11th Nov. Onboard phone call with Nandor Fa – Spirit of Hungary

Nándor Fa, Spirit of Hungary – Ship’s log 10th Nov. 2016.

I think my existance in this world was decided when my mother and my father, sometime in the second half of the 1930s, looked at each other at a ball. That moment was so significant to both of them, that a decade later it still lived in them. Right after the ball my father was called up by the army. They tried to keep in touch through letters, hoping that one day they would see each other again. By the time he could have gone home, WW II broke out and so he was kept in the army. He didn’t fight on the war front, he worked as a pontooner – constantly blasting and rebuilding. He was 190 cm tall, tough as a bull, survived the ice-cold Duna river, endless marches and several periods of captivity. When the Hungarian army fell apart, he started towards home on foot. The Germans caught him and treated him as a deserter. Close to Wienerneustadt he escaped from them and started towards home on foot. At Mór he was caught by the Russians and as an enemy soldier he was sent to one of the Gulags on the East. On the way he managed to escape again, and started home on foot, for the third time. This time he was much more careful not be caught, as they would have shot him dead. He walked throughout the whole winter, only during the night, slowly from metre to metre. Finally, he arrived home in 1946. My mother lived the life of young women at the time. Her brothers were on the front, she knew nothing about her love for a long time. Everyone just waited for the horror to be over. The war went through Székesfehérvár – my hometown – three times, all three times in the form of bloody battles. Bombing, shooting, firing canons. Sometimes in tiny cellars underground, sometimes in pitfalls dug for themselves, they were trying to survive. Young girls were camouflaged to escape from the Russian soldiers. Those must have been miserable years, living in the hopeless. Then, my mother and father were somehow blown together by the wind again. They got married and built a house from ruins with their own hands, where the four of us were born.

My father only bothered his own job, worked hard every day, he didn’t care about communism. He wasn’t capable of that. My mother stayed at home, raising her four sons. They gave life to us, gave their wisdom and morals to us. I was about ten years old when my mother was asked in by the director of my school. When she was blamed for the religious raising of her children, she said: “You, in this school, can teach my children anything you want. And I will teach them what I want in my home.” Then she turned around and left. We had nothing, so there was nothing to lose. I’m incredibly proud of my parents, they were true, hard-working people, it feels great to remember them.

10th November, 09:10 UTC

Before daybreak I was having a nap on my beanbag, when I was woken up by the wind having become much lighter. I looked out and it not only had decreased, but had turned to North. I jumped up and started exchanging sails. It was unreasonable to bear away with the J1, I would have just slowed down. J1 furled, brought down, A3 out of the bag, hoisted. When everything was ready, I put away the J1 and went inside to change clothes because I was covered in water from bottom to top (no, it’s not raining, and no, it’s not the splashes). It seems we could have the trade winds earlier towards the African coast. Conrad has already targeted it, but it was too soon, he tacked back.

Now I’m having breakfast at the rising sunshine. It’s quite cloudy, the sky can be seen through a few holes only. My menu is cereals with fruits and a cup of “café au lait”.

12:30

According to the forecast there should be about 15 knots wind from NE. Instead, the reality is 9 kts from W. In the afternoon it turned from one minute to the next. I was above Madeira, both directions seemed to work. If case the wind remains the same, I’m going west with the front of the fleet, if it turns I’ll gybe and go to the East side, which seems more favourable.

The Northerly arrived, 5 minutes later I was on the other tack, on the way to comfortably pass above the islands. We slipped out from above the islands, and now I’m sailing with clean wind, free as a bird. Some of us were blown together here: Kojiro, Conrad, Arnaud, Romain and I. On the other side there were a few boats way ahead of me, now we are almost at the same latitude. This makes it interesting.

Position on 10th nov., 19:40 UTC: 32°51,2′ N, 016° 03′ W, everything’s all right.

11th Nov. Today at 12 GMT Vendée Globe LIVE with Nandor Fa Spirit of Hungary!

WATCH online: http://www.vendeeglobe.org/fr/web-tv

Finger crossed to be able to connect to the boat ?

Every 4 years the Atlantic shows its teeth to the Vendée Globe’s skippers.
We received a short message from Nándor Fa onboard Spirit of Hungary:

“The first night was a tough one, with lots of showers, sometimes with ice, very cold. All kinds of winds from zero to 45 knots, it was hard to choose the right set of sails. Still not easy, I’m going in downwind with the A7 among enormous high seas. I had no sleep at all, maybe tomorrow.”