LinoCat

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...

It is actually nice to also see at least one superyacht that belongs to a german! Prof Reinhold Wuerth has used the term "Vibrant Curiosity" as a motto in his company already in 2007. Here are some technical details: Designer: Nuvolari & Lenard Builder: Oceano Engine: twin 4,680 HP MTU engines Material: steel LOA: 85 m (278.9') Max Speed: 18.5 knots Year: 2009 Guests: 14 Guests (when cruising): 14 Cabins: 7 Country Built: Netherlands Unfortunately the launch of this boat was commented by the press in a negative way due to the recession. But between ordering such a beautiful yacht and the delivery there are usually years between. I think it is a nice boat and from what i know about the company he has very well deserved it!

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.