LinoCat

Around 3.30 we took the Parasailor down because of lack of wind. Then later in the morning around 5.30 a dark wall hit us and the wind went up to approx 35 knots. The boat got a good wash down and waves were building up locally so that we had to increase the response of the autopilot to keep the boat on course. For safety reasons we started both engines and i was sitting outside in the rain. The rain came from behind and despite the fact that i was sitting under the bimini roof i got soaking wet and cold. When the sun was coming up and then wind had a steady 15 knots we directly put the Parsailor back up and now we are doing between 6 and 7 knots. Lets hope that this continues for a while. Here is one of the 200 pictures we took today flying a Sutton Freeform matress kite and a Ricoh Caplio digital camera taking pictures every 5 seconds.The original snaps are COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, this one here is just to small due to the bandwith of the line. I will upload better quality ones, once we ar...

Since the wind died down again we had to bring the Parasailor down. Why not stop for a quick bath ?? so we jumped into the water and had a short swim. No comparison to the canaries. The water has 27 degrees and you feel you could stay there for hours! GREAT! But now the wind should come back!

We had a good night with moderate wind an calm sea. Our average speed dropped to 6.8 since the start so we need more wind. And starting from tomorrow we should get that. I did not win a single game of Skip-Bo cards in the last 2 days, so i have to win tonight :-) We are currently doing 5.3 knots but we still hope that with more wind we are able to arrive in St. Lucia the 9th of December. Enclosed is a picture of todays sunrise.

We are currently doing around 4 knots since the wind has died down. The annoying part is, that the wind also changes direction so we have to move the sail from left to right then back to the middle then right then left and so on. This is not fun. We would rather want to have 20 knots again but they are already predicted for Saturday! Nevertheless we are having coffee right now and "Lebkuchenherzen" Christmascookies. This is the good part of christmas :-)

We will pass the 1000NM mark in one hour and also we expect a toll station or border control in a few miles since we are then back on the electronic chart. The "Amazing Grace" already had these celebrations so they are ahead of us. It is a Broadblue 415 catamaran and they are doing really well. So is "Ca Canny", the second Broadblue. Those who have seen our pictures from Las Palmas, they were the two catamarans side by side directly behind us. The wind has died down to around 14 knots and so we are only doing 5 knots at the Moment. The RObinson is faster but their Parasailor has 125 square meters and ours only 105. In front of us there is Goldina, a Najad 57 with an Israeli crew. We brought the Parasailor down and motored for around 1 hour while checking the parasailor and having breakfast. Now it is again back up. The night was quiet and the waves got smaller also. So we all had a good night sleep. It rained a few drops but enough to wash the salt from the boat. We...

Hi, some people have asked us how Lani is doing while cruising. We are all surprised how well she is coping with the situation. What are the limitations? She can not go outside and walk around but so far she has not complained about that. She wants to go on the trampoline to jump up and down but we told her that the net is dirty and she can not go there and she accepts it. The good side of the coin is that we have a lot of time to play, read and sing with her. So we came up with some stupid things like "Commando". One says "Commando" and then "CLAP" for example and then everyone has to clap. Or "Commando pistol" and everyone has to hold his fingers like a pistol. This can go on endless and always, especially between eating breakfast or dinner. She is learning coordination by that and has a lot of fun. Also we show her all the fish and she is squeeking in enjoyment because she loves fish. Some building blocks like Lego Duplo or Fisher Price basics...

Without any fishing rod we used our permanently installed fishing net between our bows of the boat to catch this massive fish. We are not sure if we turn him into a fish curry or grill the fillets. Size does not always matter but sometimes it does!