Before we Cascais in Portugal we met a skipper called Susan, Scrumpy brought her to our attention as she couldn’t resist his adorable little furry face. This happen smack bang in the middle of our panic about low pressure systems & when best to leave for the Canaries, so we decided to pick Susan’s brain a little. She seemed to know quite a lot about passage planning, had various weather routing accounts which she subscribed to and she was heading for the ARC in Gran Canaria. Her plan was to sail to Sines for a night where she would reassess the weather & potential set sail for the 700 mile passage. She offered to met us in Sines and go through her plan and hopefully teach us a thing or 2…. which was Perfect! ….. And she was pretty perfect with her slim waist & clever sailing knowhow i envied her & so she became known to us as Perfect Susan.
We didn’t end up seeing her in Sines and we figured being perfect with a boat that averaged 8 knots she had probably looked again at the weather & decided to head straight for the Canaries. Then on our first day in Las Palmas we bumped into her again! She had arrived about 6 hours before us & had left the same day us but from Cascais instead of Sines. As we had only taken a few hours more than her & had had similar problems with no wind we were feeling pleased as punch!
We ended up in the local sailors bar that evening which unsurprisingly is called Sailors and bumped into Perfect Susan again she was very complimentary about what we were doing & bought us a pint. She also offered to help us with our Atlantic Crossing passage planning …. which was again prefect for us and would be really useful. We meet some of her fellow crew a really nice lad called Sean who was a doctor taking a year out to something a bit different & had bagged some sailing qualifications to help him out. He had found Susan and her boat Sirens Tigress on a website where skippers can look for crew & vice versa.
We have now progressed Perfect Susan’s nickname to Papa Sierra but the principle remains the same and she is continuing to ‘mentor’ us and hoping even keep in touch via a special satellite mailasail / Iridium Go email we have. Sean is already on route to the Caribbean now on another boat & PS is leaving on Sunday 22nd Nov with the ARC. We don’t have any photos of her but we will try & get one before we leave & hopefully definitely get one when we see her again in St Lucia!
Sean we hope your passage is going well & wish you luck on your uni course in Jan 2016. Susan thanks for all your support & we hope you don’t mind your nickname!!!!
Boat Hobos 