10-02-2009
Changes
I am sitting on a comfortable divan overlooking Marigot on St. Martin while my boat is somewhere in the British Virgin Islands. Has the boat been stolen? … No. Have I sold the boat? … No, far from it. I have decided to take 4 months away from her to make some much needed money. It’s not that I’m going bankrupt, but I want to raise enough money to enable me to pay back a good portion of what I owe Gideon, the previous owner. I came to realize that if I only relied on the charter income that it would take me a few years to pay him back. The result is that I am now going to return to Royal Caribbean to do 3-months of fill-in work for them as Head Broadcast Technician. My boat will still be chartering, but now the boat is being captained by Trond Vika Furu, with Thomas Framnes as his very capable deck-hand. It was hard to go ashore from the boat and leave her in the hands of others, but it had to be done.
The impact has been mad much easier by Ian Gurr , whose fantastic hospitality I’ve been enjoying these past few days. The pictures below show you why.
I have the guesthouse to myself and even have a pick-up truck at my disposal. I now spend the days relaxing on my divan, writing, exploring the surroundings and sampling the island’s nightlife. This is just the kind of vacation I needed. I’ll stay here till February 21st, when I fly to Galveston in Texas to join the Voyager of the Seas, where I’ll work for 6 – 7 weeks, before I go to another ship and work there till I return to my boat on June 1s. The tentative plan now is to use the month of June to sail the boat down to Venezuela to dodge the hurricanes. While Hurricanes make life miserable in the Caribbean, I figured I’d leave the boat there and return to Norway to spend the summer working there. We’ll see what happens, plans always change, but for now it seems like a good one.
I also have to include a picture from where I stayed my first night when I disembarked. I couldn’t get a hold of Ian, but through Couchsurfing I got in touch with a friendly Dane that let me surf his couch. Let’s just say that I really liked the location of his beach house.
09-02-2009
Past Trips
In order to make it easier to keep track of trips I've done, I've put them into chronological order. This way you can scan down on the list below until you find a trip you want to see, then you click on the picture and off you go.
A beach trip to the Philippines
17-01-2009
Some images from the Caribbean
A lot of people have asked me to post some pictures from the Caribbean. I'll start with a small video taken when I took Marcus and Morten, two friendly Swedes I met in a bar in Le Marin, for a little cruise on my boat. This is the first swim I took in the Caribbean after sailing across the Atlantic.
Next are a few pictures from Le Marin.
Here are some pictures from Mustique, my favorite island so far. The first image taken as I'm anchored right outside Basil's Bar, the other ones from a walk I had around the island.
When people think of the Caribbean, Tobago Keys are what many visualize
St. Pierre on the north tip of Martinique is another place I really liked.
I've noticed that when I'm on charters I don't really take any pictures. I guess it's because I'm working and I let the charter guests take all the pictures. This is something I definitely need to work on.
When Lauren was here I got to celebrate Christmas, properly which was awesome ... A story my face tells =)
16-01-2009
Another Day in Paradise
I’m currently anchored in Prince Rupert Bay in Dominica. I would go ashore and explore the rainforest if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s pouring down. I know it’s a bit ironic, but I’m not talking about some light drizzle, it is bucketing down outside. So instead I’m catching up on my emails on the boat having forked out $10 to get connected to the HotHotHot network. All is good.
I arrived here in the afternoon yesterday from St. Pierre on the North tip of Martinique after my first proper open-ocean solo sail with this boat. The sail was a bit of a disaster, I set sail with a very conservative reefed main and double reefed genoa only to be met by big waves and wind that was bordering too strong. I had to turn my rudder all the way to port to counter the wind, so I knew I was over-canvassed (though according to the manual that came with the boat I was not). I pulled in the genoa and put the bows into the wind and waves. The autopilot gave me grief, so I had to turn it off and had to dash down to steer manually every 15 seconds. The waves were pretty big and for the first time in my life on this boat I was actually afraid. The mainsail ripped as I was lowering it, hugely frustrating, since this was the first time I was using it since I got it repaired in Le Marin. After a lot of cursing, sweating, getting drenched by sea-water and holding on for dear life I managed to secure the sail and turn towards my course. Needless to say I was depressed about the sail, but I chose to focus on good things: The genoa still works and the autopilot decided to work again, so I was back in business, motorsailing doing between 5 - 7 knots. The waves were really big and by far the biggest I’ve ever sailed in. I tried to take pictures, but they look puny on film, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I got drenched sitting in the cockpit, so that says something to the people that have been onboard.
Once I got to the lee side of Dominica the waves vanished, but the wind didn’t, so I continued in a much more leisurely fashion. While making my way I spotted a whale waving its tail towards me and also a marlin raced out of the water in hot pursuit of some prey. Added to this, I saw some stunning rainbows, so though the sail started bad, the ending was nice. As I was making my way into Prince Rupert Bay I passed Wind Surf, one of the old Windstar cruise ships.
I was planning to sail for Antigua at 2pm, allowing 16 hours to cover the 95nm to Antigua, but I’ve decided to hit the sack early and get up at 3am and set sail then instead. The wind will be more favorable and it will be nice to get to Antigua just before it gets dark, so that I can enjoy a good night’s sleep without having to do a proper night-sail.
10-01-2009
Blue Monday
After a great 2008 with many ups and a few downs and a sensational exit out of it, 2009 has come to hit me in the face. It feels like getting fired on a Monday after a particular festive weekend. There are many reasons for this, chief amongst them that Lauren and I split up. We're still great friends, but she needs to put her university degree to use and start a career, while I want to circumnavigate. Life goes on, but it does take some of the vibrant colors temporarily out of your life when you go through a break-up, even if it is a friendly one. So now I'm sailing solo again in a very literal sense.
On top of this the boat is giving me some grief. I split the mainsail sailing from Bequia to St. Lucia, so I had to get it repaired. I got it back this morning, but carrying the damned 74sqm sail alone is tough, not to mention lifting it in and out of the dinghy and onto the boat. I'm going to try to mount it when the wind subsides, but I think it will be a Hellish job all alone.
Added to this is a 30 point long list of things I need to work on, from leaks and bilge pumps, to laundry and shopping. I'll have my hands more than full up until my next charter starts on January 21st. Oh ... I also need to sail single-handed from Martinique to Antigua, which should be fun. I actually think it will be. It'll be a bit hard in the beginning, but once I get the anchoring down I'll be all good!
So right now I'm doing the only appropriate thing to do when you've just broken up with a girl you like and you have a shit-load of things you need to do and a long way to sail: I'm having a beer!
Things will sort themselves out in due time, so why stress out about them?
31-12-2008
Happy New Year
Happy New Year from Mustique
I'm anchored off amazing Mustique in the SVG. Tonight we're celebrating New Years Eve in Basil's Bar on the beach. Right now Lauren is onboard with me and I have an excellent couple (Roar and Monika) chartering with me. Life is grand and if 2009 is anything like 2008, I'm in for a real treat.
I wish everyone all the best and look forward to (hopefully) seeing you soon!
Love Andreas
11-12-2008
Crossing the Atlantic
(More pictures and video will soon be posted)
Crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat truly is an adventure of a lifetime. It’s one of those things many people speak off, some people dream off and a very few people do. When I left Norway on Sept. 22nd I had no idea if I would find people that would sail with me even to Gran Canaria, going across the Atlantic seemed like a distant, surreal, dream. As I worked my way southwards from Norway, things slowly fell into place. By the skin of my teeth I managed to find crew for every leg of the journey and when I got to Gran Canaria I actually had a long list of people that wanted to come with me. I was in the dream position of hand picking who I wanted to come across with me. I said no to six people and yes to four. The four people were: Knut, Trond, Arvid and Kaja. You never know how things will work when you put 5 relative strangers in a confined space for weeks on end, so I was a bit nervous, but felt confident that it would work out.
We decided to set sail on November 20th, 3 days before the ARC regatta. 225 boats sail with the ARC regatta, so leaving a few days before them was a great way to have their security network around us …. Without paying for it. We got the boat fueled, loaded with provisions and ready to rock by 7pm on the 19th. Then we went and had a good farewell dinner at our favorite local restaurant, before we retired for the evening. At 05:30 am on the 20th I woke the others and by 06:00 am we had cast off and were on our way. The forecast looked good, but when you have 16 – 18 days at sea ahead of you, you only know what the weather promises for the next few days and not the entire trip. We had a friend of mine Morten Wichstrøm, who also does my charter bookings, following our every nautical mile from his home in Oslo, where he sent us a continuous stream of weather updates and news. The trip certainly wouldn’t have been the same without his assistance.
From the get-go we were plagued with very little wind. It quickly became apparent that our projected 16 – 18 day crossing would probably take longer … much longer. The tough thing was we had no real clue exactly how much longer, because in a worst case scenario it could take us up to 4 weeks. Though my boat is fast, I still need wind to sail. Without joking I can say that for the whole trip we had between 8 – 11 knots of true wind hitting us almost directly from behind most of the time. We were lucky to hit some areas of low pressure that really helped us out towards the end. We saw winds from 0.1 knot of true wind, to an absolute maximum of 24 knots when we narrowly avoided a squall. Anyone that sails will recognize that we had very little wind. This is also a reason why this years ARC regatta is one of the slowest in history and they have seen many boats abort the trip across, because they had so little wind that the trip would take them too long and they would run out of food and water. They opted instead to head back to Gran Canaria, or to Cape Verde and wait for more promising wind.
We surveyed our stores and felt confident that we had enough food for 3 to 4 weeks. We had very little canned food or long-term food, focusing instead on fresh fruit and vegetables and filling my freezer with chicken and meat that we thawed before each dinner. This ensured that we had great produce that Knut and Kaja used to drum up awesome meals with. It also meant that we were very dependent on the freezer. Had it gone belly up … well … let’s just say that next time I’ll make sure that I have more control over the shopping list, so that we would have been more non-perishables onboard.
Another concern was our fresh water supply. On the very first night we lost about 100 liters from the port water tank, probably because a faucet was left open. This meant that our water supply was effectively halved. Though I have a water maker it has given me some grief, so I didn’t want to rely on it. Instead we went into water rationing mode. I think any camel would have been impressed by our efforts. We used salt water for showers, cleaning dishes, when cooking pasta and rice and only used fresh water when we really needed to. We had brought over a 100 bottles of 1.5 liters of drinking water, so that came in addition. It is after all tough to sustain your body on salt water. Our efforts paid off and we didn’t need to start the water maker (except to test it … and lo and behold it didn’t work), we even had about 30 liters to spare when we came to St. Lucia. You might wonder if it was a tough to be in this kind of mode, but it really wasn’t, once we got used to it, it became natural and even taking salt water showers was no hassle.
Our last area of concern was electrics. Running a fridge, freezer, autopilot, navigational instruments, running lights, normal lights, etc. is a huge drain on the batteries. It quickly became apparent that my poor solar panels wouldn’t be able to keep us replenished and with so little wind my wind generator was of incredible little help. Now it was time to make any Scotsman jealous at how much we could save. We basically turned off everything except for the fridge, freezer and chart plotter. Yes, you read correct, we turned off the autopilot. We are without a question one of the very few boats that hand-steered the entire way across the Atlantic. This meant that night and day, someone was on the wheel steering us across. As a side note, because we were 5 people onboard it wasn’t a huge strain and also meant that we always had someone looking forward, which sad to say is not the case on all boats. At night we naturally turned on the tri-color, but besides that and the VHF we used no extra power. As another side note I was appalled to see how few other boats had their VHF’s on. I hailed 5 sailboats during the crossing and no one responded. We also saw a number of sailboats that didn’t use their running lights at night, so I was sad to see the level of poor seamanship. I’m sure if they ever get into an emergency they will be quick to turn on their VHF’s to scream for help, but other than that they kept them off. With our supreme level of frugality we still had to run the engines for 5 hours every day to recharge. On days with little to no wind, these 5 hours gave us some momentum forward, but all in all I had a balancing act between how much electricity we needed to use on one side against how much fuel we had to run the engines on the other. It was a tough equation, especially when we had very little wind and would love to motor sail to put some distance in our log.
Though it might seem harsh that we needed to conserve both water and electricity and hand-steer on top of that, I think it worked out well. No one complained and everyone pulled their share of the load. At the end we had a much more true sailing experience, closer to how it was in the old days. With the exception of the freezer of course.
When talking about the freezer I can’t begin to the great cuisine we enjoyed onboard because of it. We bought a lot of chicken, minced meat and bacon that we broke down into daily packets and froze. This meant we only thawed what we needed. For the first week at sea, Kaja dished up some great salads stretching our fresh vegetables for as long as they would last without spoiling. We had apples for basically 2/3 of the way and we ran out of oranges 2 days before St. Lucia, so there were few cases of scurvy onboard. To give you an indicator of the meals we had, listen to some of my favorite: Chili con carne, shepherd’s pie, tex mex, Indian chicken curry, chicken onion soup, taco’s and fajitas, bangers & mash, Pasta Bolognese, pizza and burgers. All of the meals were lovingly prepared by Knut and/or Kaja and it was something everyone looked forward to. It felt like we were having a Sunday dinner every day.
We ate all our dinners together, but left the rest of the meals up to each person. Due to our shifts we never really had a fixed time of day to eat breakfast and lunch, so people ate when they were hungry. The first week we had good bread, then we moved into the long-life bread and lastly we moved over to the Swedisk knekkebrød. We had a large variety of spreads, cheese, meats and so forth, but as time passed our selections decreased, but we never really ran our of anything. On top of that we had a variety of muesli onboard and when topped off with ice cold long-life milk it was a pleasure to eat. On top of this we had a variety of snacks that we also polished off on the way. In short we had a great variety of food and I think it is why spirits were high on the entire trip. A well fed crew is a happy crew.
I mentioned that we did shifts and it worked out the following way: Each person did one 4-hour nightshift and one 6-hour dayshift. Then every 5 days each person did 2 nighshifts and got the whole day off. It worked out well. Because then people could look forward to a day off every 5 days. At all times, two people were on watch. The shifts ran from 18:00 – 22:00, 22:00 – 02:00, 02:00 – 06:00, 06:00 – noon, noon – 18:00. In the beginning I also did a slight shift, so that one shift started 2 hours later, so that you would stand watch with two people instead of just one. That worked well up until the two least experienced people, Kaja and Arvid, were on watch together on the one shift we had the most wind. The result was that we had the one sailbreakage on the whole trip: The old gennaker split and was firmly broken. After that incident I shifted the watches around a bit, so that the inexperienced would never be together on shift. I also changed them, so that two people went on watch at the same time and stayed together the whole shift. The change proved successful and we had no more accidents after that.
Besides the mentioned gennaker, we had few other problems. The spinnaker halyards was a constant source of chafe and worry. I gaffa taped the area that comes out of the mast, right where the gennaker is attached. The forces at play there really tore into it and as the pictures below shows, I need to take a closer look, because things like that shouldn’t happen after only 10 hours of being under tension. I need to get my ass up into the mast to check what’s going on. The brand new foresail also has some issues, because I think the sailmaker screwed up on the measurements closest to the furler. The reason I say this is because from the looks of it, the sail should go about 20cm higher to be in the right spot … well, it doesn't, so I’ll need to hoist it a bit and secure it down with rope. The whole ordeal of hoisting and lowering the foresail would be a lot easier, if it wasn’t connected to a wire, making raising and lowering it a lot more time consuming than it could have been. It also ensures that it’s something I can’t do by myself, but need assistance. Of course the sail itself is beautiful and on the furler it is very easy to use, but I need to get it positioned perfectly on the forestay for it to be perfect. Even though we had ridiculously little wind, we did have days when I feel like the wind generator (Seabreeze) should have generated electricity, but it didn’t. I really feel like it’s been a struggle to get the thing to give me anything remotely in the vicinity of what it promised. One big blow is that both my trampolines are basically falling apart. Gideon said they would be good for another 2 – 3 years, but from the looks of it they’ll only last a few more months, maybe less, now that I’m here in the Caribbean and they’ll see a lot of use. Another blow was that the port side bilge pumps stopped working again. This greatly irritates me, because I’ve spent so much time on them and Gideon even had an electrician come and rewire them in Amsterdam, but it seems to be to no avail. I had to manually bail out over 200 litres of salt water from the bilge during the crossing. Irritating to say the least! I also need to find out where the water is coming in, but I’m not too concerned, because it only happens in rough seas, so I think it’s through one or some of the through-hull fittings above the waterline. It’s also clear to me that both forward hatches leak not only in rough seas, but also when it rains. It’s also clear that it’s not from the seal, but I hope it’s not structural. I’ll need to spend more time on them in the weeks to come. Another disappointment was the solar fans I installed in Amsterdam. I installed 6 and already 3 of them have stopped working. In 50% breakage in 5 months is not a good track record. They basically just pack in and stop working, so I need to jump on the warranty band wagon and get them replaced. Of other pressing concerns I also need to drill two holes in the anchor roller, so that I can move the roller back a few cm. This will stop the anchor from jamming, a problem that becomes evident anytime I anchor.
Now that the temperature is getting warmer and warmer and the sun’s rays are relentless it’s become very apparent that my dodgy Bimini will need to be replaced. I’d like to replace it with a hard top, so hopefully I can scrape together the funds for that. On top of this it is of course the repair that I need to du to the pulpit I broke in Ijmuiden. I’m a bit puzzled at how the stanchions are fastened to the deck, because they seem only to be secured with a screw and no backing plate, maybe not even a washer, what’s worse is that they are in the actual deck molding, so I can’t get to the screws from underneath to strengthen them. Hopefully the mooring cleats are done properly, so that I don’t have to worry about their strength. It’s definitely something I need to talk to Gideon about.
Besides these things I have a nice little list of things I need to do and improve, but hey, that’s the way it always is. The key thing though is that I still think the FastCat is the supreme boat and I’m deeply satisfied with her. I wouldn’t exchange her for anything, especially once I get through with the repairs and improvements I need to do.
I hinted earlier at the poor wind we had and it’s true. In the end it took 21 days and 3 hours from when we cast off in Gran Canaria to when we were tied up in St. Lucia. Considering that we sailed close to 3000 nautical miles, this means an average speed of almost 6 knots, which is respectable for a normal boat, but I was expecting a much faster time. I can’t blame anything or anyone, but the wind. It certainly wasn’t the boat’s fault, because even with an inkling of wind we were moving graciously through the waves. In fact everyone onboard was amazed at how the boat moved. No matter the waves, we were safe and when the wind did pick up (on those rare occasions) the boat loved it. It’s also easy to look at the wind and think: 11 knots of wind. Well, they should do 7 – 10 knots then. Maybe if I got it at a different angle, but when it’s coming from straight behind it’s tough to get a lot of power out of it when you don’t have a huge spinnaker. My sailrobe is basically the main and genoa and two 135sqm and one 120 sqm gennaker. On the days we really moved, we had around 14 – 16 knots of true wind. Then it was a joy to sail and we flew along doing around 8 knots. The problem and what really dragged the average down was the bad days when we hardly any wind to work with. Days with daily averages of 4 knots or less are a killer. We didn’t have too many of them, but those we had meant that we needed to sail so incredibly much faster to lift the average back up again. Our worst day by far was day 14 when we averaged 91 nm in 24 hours. That’s 3.7 knots as an average. We were dying onboard. Then it looked like the trip could take almost 4 weeks and we felt a bit demotivated. Around that time the time-to-go indicator seemed to be stuck on 10 days. It was certainly our big joke onboard that we’ll be there in 10 days. Things got better and towards the end we were able to average between 170 - 185 nm in 24 hours, which we were very happy with since the winds never exceeded 18 knots.
Though we were plagued with little wind, the weather was gorgeous for the whole trip. I think we only had 2 or three days with rain, and even then it wasn’t continuous. We were able to lounge around and enjoy the sun and the great food. I finished 3 solid books: The Birds of Prey trilogy by Wilbur Smith. It felt exhilarating to read about pirates and privateers off the coast of Africa, when that’s where we were sailing. Everyone else also finished a large number of books, so it was a well read crew that walked ashore. The favorite book of the trip was Collective Suicide by Arto Paasilinna a book everyone read and loved. On one of the particular dead days in the middle of the Atlantic, we dove into the ocean and enjoyed a leisurely swim… and a bit of action.
All in all, the trip across was amazing. It was one of the things I dreaded the most when I left Norway, but it turned out to be the best parts of the journey. It is certainly something that will stay with me forever.
16-11-2008
Gran Canaria her we come
After 2 days in Oeiras we were ready to take off. The stay had been short, but sweet. It had climaxed in our epic “Capture the Flag” and we were definitely ready to feel the wind grab a hold off the sails again.
We set sail in the afternoon when the wind was most favorable. It was nice to finally have the forecast kick in. We motored for less than 30 minutes, before we shut off the engines and hoisted the sails. The awesome thing was that we didn’t need to power up the engines again for propulsion before we got to Gran Canaria.
Trond and I decided that we would sail conservatively, so that we wouldn’t rip any sails or have any other mishaps. This really paid off, because nothing broke on the way. The only downside was that we perhaps didn’t push the boat as hard as we could.
The trip was a true joy. The first three days passed in normal fashion, where we basically sustained ourselves on bread, apples and biscuits, but late on day 3 Trond cooked up a storm with a very tasty pesto chicken pasta. After that it was no turning back. We enjoyed all the food we had brought and could finally feel our bodies properly adjusted to the motion of the ocean.
The wind was surprisingly a bit challenging, because we got it straight from behind. Add in modest sized waves and both we and Otto (the autopilot) had to get a bit creative. The main sail and genoa saw the most amount of work, because the waves were a bit too big to fly the gennaker safely. The wind was also a tad strong, so it was bordering on when we would take the gennaker down had we been flying it, but we still let it feel the air for a few hours when the wind was not as aggressive. In essence we decided not to fly the gennaker if the apparent wind was bordering 15 knots. When we were in the vicinity of 15 knots of apparent wind, we normally saw from 23 – 28 knots of true wind, which could have been a pain if something had gone wrong. During the last 24 hours we had decent sized waves, so we opted to drop the main and just use the genoa. It worked like a charm and let us sail doing 6 – 8 knots in a very relaxed way. When we got to Gran Canaria the wind died, so for the last few hours we had to fire up Judas to get us to Porto de Mogan. I would have liked to have gone to Las Palmas, but with the 250+ boats sailing in and around the ARC staying there now, it was better to head further south to a place we could chill and be comfortable.
All that remains now is to wait for the crew members that will sail across the Atlantic with me … and get the boat ready … oh and naturally enjoy some MUCH NEEDED summer and sunshine …
09-11-2008
A day for the iron top-sail
Peniche wasn’t a bad place, but with no wind and no waves there was no point in sticking around there. It’s true we could have waited there, but I was advised to head further south, where the wind is more predictable and steady. The fact that there was no waves meant that we couldn’t do what my brother suggested: Go surfing. In fact a big competition was cancelled the day we sailed in, because of an utter lack of waves.
We though we’d only stay in Peniche for 2 hours, so the authorities didn’t make us pay any mooring fees, but when we spent the night there, we made sure we left before they would come descending on us in the morning. So at 06:26am we cast off leaving the waveless surfer paradise behind us.
We were able to take advantage of the morning breeze and sailed for the first hour, doing an impressive 7 knots in 8 knots of true wind. That was however the only time we were able to sail without the iron top-sail. For the rest of the day we had to motorsail, because the wind never exceeded 5 knots, but stayed between 1.5 and 5 knots. This gave us plenty of time to read, solve Sudoku, talk … and eat. The trip went very well. We headed down to Oeiras, which is located right as you start the sail-in towards Lisbon.
As soon as we got in, we checked the forecast and from the looks of it Tuesday will be our day. The wind looks very promising from then and through the rest of the week. So now we have 2 days in the most expensive marina I’ve ever stayed in: €54 per night!
Having said that it’s probably the nicest marine I’ve ever stayed in, so I’m not complaining to loudly. We’ll chill here till Tuesday and then set off. I can’t wait to finally sail in optimal winds. Hopefully it will pan out.
08-11-2008
Povoa de Varzim to Gran ... Peniche I mean
I was planning to set sail as soon as my latest crew member Trond came down from Norway. Unfortunately the winds wanted it otherwise, so we ended up spending two extra days in Povoa before we finally cast off. The winds were going with us, but at strengths of 2 – 4 knots, we had to hoist the iron topsail to make any meaningful progress. We quickly calculated that we’d be using a lot of fuel, just getting down to where there wind was forecast, so instead of shooting straight for that, we aimed at Peniche (130nm south of Povoa on the Portugese coast), so that we could top off our tanks and download a new grib file (A grib file is a weather file, that certain programs allow to download. They are great for seeing when and where winds will blow.)
The trip down was very uneventful, except for a school of dolphins that came and played with us a few times. Magical animals that you felt were observing you, just as much as you were observing them. We came into the harbor in Peniche fully intent on staying an hour and then shooting off again. Alas that proved to be too ambitious. First of all we couldn’t get diesel for another hour and any internet place opened 2 hours later. These people start work late, have a few hours of siesta in the middle of the day and even leave early … What a great life!
We did a break-neck diesel filling at a tiny pier with a shallow right in front of it. Then we downloaded the grib file and to our disappointment it promised no wind at all. So instead of sailing on, we’ll stay here till tomorrow, then we’ll hopefully sail, if not motor down to Ceicos, to wait till Tuesday when real wind will finally kick in …. Unless the forecast changes … again.