LinoCat

LinoCat has done 10000 nautical miles yesterday just in front of St Lucia. We had planned to moor at the pitons but all moorings were already occupied and so we directly sailed through the night to Bequia.

Yes, it is rain on the picture. It rained heavily a few times during the night and day. WHat a relief for St Lucia! The same happened also in Martinique. Lets hope that the water problems will be solved by the rains. We started the crossing at around 1200 and the wind was OK and the sea state moderate. I was sleeping when Chris saw a whale just dissapearing right in front of our bows. The whale was then showing up once more behind LinoCat before it dissapeared. We arrived in Martinique at 15.00 but we had to wait until 1630 before a berth was assigned to us. So LinoCat is now back in a harbor since a long time. Martinique is as unfriendly as always and as expensive as always and we are looking forward to set sail again tomorrow. What we really love here is the water pressure to fill up the second tank and to rinse down the boat. (If it is just permitted)

Here some pictures taken a while ago from aboard Vanora. LinoCat left Tyrrel Bay 3 days ago and we then sailed to Bequia. The wind angle was always around 40 to 45 degrees so about the max which we can sail. Due to the strong winds we had a reef in the mainsail and still were doing more than 9 knots from time to time. Nice new antifouling! In Bequia we just took it easy, went to Doris for some shopping and left it the next morning after getting fresh and warm Baguette delivered to our boat. The passage to St Vincent was Ok but from St Vincent to St Lucia it was rough with a loft of changes in windspeed and direction and some unpleasant waves. It is said to be calming down in the next days and that would be nice for Andi, Anja and their girls. I filled up the gas tank for the Dinghyand we did some more shopping for food (Like 24 cans of Piton beer). Tomorrow morning we will head for Martinique. If you want to read more in german and see some pictures check out Vanors blog: http://bluewa...

After a nice sail together with Vanora we reached St Anne after approx 4 hours. We took some snaps of Vanora flying "Wulle", their Gennaker. of course they were more than 1 knot faster with that sail compared to us. In the anchorage we just had a nice sunset and i will open a Piton beer as sundowner and then we will check out St Anne together with Peter, Tina and Chicco. You know that you are "back in Europe", when it is hard to find a free WiFi.

Many people asked me about our solar panels and controller and how much power we get out of them. The max A we see here in the Caribbean is around 46A during midday. The total of power added to the housebank is around 180 to 200Ah per day. That covers producing 125Liters of water, run 2 PC and the radio and the lights like cabin, saloon and mooring light (all LED). And this is without tilting the solar panels. If you tilt them towards the sun you might get almost 70% more but it is not easily possible in our installation. In Rodney bay we did some shopping and met with our friends from Vanora for coffee and then we went out for dinner to a Thai restaurant called KuDeTa and the food was very good. The water in the aby was very clear like we had not seen it before. Today we will clear out and sail to martinique together with the Vanora. We will nachor in St. Anne since we have never been there so far and then proceed to Le Marin for washing the boat and renting a car to go to Fort de Fra...

John and his family left us just at sunset to go back to Sweden. The water taxi picked them up and drove them to Soufriere. We also set sail just 20 minutes later and are currently heading towards Rodney Bay where we will arrive around 2300 local time. LinoCat will be anchored in the bay since i am sure the water shortage is still existent and in the bay we can produce our own water.

We were just drinking coffee early in the morning when i though: "Oh, have they installed another mooring just ahead of our boat 50m away?" Then i realized that we have been gone drifting away. The line at the bouy has been chafed through. What a luck that this happened in the morning and the wind was blowing away from the beach! The ble loop on the lower left in the picture is the broken one, now we tied into the other one. That leaves the lesson that we have to check the mooring lines daily i guess. The Vanora crew were less lucky, the just have lost their Dinghy :-( Not known how this also leaves a question mark. The good news is, that we will meet them very soon again in St Lucia and also in Martinique. Lani is daily climbing on the steering wheel and pretends so drive the boat. If you lift her up she even wants to grab the engine controls and of course presses all the buttons she can find. The anchorage here is almost empty this morning which i guess is quite uncommon in...

Some more snorkeling pictures from the Marine Reserve park at the Pitons. The visibilty was not as good today since the wind has turned a bit and waves are coming in. The wind was gusting up to 38 knots today and so it is a little bit rolly. But good that on a catamaran this is not that bad. We also went to Soufriere to get some food. Our swedish friends will leave us tomorrow and it looks like we will then sail to Martinique after a quick stop in Rodney Bay. We hope to meet Volker C5CAT and also the Vanora crew there.

The kids are watching Horton hears a Who so that the adults can go snorkeling. (Of course one adult stayed on board :-) ) It is interesting to see them play since Rebecca, the younger daughter of John and Susanne can only speak swedish while Erika can speak english. Here LinoCat is anchored in front of the Petit Piton. It is a little over 700m high and an old volcano. This is a marine park and so we have to use a mooring bouy and are not allowed to anchor. There is just a wild fire burning on the Petit Piton and since we will stay over night we are curious how it looks. Chris just turning around to the surface after a snorkel dive. John taking pictures. Nice fish looking like a flying saucer.

We have reached Marigot Bay in St Lucia. It is currently not crowed and yesterday only 3 boats were at the anchorage. John, Susanne, Erika and Rebecca from Sweden are with us and they have brought a new team member named KNUT. Knut is an elk and he has just now taken over the captains chair. Lets see how he is coping with his duties!

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.

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.

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...

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

Karin and Heinz arrrived and we had dinner at the Charthouse Steakhouse yesterday. This morning we left at 9.30 from Rodney Bay and the plan is to reach Wallilabou. Will post more when wifi access

The anchorage St Pierre, a small village in the north of Martinique. It was not crowded and we slept well. Lani excited on the way to the village. Last time it was only me being on land for customs clearance. The dinghy dock directly in the heart of the village What a cute little town and lots of space for Lani to run after doves or seagullls while she is making squeeking noises and wonders why they all fly away. The dock seen from the town side. Especially for JOHN in Sweden, at 17.32 we still had almost 35 Celcius. So you might bring us some snow when you come to St Lucia! The Leader price supermarket in Le Marin has a Dinghy Dock where you can take the shopping cart all the way to the dock and then there is even a place to return it there to get the coin out of the cart. Picture was taken from the Dinghy with all "crap" piled up to be loaded in the boat. The evening before i was already there to get tons of bottled water. At around 11 we lifted anchor and left for St Luci...