April 4th - Rom punch, Rowing boats and Regattas!

Dear friends!

I reasently realized that my last post disappeared somehow on it's way to our blogg and you therefore haven't been able to read anything from our adventureous tales from the Caribbean. Sorry! I will publish that now instead.

Last time you heard from me we were at Dominica. Now we are in the French side of S:t Martin. That means that we now have cruised through the major part of the Caribbean! Tobago Cays is in the south with only something like 100 Nm to Trinidad-Tobago. It have been one great trip!

Can you imagine - the water, the beaches, the small colourful villages, the fresh fruit etc... In the most places people are very helpful and look upon tourist as their most important source of income. That comes with some good sides and some bad. We have experienced both.

In Dominica for example. The village had a really nice atmosphere and felt very friendly. You felt welcome. The prices were very reasonable and the food were great. We would very much like to come back to Dominica. On the island Nevis, which belongs to the country S:t Kitts and Nevis, the feeling were the opposite.

We came to Nevis after been at Antigua - more about Antigua soon - for some nice days. We came during night. It is not easy to sail in to a foreign harbour during darkness, but with good prepreations and a cold head and steady hand it's most often end with a success. What you don't see when you arrive during the night is exactly how recless the ferrys in the harbour drive during buisiness hours...

Well. The swell from the ferrys wasn't actually the problem. The problems came later. After a very time consuming clearence process with the customs, the immigration and port office we went back to our dingy. Due to heavy swell in the harbour we have secured our dingy very well. Still the a police man came up to us and said that our dingy had gone to sea and some generous fishermen or whatever had gone after it to save it. We should pay our gratitude and respect to the heros, at least buy them a beer.

Very well, we know when somebody is trying to fool us, but this time it was a bargain to get away from the silly police man with his pilot glasses and white shirt with alot of golden stripes on it. 20 EC-dollars was okey.

Then we went back to our boat with the intentions of moving our boat from the illeagal anchorage to the leagal bouy - we learned at the custom office that anchoring in Nevis is not allowed, only bouy mooring. Safely moored at the bouy I took our little dingy back to the town harbour to visit the post office. I had learned my lesson and secured my dingy according to all laws of mooring I know - and trust me, I do know them all and how to safely secure a boat and I always have a storm in mind when I do it!

My post office visit lasted maybe 45 minutes. Not long time enough for my mooring to get loose and let go. Evenso, when I came back somebody had untied my mooring in a way that would have made the dingy seaborne if I had been gone for another 10 minutes or so. It was obvious how the mooring line were untied by help of a human hand. After discovering this I looked down at the dingy and found it full of water! Someone had tried to sink our unsinkable dingy.

Angry, sad and disappointed I went down in the dingy and with only help of a sponge started to empty it from water. Then I saw an ugly, stupid old man in the far end of the bridge waving with a bucket trying to sell his bucket to me to use for empty the dingy from water... What do you call that? Management through creative monopoly? Did he actually think he would get that bucket sold? Poor man. Do I have to tell you that we left that island as soon as possible!

Very well, of course you will meet some stupid people when you cruise through so many different countries. 99% of all the people we meet are just wonderful.

In Antigua for example. Oh, I liked Antigua. Antigua has, according to themselves, 365 beaches, one for each day on the year. I have no reason to doubt that! We came to English Harbour in the early morning after a fantastic sail. My friends, these Caribbean nights are just beutiful. We were having just perfect wind. My watch started 0300 hours and the only light on the sky was the Milky Way and a perfect moon. We were doing something like 5-6 knots, which is considered great (that is - don't laugh now, will you - 10-12 km/hour). I had made my self a nice cup of coffee and had my favourite music in the i-pod.

You know, there I was. With a cup of coffee, my i-pod, perfect sailing, warm wind and THE most beutiful heaven above me, thinking that this is the place to be. It was absolutely great. Then you just enjoy and feel happy.

So what do you do then, standing there, when the coffee cup is empty and the album on the i-pod have started over for the second time? One thing you can do, and this might sound silly, but still a challenge everytime, is to try to figure out exactly when the sun will rise. It sounds easy, but in the beginning it's dark and definately still night, then it's still to dark to call dusk. Third time you are convinced, but you are still wrong. Then you just look away for a second or two and suddenly you realize that it have been morning for a while. I wonder how the morning Godess does that?

Very well. Antigua. Nice place! We had a great time at Antigua. English harbour and Falmouth harbour is just next to each other. It's walking distance. We were at the classic old English harbour. It's a well preserved old remaining from the days of english colonialism. It felt like arriving in some small English village. Everything here was close, easy and conveniant. I liked that.

English Harbour is were the classic regatta Antigua classic yacht regatta takes place. Here they have been racing those beutiful old pre-war yachts every spring since I-don't-know-when. Please type in Antigua classic yacht week in the search window at Youtube and see for yourself! It's a beatiful site.

We often strolled down to the more lively harbour of Falmouth Harbour. Here you find nice cafes and restaurants by the water, nice food and nice prices. You sit close to beutiful yachts, super yachts and mega yachts. For you to understand just how big a superyacht is, let me put it like this: An anchor lantern is a light you have to light during nights to make other boats aware of your presence. This is a white 360 degree lamp (compared to the running lights which is a respectivly red, green and white 225 degree lamp on each side of the boat). This super- and megayachts have instead of this white 360 degree lamp a red one on top of their mast(s). Why? - So the air planes don't collide with them! (I'm not 100% sure on this explanation, but it's at least plausible :-)

One of the boats I saw there was the J-boat Velsheda. Please google that and have a look. Yeah, what do you say now? Ahh, isn't she something! (I can't be completely sure if it was Velsheda, because she has a sister ship that is confusingly similar, but you get the idea anyway).

Antigua is often the first place you arrive to when you go from the Cannaries to the West Indies. First day we witnessed the arrival of some crazy people that had been ROWING over the Atlantic! Can you imagine? Rowing over the Atlantic? One boat among them had been rowing since the 6th of December!! My god! Here we are complaning on Babian butt after some weeks. I will not complain any more... (Babian Butt is what you get after sitting most of the day on rough plastic surface that rock from side to side day around).

In the evening one day we took a taxi up the hill to Shirley Hights.That is a bar on top of a high hill, with a stunningly beautiful view over the bay and island. Here we listend to steel band, reaggea, caribbean live music under the stars. We had rom punch and grilled meat and it was a great party. Lot's of people and great atmosphere. That felt very Caribbean to me.

After Antigua we have been exploring the fabulous dive waters at the volcano island Saba (check that out at google!). I also have a good story from Guadeloupe that I didn't tell you now, so keep looking for updates on our blogg, I will tell you that story soon. But for now, I say: over and out.

To all my berliner friend: I miss you and I'm looking forward to meet you again on the other side of the Atlantic!

For now: Auf wiedersehen! Tschüss!