News about the voyage of the student training vessel Gunilla (Sweden) supported by C-Map CM93/3 ISO 19379 certified digital cartography and Chartworx Electronic Chart Software.

In Cádiz, we changes students and crew. Now we have the first year students with us. It is a great experience for them to do this first trip witch include a crossing of the Atlantic.

Since we left Cádiz in November our first stop was Agadir in Morocco. The main issue there was to visit Tafraut and get acquainted with the Berber culture, witch are quite different from ours. But also Agadir was interesting, at least for us “boat lovers”. They are still building small fishing boats of wood, witch are very interesting to study. There is a big open place with about one hundred boats in different stages of completion. And a lot of wooden loggs. No lifting cranes, all is done by hand. When one boat is ready (of course the one in the middle), thy simply make room between the boats and drag it out with help of a big tractor. It smokes and sometimes catch fire in the sledge they use. People running with greased planks from aft to fore. But sooner or later (usually) the boat will reach the sea.

After Agadir we had some days in the Horse latitudes, but halfway down to Cap VerdeIslands, the wind came so we could have good sailing to Mindelo.

There a trip by ferry and a journey on a wooden bench on a Pic-Up took us to the nice valley of Ribeira Grande on the nearby island Sao Antao.

Here the nature is quite different fom the other island, green and rich.

The big step over the Atlantic was not according to the plan this year. According to weather statistics, the wind shall blow steady from NE, but this was not the case this year. Weak winds an lot of rain was on the meny. But we finally made it and today, the 30^th of December we  anchored in the bay between Ile du Royal and Ile St Josef, known as The Devils Islands, or Iles du Salut, the island of hope.