LinoCat

once again. Some people are joking already if we are going to get a ferry license for Grenadines-St Lucia :-) Tomorrow Ute and Mathias will leave us and fly back to Germany while John and his wife and 2 kids will join us on LinoCat. We are not affected by the Tsunami resulting from the earthquake in Chile since we are not in the Pacific but we know quite many sailors out there and keep our fingers crossed for them.

Yesterday evening in Bequia: We all had a relaxed evening on board Vanora. Tina had prepared pizza and Peter was baking it to perfection. THANKS A LOT! We chatted until around 22.30 and then went back to the boat

We left after checking out with customs and immigration and after Ute and Mathias had one more snorkel trip. The wind has died down but is still coming from good directions and so we sailed to St Vincent and are now motorsailing along St Vincent coast. I guess we can again sail in the channel from St Vincent to St Lucia. LinoCat might reach the anchorage around 0100 in the morning. In Bequia we fileld up all water tanks since in St Lucia they still have dramatic probles with water.... And thanks to Dr. Hahn for noticing that all pictures taken with the Nikon D700 were dated 2008 :-) I now changed the date on the Nikon.

You can even order your food now for boat delivery over the VHF radio. Cool stuff or to much tourist stuff? I don´t know yet. Anyway we do not have to order there since we will be on the VANORA for a sundowner and a PIZZA! YUMMY Typical Vanora feeling! It is nice to have them around again.

A while ago i had changed the coal prefilter on the watermaker and cleaned the seastrainer inlet. On the pictures you can see that this was necessary. The watermaker had 250hours and was 6 months in use. The 5 and 20 micron filters need to be cleaned next. The watermaker is still producing between 25 and 30 liters per hour depending on the watertemperature and voltage. We are consuming around 100 liter per day and that means that we let the watermaker run around 4 hours per day. It draws 10 Ampere so with our 200Ah charging per day over the solarpanels there is no need to run the engine at all. I would now consider a bigger watermaker for the future but weight is another issue. I have the gut feeling that some parameters are not set correctly since it still shows prefilters as good in the display panel.

Here are some snaps from Chatham bay.

After Clifton on Union island we sailed to Chatham bay just on the other side of the island. Hoping to catch a barracuda at the same spot as last time we did not have luck. In Chatham bay we went for a walk on the beach and then back onto the boat. We bought a Tuna and grilled it for dinner. During dinner we caught a very small soldier fish and set him free again. After two rounds of playing cards we went to bed. The Royal Clipper was also here and it was nice to see her leaving the bay under sail and illuminated. (Update via HF SSB so no pictures)

Happy island is an artificial island made mainly of empty conch shells and is a good place for a sundowner. A rumpunch is around 10EC and tastes very good. Kids can play in the sand and we met the crew of a swedish boat and they had 4 kids which were also playing. After 2 rum we thought it is enough and went back to the boat since it was also getting dark.

After a nice Lobster BBQ yesterday evening and a good night sleep we sailed to Clifton on Union Island this morning. The wind was only around 10 knots from behind and since it was only a 4 mile ride we used the Genoa sail only. So after one hour we dropped anchor in Clifton. Maybe we will visit "Happy island" a small artificial island, maybe 20m in diameter with a only a bar/restaurant on it. In Clifton you can also get rid of garbage. We do not give it to boat boys since sometimes they just dump it into the ocean. The island to the left is a part of the Tobago Cays and the sunset below was taken right before the lobster BBQ on the beach in the channel on the Tobago Cays.

We had breakfast and Sydney was delivering the baguette breads to our boat. We snorkeled in the morning, then had lunch , took some kite aerial pictures and went by dinghy to the horseshoe reef to snorkel there. We saw a nurse shark and a coooool reef shark. I did not bring the under water camera this time :-( Tonight we will have lobster BBQ at the beach What a stressful life!

It took us around 1hour to sail from Canouan to the Tobag o Cays. We are right behind Baradel island with the turtles. The wind has slowed down to 15 knots and the sea is also calm. Lobster beach BBQ with Romeo is scheduled for tomorrow. Readers, please join us! (Vanora, Medianoche, Bagalut, etc. ) A perfect day!

After breakfast we went for a bit of snorkeling. I had to check the saildrives and rudders since at night a fish bit the hook and pulled the line under the boat. I was up at night to get him out but the line then snapped and so i had to make sure that the lead, hook and line was not jammed somewhere. Also i was looking for the fish but could not find him around the boat. I hope he will survive. Snorkeling here was nice and the anchor was holding well in sand despite the 360 turning winds and currents. So not a bad spot as a quiet anchorage. We will now leave to the Tobago Cays.

We are in Canouan and the next boat is at least 2 miles away, the water crystal clear and we will have a snack now and then go snorkeling. The anchor is lying in sand at 6m and around 25m chain are out. The anchor is well dug in and so we should be fine. If the anchor slips we only have 10m before we "reach" shore.

After the midday siesta we went to Gingerbread for a coffee. Lani and Chris had fun during the Dinghy ride. With 4 people we were really slow. We had banana and other cakes, Cappucino and Latte and then a nice walk through the village. Mathias and myself chatted with an ex mate on an Oil tanker while the girls went shopping :-) Also we got new fishing lures for higher speed. They are also supposed to swim deeper. The brand is Yozuri which we used succesful already before but we lost all of them during the atlantic crossing. On the way back we stopped at "Bagalut" with Walter and Brigitte and they gave us a warm welcome like always with drinks and snacks and so we sat there together with Ralf until the sun was down. Now we will chill on the boat and let´s see if we go to the live music at Jacks beach bar later...

Bequia Panorama picture. The small dots in the left part are Mathias and Ute. In the dinghy on the way to the beach. And again Mathias and Ute swimming in the water. Not to many other people in the water :-)

The Gunboat 66 Gazelle leaving Rodney Bay anchorage. What a beautiful boat. After an uneventful week in Rodney bay (besides Bettina birthday and the meatballs :-) ) we headed south to Vieux Fort to pick up Mathias and Ute. It was a rough and unpleasant ride. We had swell from the north in the beginning and later from south and the wind coming from front with up to 31knots. We reached Vieux Fort and met with Ralf from La Medianoche and went to the airport. After Mathias and Ute arrived and Inge left us we decided that Joern, a sailor from Hamburg is taking them to LinoCat since Ralf and myself wanted to clear out of customs and immigration. After around 30 minutes we then took a taxi to the harbor and when we headed in the dark towars our boats we saw a small dinghy rowing through the night. YES, it was Ute and Mathias in Joerns boat plus the guest of Joern and luggage in a small rubber boat. Ralf towed them to LinoCat and we had a drink and went to bed. The next morning, after breakfa...

It was looooooong time to change the toilet pump on LinoCat. But first try it out with one, so we still have one toilet left which works for sure. So the guest bathroom toilet was under maintenance today. Removing the old pump was a little big ugly since the pump and the valves did not look brand new inside and also the liquid in the pump and hoses had to be emptied. Also do not forget to close the seawater flush inlet valve if you do not want to sink your boat :-) It took around 30 minutes to change the pump and it looks like it is working fine and also that the backflow problem from the holding tank has now stopped. After trying it ouf for a few days i will replace the other one also. And it looks like Ralf really found the elctrical problem in our cabling, it was a loose battery terminal which i had overlooked. It was on the starter battery but from there connected to the housebank. Lets hope that this solved the issue.

Tina had her birthday yesterday which we did not know. But Peter from Vanora called us and told that they will return earlier from Martinique and if we had plans for dinner already. So we agreed to come over to Vanora for Dinner. It was a nice surprice to get meatballs and potato salad and we all enjoyed the evening. Tina was sitting between the two babies sleeping, Lani and Chico. At around 2300 we returned to LinoCat full and happy! Have you checked out the Vanora-blog under: http://www.bluewater-dreams.de ?

LinoCat is now back on anchor. So much cooler and more breeze flowing through the boat. Waiting and watching a sunset in the bay is great since nothing obstructs your view. Today Ralf and myself looked into our electrical issues and it looks like at least one might be solved. I will update you later about this!

So we safely arrived back in St Lucia. It was nice that the wind eased down a bit and so we had a fast sail between the islands and weak wind with some motoring on the lee side of the islands. It was time for a haircut since i felt like a rastaman with my "long" hair. That feels much more caribbean! Lani wanted to have her toe nails painted :-) In St Lucia many cruise ships just left for Barbados in the evening. Another nice sunset