts for the block, out with the harness and this time Sebastian was once again hoisted up the mast. Problem solver that he is, he of course came down and had succeeded in the mission. Mission completed and once again he became the hero of the day.

During the day we kept good speed, dolphins played by the boat and everyone was happy and satisfied. After lunch we thought it was time for a well-deserved rest. But the Genoese did not think so. Those who were resting on the sun deck then suddenly saw the sun shining through the Genoa as it should not. Ni vet vad som sker….. ner med genackern för inspektion, en 40 cm lång reva vid akterliket. Just to take out the spinnaker tape and repair. Now the genoa is whole and up again.

For dinner we had a spicy and tasty Thai stew, and for dessert we had chili crits. The reactions were a bit mixed, some sweated more than others.

Now we sail into the dark night and hope everything is in place when the sun rises. ☺️

Despite all the challenges, which would easily fill a season on TV, the atmosphere is great at White Lotus

12 days at sea

Day 12

We have now been at sea for 12 days and we have less than a third left. What have we done all these days apart from mending sails and climbing the mast?
When we started, we decided to sail all the way by ourselves and not use the autopilot. We have a rolling watch schedule where there are always three people sailing the boat, except for our skippers who have their own schedule. This means that one person is relieved every hour, which means that we have four different people to talk to on watch. At night it's nice to wake up fresh and know that the other two have been going for a while and are a little more alert. Sailing at night is magical. The boat is calm because many people are asleep and the conversations vary from hour to hour. Sometimes you just sit quietly and enjoy the moon and stars.

There are a lot of sounds on a sailboat. The waves crashing in between the hulls, the interior creaking when we go fast, the sails rustling and banging as we catch up with the wind, and the winches squeaking. Some sounds you get used to while others make you wake up and be on your guard. Not getting a coherent, longer sleep affects us in different ways. Some seem to handle it better than others. With the schedule we have, you get 7 hours between shifts in the evening, night and morning so if you find it easy to fall asleep you can get a nice long sleep some days. The advantage is that the sun goes down at 7 pm and up at 7 am so you get the feeling that it is night for quite a few hours. It gets a bit confusing when you say good morning to someone who comes to the guard at midnight when they have been asleep since 8 pm, while at the same time saying good night to the person who goes off duty to go to bed.

How is it possible to steer our little ship? Well, quite well if we may say so ourselves. The fact that we have a bunch of competitive people on board was discovered very early in the voyage. The first few days we saw a lot of boats and the hunt was on. The big question discussed was how far south we should go to get the best winds to the west. We chose to go far south, a detour it may seem, but we have had good winds so far. Of course, we are watching our friends' boats and updating ourselves daily on their positions. Apparently you can compete in many sports when you sail. Everyone has their personal speed record, the boat's speed record, the longest distance in a day, the biggest fish, who can sail the longest without collapsing the genoa, etc. Our fastest day so far was on November 30 when we sailed 214.2 nautical miles.
Today our skipper Sebastian challenged us with a competition; Sail as far as possible in 10 minutes on a certain course. If you do not keep the course, you are disqualified. It will be exciting to see how it goes.

Some of our readers may be wondering what happened to our 500 eggs and all other provisions. We have eaten about half of the eggs, the fruit is out except for the green apples and a handful of oranges and the fresh vegetables are running out except for white and red cabbage. Otherwise, we have a pantry full of pasta, rice and preserves of various kinds. We have eaten very well and varied, we have several creative chefs on board. Ronja has also put the finishing touches on our days with her pastries. Luxurious and good!

Between watch shifts, sleeping hours and meals, we read, play cards and other board games, listen to music and write a diary. Sometimes we have a joint coffee break with a quiz or other team competition, while other days are quieter and allow more time for rest. Everyone shows respect for each other and there is room for both personal time and social time.

Now we are in the month of December and the boat gnome has started decorating the boat. This usually happens at night. There have been foam gnomes in various places, we find messages like "Merry Christmas" a little here and there and we have a painted tree in the ceiling. Let's see if there will be some lussebullar for the first Advent!

Today, Friday, has been a nice day with a little calmer pace on the boat and some joint activities. The big question of the day is; who the heck put Nutellan in the fridge? We can't have that.

As usual, continuation follows. Now we have less than 900 nautical miles left.

Odd traditions at sea

Day 15

We can probably call it a tradition now, to start the day by cooking the genoa. Saturday started just like that, then it became a quiet day with good sailing, rest, games and reading.

Everyone has gotten a little comfortable on the boat, more and more private things are lying here and there. When the boat was cleaned, a basket of shame was created. All private items found where they shouldn't be end up in this basket. A battle has broken out between careless and disciplined sailors. Then there are also those who voluntarily put their things in the hamper to know where they are.

The last few nights we have a few hours between sunset and moonrise. During that time, it is really dark and all the stars are extra visible. It is incredibly beautiful and powerful to navigate by the stars.

When we woke up on the first morning of Advent, the boat gnome had stuck an Advent candlestick with a lit candle in the window. Santa sees and hears everything and knows who has been naughty or nice. We'll see who gets Christmas presents this year...
The Advent snack consisted of freshly baked lussebullar and homemade ice cream. The appreciation barometer hit the roof!

Speaking of waking up, the watch schedule means waking up the person who is supposed to relieve you. The methods have gone from soft words and songs to tapping toes and mistletoe. It is worth mentioning that we made a serious mistake in the planning of provisions and an experience to take with us to future voyages. We had to open the snack supply for week three 6 minutes before week three started. However, we will never have to open the bread bag intended for week three, everyone seems to prefer porridge or scrambled eggs for breakfast. The mystery of the nutella in the fridge has been solved, the culprit was caught red-handed this morning with the excuse that he does not eat nutella. The crew is now discussing the appropriate disciplinary action.

The direction and strength of the wind has been in our favor the last 24 hours and it has been extra fun to sail the boat today and we are approaching the final destination by leaps and bounds.

120 NM left to land

Day 16

The countdown has begun..... we now have about 120 nautical miles left to the finish line and we are slowly preparing for disembarkation. How will it feel to come back to civilization? Will we have sea legs? How many people will get tattoos? There are many questions because we are very comfortable at sea and the routines we have become accustomed to. But now we are looking forward to the next adventure, wonderful sailing days in the Caribbean with sun, swimming and full nights of sleep. And maybe the occasional paraplydrink☺️.

Today we have cleaned the boat and inventoried our food supplies. We realize that some things we have counted correctly and some a little less well. Can you swap orange marmalade, wholemeal bread or milk for fruit and vegetables on St. Lucia? We'll see tomorrow.....

At the end of the race Sebastian challenges us by setting gennaker and jib and taking down the mainsail so we get extra speed to the finish. There is always some position to chase.

This morning our boat Santa was suddenly gone and there was a message that he had gone to the North Pole. Why would he choose to leave our boat and this wonderful crew? Something was wrong and we suspect that someone is the Grinch. What could be the North Pole on a boat ? Well the freezer! There was Santa vacuum packed....but you don't do that with impunity. Now Santa has sent reinforcements in the form of a larger elf called Stor-Klas and he had a letter with him. That now it must be tightened, otherwise those who mischief without Christmas presents.

We look forward to our last night under the stars on the Atlantic and guess which of us will scream land in sight first.

The finish line

Day 18

At 03:45 we saw light on the horizon. An hour later we saw land and we who were on watch started to wake the rest. Some were sitting on the foredeck listening to music as St. Lucia approached, there was an expectant mood on board and some mixed emotions.
Sebastian announced our arrival to the ARC and we lined up on deck with our nice More Sailing shirts to meet the photographer. There was a big cheer when we crossed the finish line after 16 days, 23 hours and 15 minutes.

We sailed into our berth and were greeted by a welcoming committee consisting of representatives from ARC, ABBA at full volume and cheers and applause from the neighboring boat. It was a special feeling to jump ashore and have solid ground under our feet. The promised rum punch tasted very good and everyone was very happy!

After just over 24 hours ashore, we missed the sea and we cast off with our sights set on St. Vincent. Now we look forward to vacation sailing with sun, swimming and visits to cozy islands.

Thank you Sebastian, Ronja and Felix for your safe coaching, wonderful energy, wonderful antics and your patience to let us sail the 3069 nautical miles without autopilot.

Thank you all who followed us during the journey, now we check out for this time.

Over and out
Malin and Marie

PS Yes, it was our cabin that got wet.