Monday, May 12th – On the way to Guadeloupe

So off we sail again, after a brief passage on St Barthélémy. We took the occasion to go ashore, flirt with land-sickness, unknown for some of us and to organize a team meeting in a quiet place and less wet than the boat. The adventure continues! We found a new sailboat : a catamaran offered by the Martinican renter Autremer Concept, sensitive to the cause of the expedition: the skipper escorts us the boat to Guadeloupe and we thus go to meet him there to leave again as soon as possible.

It is under a beautiful rainbow that we thus say goodbye to St Barth, the French cousin. The SE’ly tradewinds are wet today, the dismasted boat progresses slowly thanks to the engine in an irregular swell. Fred the skipper of Guyavoile will not continue the expedition with us because he has to take care of his boat repairs. The catamaran should return to Guiana in a month. The team will miss Fred a lot, he is an excellent captain and is a key component in the team cohesion, with an overflowing humour! He thus hands over the baton to Patrick who becomes captain besides his role of project manager.

We also lose Kris, who works for ESA and who was in charge of the appointments with satellites. He fought the seasickness as long as he was able to, but does not feel the courage to continue the adventure. We will also miss him, but we understand him and admire the way he kept smiling, even when he was at the very worst. We will continue his satellite-related manipulations, he prepared everything for us.

We plan to reach Pointe-à-Pitre on Tuesday around noon and leave on Wednesday to set sail once more for the continent of plastic. We count on you to continue following the expedition, which is a real one with its material and meteorological difficulties.

The 7th Continent team