Happy New Year and Happy Birthday to the Captain

We left Gibraltar on the last day of 2013, New Years Eve, and more importantly the Captain's Birthday!!! Richard has always said that the whole world celebrates his birthday with fireworks, music,  dancing and great rowdiness, without even knowing it. And we so appreciated everyones celebration as we were limited in how we could celebrate New Years Eve and his Birthday this year. But we did the best we could as we left in cold, windy and somewhat rough seas. I made his favorite brownies and black cherry jello with whip cream. And for those of you "Breaking Bad" fans, you will understand his new t-shirt.
Leaving Gibraltar with a thumbs up on his birthday with the Rock behind him:

All decked out in our tundra wear--Brrr, it was cold:

But we are together and happy to be moving on to the Canaries:

New T-shirt:

And Mother Nature and Brother Sun celebrated with us by giving us a spectacular sunset as their gift for his birthday:

New Years Day 2014 greeted us with warmer weather. We are heading south along the coast of Africa to the Canary Islands so every day will be warmer and warmer---Yeah!!!

I decided to start my day and New Year with a shot of Baileys Irish Cream in my coffee. Sometimes a girl just has to do what a girl has to do….

And the sea puppies (dolphins) came to play with us and the Boys headed up to the bow to whoop and holler and encourage them along:

And another brilliant sunset for the first day of the year. We never tire of our sunset ritual of thanking the sun for another day of shining for us:

On January 4th we arrived on the island of Tenerife of the Canaries:

The Canary Islands are a group of 7 volcanic islands just off of the coast of Africa. It is warm and most of Europe uses it as a winter getaway, much as America does with the Hawaiian Islands. We arrived at the port in the town of Santa Cruz or Saint Cross. It's a beautiful little town and all decked out still from the Christmas holidays:

You can see in the background the tower with a lit up cross (for Saint Cross) behind the fountain pool:

After 6 years in the Med we finally found a real baked potato in a little cart along the side of the street. You could add all kind of goodies to it and we did…Yum!

The second night here there was a big festival called "The Three Kings". It is the finale of the Christmas Season and is the story of the 3 Kings who brought presents to Jesus. It was a parade with oxen pulling carts of people dressed in robes holding owls, belly dancers, sheep and goats being herded down the street, and camels carrying the 3 Kings. Pretty wild!! One king was white and looked like Santa Claus, one looked Moorish and the last was a black man. With our limited language skills it was somewhat confusing but very colorful and great fun. The Kings dismounted from the camels and were led into the town square where they sat on thrones and received all of the little children--somewhat like sitting on Santa"s lap and asking for presents.

Xavier arrived Sunday evening to complete our crew--Captain Richard, 1st (and only mate) Willow, Mariusz and Xavier.

As always, we are subject to Mother Nature, and so have been delayed for a week here in Tenerife. So we have taken advantage of getting used to 4 people on the boat and finishing last minute preparations for the crossing--such as engine tune-ups and provisioning. We rented a car for a couple of days and went sightseeing around the island. We drove to the top of the mountain intending to go to the volcano but the roads were closed halfway up due to snow. The peak is over 9000 ft high and we were able to get a good look at it through the tree tops. 

  The Captain and crew: Xavier and Mariusz...

So far we have enjoyed our journey and intend to continue so. EcstaSea is ready and so are we--physically, emotionally and spiritually. We intend to flow in the ease band and live in harmony with Yemaya and one another. So tomorrow we will sail away across the big blue Atlantic and arrive in 2-3 weeks in the Caribbean.

Sailing, sailing away…..