Ok we have been lazy… We’re in paradise but we haven’t moved in a bit. We’ll to be honest we kind of like it here. Bequia is nice, you got most of what you need here. Shops, chandleries, OK snorkel-spots, restaurants, pubs, bars, internet-acces and friendly people. Yeah, it’s quite sheltered as well witch is a good thing, tough sheltered means a different thing here from Sweden. Over there sheltered means you’re safe in most directions at least from the waves. Here we have the Caribbean sea right behind our stern and the next stop is Central America. But as long as we keep an eye on the weather we feel safe. We got land on two and a half sides, that is good enough.

What to tell you about islandlife then? Spains mañana feeling is more of a semaña version. One can get things done if one really put the mind and effort into those things but it’s easy to take a dip in the ocean, relax and all of a sudden the sun goes down and another day is wasted. Not really wasted but you’ve spent it and it’s not coming back.

We did find two really good things. A windlass handle that someone had left on the bottom and a shower-bottle. Well it’s not a real shower-bottle but one of those garden pesticide pump-thingies, you fill it with water and your favorite weed killer pump up some pressure and off you go. We use it as a shower, and it’s good, leave it out in the sun for a bit and you can take a hot shower. Soooooooo Gooooooooooood!
We found it floating in the bay right after a squall and being the good people we are we put a sign up on our boat next to the bottle telling people that we found it. A couple of days later and no claimers it was our. Now we’re going to have to keep a good watch over it so it doesn’t run away.

We’re actually down in Trinidad now for the Carnival and will be there for a while getting us and Trusty clean and shiny.

One more deep breath on the surface, relaxing, letting the waves rock me back and forth. Jack-knifing and one big pull with the arms, on my way.
Slow and steady kicks and the first equalization, keep the pressure up to save oxygen. Fifteen seconds and the bottom starts fading in, out of the blue. One quick glance at my watch and it tells me 15 meters, keep going slow and steady, 18, 20. The scale of the depth gauge is less exact here but it’s nearer 30 than 20. Level out and have a quick look around, 33 seconds. Let’s go up.

Kick away and let my body rise up, cursing myself about using the weight-belt, a couple of more kicks, damn it’s heavy, starting to push harder, much better, now progress is made.
Looking down at my arm again, 5meters, starting to relax as my whole world fills with light as the surface get close enough to touch, one more kick. Air! Damn, new record and closer to my goal of 30 meters. Cursing my self again about not bringing the GoPro to document it and not leaving the weight-belt in the dingy.

So we’re in St Lucia right now, heading back south for St Vincent. Not bad place, good snorkeling, lot’s of tourism and boatboys but when they find out we don’t want a banana leaf-hat or “de bieest ganja in the Caribbean, bobmallay usede to smioke dis Mon” they leave us alone after selling us some overpriced bananas. Easy dollars are easy spent. EC$ (Eastern Caribbean) looks cute with flowers and fishes on and the coins are made in aluminum so it’s almost monopoly money one parts with on a steady basis.

But as the sun sets and paints the Pitons orange before crashing into the sea at least I realize that we’re actually where we should be. We’re halfway there, only need to get back home later. Only the fun part left, carnival, Antigua’s sailing weeks, BVI, Bermuda and the Azores. But now we’re here and we’ve got no time to keep before the Carnival down in T&T..

We’re dropping of family/crew in Martinique and we’ll write up our New Years Eve experience as soon as we get back down to where we’ve got mobile internet again because the connections here are like back in the 90s.. 🙂

We’re going to sail in the island world of St Vincent for a couple of weeks and after that head down to Trinidad for the Carnival.

We’ll it’s a new year soon and we’re preparing for a fun night with friends in the sun. Staying here in Bequia so far has been great. It’s a relaxt island whose main focus is on tourism, almost every day we’re accompanied in the bay by at least one cruise-ship and a couple of hundred yachts.

Champagne as we end our crossing. Just to give you a bit of Caribbean feeling.

This post will contain some pictures from our time here down in the south. After Bequia we’re heading south to Tobago Cays where there are some great snorkeling. They’ve turned a portion of the reef into a turtle sanctuary and it’s not frowned upon to swim with the turtles.

Now some pictures for you!

Yup it’s that color taken with my camera as well.

Jacks Bar, where we’ll have our dinner. Yeah, it’s on a beach!!

What we wake up to right now, not bad for a December Monday..

Fair Winds anchoring after a crossing from Cap Verde.

Since we’re using mobile internet right now the pictures are not hi-res but you can email us and request if you want them in full size. Have a great New Years eve now and we’ll catch you next year!!

We’re finally in my home island away from home. Bequia, where the sun shines, the water is warm and the beer is 18 norwegian crowns at a pub 50 cm from the water. That’s how I’ll spend my New Years eve.

Merry x-mass and Happy New Year!

Yes we have set foot on Caribbean soil witch was pretty nice. More updates coming soon.

Tomorrow we’re picking up extra crew and then it’s Christmas and after that we’ll head south for Bequia and New Years party with our friends on Fairwinds if they have finished their crossing. We’ll probably head out to Tobago Cays as well.

The sun is shining and the water is between 27 and 29 so we’re taking it slow and easy. We anchored quite far out in the anchorage but we’ll move in closer tomorrow just to make our dingy trips shorter and smoother.

We see land!! Martinique! Now let’s just hope that we don’t run out of diesel.

Let’s hope there are some good wifi there so we can upload some pictures.

There’s no I in teamwork as they say. Right now there’s no I on my keyboard. Well it is there but won’t work. Damn salty air and such things.. Good thing the screen keyboard works so I can write Ii and copy and then use witch of the I’s I want to use.

So what’s up then?
We’re 140 NM out from Martinique and we have about 30 hours left of motoring at this speed, we have about 50 something liters of diesel (damn how many i’s are there in the English language?) left and that might be enough… We’ll measure tonight and see if we need to stop and drift for a while.

I’ve finally figured out why the trade winds don’t want to play ball, no human sacrifice (last time we gave the Atlantic half a finger) so no good wind. The upside of this is that none of us have been seriously wounded the downside is that my toes have finally healed (toes bad from kitchen work) so cutting of one of them is no longer an option… Bummer..
I mean what more could the ocean want? We’ve given Mr Ocean candy, Cava, half a cupcake, some beer, potato-crisps and lot of already half-digested food. I mean, come on, what more do you want?

The sun has been out for a couple of days and I’m starting to see a problem with our choice of destination, I’m actually not that fond of heat.. It’s 35 in the air and 28 in the water and Trusty is a boat shaped sauna right now and with the small amounts of wind we get won’t give any relief. But I guess no one gives us any pity and I don’t blame you (buhu buhu we have a heat problem while sailing towards the Caribbean). Winter is not coming but already upon most of our readers. Btw it’s six days left to X-mass!!

Well I do hope we’ll be there then. It would be nice, some ice-cream would be nice..

Last night I heard a new sound, Trusty out at sea is a cacophony of different sounds and one learns the origin of most of them during a longer stay. As soon as one hear a new sound your mind starts working again, trying to find out what the hell is going on. It could be just a pencil on the floor witch is a none problem or delammination of the hull witch would be something a bit more serious. Mostly it’s just Trusty shifting shape a little because of a different sail-setting or something that has shaken lose of it’s towel wrapping.

This was a scraping sound witch was interesting, scraping sounds are not that common in our little world. I tried to pinpoint it at it came from where we have our closet and toilet area, right next to where the mast pass through. Moving silently toward the sound trying to find it it stopped. Hmm, must be something with the floor I thought and tried to focus my hearing as I moved around little. Nope, still silent..
Walking back toward the kitchen the scraping started again. Now my mind started making up reasons for a scraping sound, did we hit something that is scraping against the hull? Giant squids? Cockroaches? Kraken? I shifted my weight slowly not to disturb the floorboards and swiveled my head to pick up on the direction, looked down and saw a black blob just in front of my feet.

It was a small marine bird. Our floor is a bit slippery and I guess the claws couldn’t get enough traction for the bird to stand up. Also there’s kind of no room to fly in that part of Trusty, it’s small and a bit cramped (still good enough for us) not ideal for getting enough speed to get airborne. So I woke up the whole crew and slowly picked up the bird.

It was black and small and didn’t mind at first, I could feel the heartbeat slow down and as soon as it started to relax it begun picking at my fingers. After no response from me it calmed down again. I carried it out into the cockpit and sat it down on a big flat area. It just sat there for a while and then it flew away into the night.

The odds of finding a fish as well as a bird inside must be fun.
Right now we have 344 NM left until we’re anchored in Cul de Sac de Marin in the southern part of Martinique. The GPS thinks that it might be something between 100 to 85:34 hours to go. We’ll see. If we just get a little bit more wind so we can get at least 1.5 knots out of it the diesel will be enough to get us all the way. Yeeey!

Yeah we’re steaming.. you should be steaming too, we’re steaming, jah comes and we steam on.. woooihjooohooo!!!

We have our diesel running, our reggae on and the sun is shining, water is blue and the wind is erhm not blowing. I no longer believe in the trade-winds, they’re a lie. Probably invented by the new world order to make us believe in the early trades when we didn’t have any engines. Probably alien technology that drove the slave ships from Africa to the colonies and sugar and cotton back to us.

To be serious tough if we had more money and could stay out for two years we would have waited until January to cross, the trade-winds (if they actually exist) are stronger then but we want to celebrate new-years eve on a beach and not in a marina next to Uffes krog and the Irish Tavern (not that the Irish Tavern was that bad, the Guinness was ok). But we don’t have unlimited finances (maybe if I win that lottery) and we actually want to spend more time in the Caribbean than on the Canary Islands. If we’re going to fit The Carnival in Trinidad, The Baths in the BVI and Bermuda before we head back to reality we are going to need all the time we can get over on the west side of the pond.

Now we’re under 500 NM and we hope that our diesel tanks will be big enough to bring us all the way there. Worst case scenario we can use our dingy engine 🙂 or just tow Trusty with our little rubber boat, that would be fun.Well we’ll see what the future holds.