Blue Horizonvideo
At 30 knots, it will take 3 days against the wind and waves to reach the African mainland!
15 March 2026 · 36 min · 124K views · Cape Verde
Sailboat surging through rough seas under blue sky
What this video covers
A broken steering chain stranded the crew at Cape Verde before departure; local repair, provisioning, and customs clearance consumed a full day before they could sail for Gambia.0:07 Thilo, Leonie, and two additional crew — Claudius and Pauli — left the island immediately, accepting forecast winds of 30 knots rather than wait for conditions that would force days of beating.1:35 Once clear of the island's lee, conditions deteriorated fast: sustained 25–30 knots on the nose, gusts above 30, and 4–5 metre waves on a hard upwind course.2:20 Leonie suffered seasickness for all four days, eating almost nothing; Thilo managed on dry crackers.9:00 The boom bolt fell out of its fitting on the final morning, requiring the whole crew to manhandle the spar back into place in residual swell.25:43 Unable to hold the rhumb line to Gambia, they diverted 120 nautical miles short to Dakar, Senegal, arriving coated in Saharan sand that had reduced visibility and blanketed every line and surface.28:47 The crew rated it among their four or five hardest passages, but the current, larger boat held where they say the previous, smaller hull would have forced a turn-back.22:48 A Salee SIM card provided mobile data immediately on arrival in a new country.12:12
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