LinoCat

Hi there on the last day of the year. We all went by Dinghy to town this morning and bought some food and some stuff for Lani. Then we played around with the kite aerial photogrpahy but the wind was to unsteady and so we did not play around enough for good pictures. Maybe the next try on the Tobago Cays is more efficient. Tonight we will be 12 people going out to "Gingerbread", a local restaurant for dinner and then to "Frangipani" for the party. And we are celebrating new year 5 hours after for example Germany. I checked engine oil today and pumped out some water from the stern shower out of the portside engine room. When checking the tension of the steel cable for the steering i had the feeling it might be to tight and so i will loosen it a bit the next days without giving it to much play (hopefully). Our watermaker produced around 90Liter of water today and the solar panels delivered almost 200Ah. Enough for 2 fridges and the lights and music plus the watermaker.

In the back you can see LinoCat at the anchorage. Here you get everything delivered to your boat. Laundry, ice, gas, diesel, bread and they take the garbage also. Mike and Uli at the beach. The sand is very soft but the small waves create quie big turbulence and it is tricky to land with the Dinghy but there is a Dinghy dock at Jacks bar. A GunBoat catamaran in blue waters next to use. An absolutly beautiful boat.

After a night at Blue Lagoon we cleared in customs (140EC Dollar) at the airport and they also did the immigration procedure. The taxi ride was 30US-Dollar but he waited 45minutes at airport and 20 at the supermarket and it was for both ways. We arrived at 1300 in Admirality bay in Bequia and are next to the La Medianoche. the water is clear and warm, the beach evry near. What else can we ask for? More updates later, now i have to get some lunch :-) We have been swimming and also have been at the beach for a walk. The Vanora also arrived and we will have beef from the BBQ and Naan bread for dinner. There are around 100-200 boats here since this is THE new year party location here....

To the left you see "Barbie", a cute motor yacht which also available for charter. If i am not wrong the price would be around 250.000 USD for a week but hey, you can bring a dozen of friends too! Then i liked the sunset today, it was very clear and the clouds were above the water level, so the sun was really an orange ball sinking into the water around 17.45. Yes, it is getting dark here fairly early. The approach to Blue Lagoon in St Vincent was around 19.30 so it was dark but the moon gave some light. In the bay 3 out of 4 buoys were unlit! So be prepared when sailing in the Caribbean. Also the entrance of the lagoon did not match with the elecronic chart but we all know that this might happen. A good old 12V beam search light helped us to find the entrance which is as shallow as 2m and then we reached deeper water and are now currently docked at the Sunsail dock. There is a lot of swell and the dock is squeeking and moving back and foreward and also up and down but it is

Mike and Uli arrived the 27th and i picked them up from the airport. The plane was only 25 minutes late and i knew this from the internet. The flight had an "on time rating" of 0.5 on a scale from 0 to 5 where 5 is the best :-) So chances were fairly low that it was on time. We drove to the marina Le Marin in the south of Martinique and had some beer and then went to bed. The next morning we had breakfast, cleared out of customs and paid only 43 Euro for the marina stay and water. Peter and Tina visited us and we left the marina at around 10.30 in direction south. We had a reef in the main sail and the crossing was nice. We did between 6 and 7 knots but caught no fish. Passing the Rodney Bay marina the Club Med 2 was just leaving the bay. It is a huge cruise ship but also has some sails on top of it. At 16.30 the anchor fell in Marigot Bay on the left side of the channel in the outer lagoon. Until then a few boat boys had approached us offering mooring buoys for 40USD which i

End of october we stayed in San Miguel, Tenerife for a few days. We tied up next to a huge sailboat and the Vanora next to a Trawler called "Tobago". Now the Vanora is anchoring around 200m away and the Tobago just pulled into the berth next to us! And the crew is from MANNHEIM! No, this is not a joke. This marina has more than 600 berths and this boat is right next to us. The directly came over the Atlantic but the crossing was a litlle tough and t hey have lost their Dinghy in a storm weihing around half a ton including engine, etc. It is sooo unbelievabkle that we meet them on this side of the world. Maybe i should take up playing lottery?

Here are some pictures which Tina from the Vanora took in the last days. Since one always has many pictures of other boats but never your own, we are quite happy to get some snaps. The photo of Lani is just tooooooooooooo good!

Since the warm sleeping bag was too warm and also getting too small we got this one from Neel, Anant and Julia. Lani is sleeping very well in it and she does not get too many mosquito bites either. It is made in India and looks great.

Well, we had to clear out from customs and it was a nice process since i had a casual chat with Marlon, one of the customs officers. We used an electronic online process for that over the internet. It is called eSeaClear.com and works for many of the caribbean islands. Of course NOT for Martinique since this is Europe! We left Rodney Bay around 11 and so did the Vanora since we decided to cross together. Captain Lani was in command today and so she took the steering wheel for the first watch!. We had nice winds around 15 knots and also with a good direction and the waves were also not too bad. On the way the "Q" flag and the flag of France were hoisted to show that we have not yet cleared in customs in France. At around 1500 we reached Le Marin in Martinique and we lowered the sails and went into the marina. The entrance is quite tricky and i would not want to do it in the night if you have never done it by day. Also there are many unlit fishermen bouys near the entrance and

Hi, we had a good christmas. A local guy polished all our stainless steel stuff :-) Also we visited John and Liz on the Jalan-Jalan. The evening of the 24th we drove to the Vanora to have dinner with Peter, Bettina and Chico. It was the first christmas where we went by Dinghy :-) Lani is unpacking gifts with Tina. She was the only one getting many gifts! She was then dozing off on the bench next to us. Peter had organized propane gas for his "special grill" and we actually had "tarte flambe" or "Flammkuchen" in german. The last one was with apple, cinnamon and Cognac! The sunset was nice but we were hoping for a "green flash" sunset but Santa Claus just brought a normal caribbean one with around 28 degrees Clelcius. It was a nice and relaxing evening and we are happy to know Peter and Tina!

We got up a around 7 and had breakfast. The Nutella is empty and so we have to go for a refill to Martinique. That is good since Mike and Ulli will arrive there anyway. In the morning i brought our gas cylinder for a refill and how they do it is an adventure all by itself. It costed around 7 EUR which is an OK price. Then we went for shopping which took the almost usual 2 hours and visited Norman "Norm the Storm" from Quebec who docked his yacht near the shopping center since his brother were visiting him. After a short chat we did our shopping and Lani had her nap. I went to the hardware shop and to Regis electronics and islands waterworld for some "men shopping" and so i got fishing lures and 2 stroke outboard engine oil YEAH :-) Back on the boat we went for a coffee and a blueberry smoothie for Lani. Then Regis, the electronics company called that i had to visit them with boat papers for customs since the new windvane arrived (warranty exchange). The customers of

Sad that he left but i guessed he liked the trip. Many people will miss him, especially at 4 in the morning in the swimming pool :-) He went to the beach with us this morning a last time and then he left around noon. Later we visited Ralf and Inge and Peter and Tina who are anchoring outside in the bay. It was a beautiful sunset and the catamaran you see in the picture is the VANORA of Peter and Tina. They WON the multihull class and we are totally happy since they deserved it. We will now clean the boat and get ready to leave Rodney Bay after windvane will be repaired (hopefully tomorrow). 27th Mike and Ulli will visit us in Martinique until that time we will take it easy as we would do anyways :-)

Hi, we were called to the stage 3 times: -for being a net controller (SSB Radio operator and relay) furing the rally -for Lani as the youngest participant -and for our kite photographs We won "Kinderschokolade" YESSS, a meal for 4 at H2O restaurant and a bottle of Antigua rum. I swapped the rum againsr Lanis chocolate, so she now owns a bottle of rum and i can eat the chocloate :-) Too sad that Andi can not join us for the dinner but he left today. In the Multihull division we scored as follows: Multihulls Division Nr. Boat Name Design Flag TCF Finish Time Eng. Hrs Corr. Pos. Class 185 Vanora Lagoon 420 GER 0.964 8/ 08:36:08 4.00 15/13:38:54 1 A 156 FarFar II Lagoon 440 NOR 1.007 8/ 02:58:58 0.00 15/20:37:43 2 A 201 Espumeru North Wind 40 FIN 0.947 9/ 09:40:40 2.25 16/05:08:54 3 A 183 Amazing Grace Broadblue 415 GBR 0.983 8/ 21:38:31 1.17 16/07:02:45 4 A 181 Ca Canny Broadblue 415 USA 0.983 9/ 04:33:13 11.58 17/00:04:46 5 A 100 Boundless 1 Privilege 495 AUS 1.171 7/ 06:35:30