LinoCat

I got up at 3.45 and lifted anchor at 4 in the morning. Under radar i made my way through the anchoring yachts. It always amazes me that even in times of LED bulbs some folks still do not use their anchor lights at all during the night. Since the moon was already gone it was pitch dark and i used radar and a search light to find my way out. A few miles away i passed a buoy which was unlit but i could clearly see it on the radar and it reflected my searchlight even though it was still 0.3 miles away. There was almost no wind and the first 2 hours i just motored with one engine at 2200 rpm doing 5.4 knots. Then i pulled out the genoa in addition and now it is around 5.6 knots. The total distance is around 75 miles and du to the low wind forecast we decided to leave so early because St Barth is tricky to approach at night. Talking about St Barth, the name is actually St Barthelemy but that seems to be to long for everyone. It is not as high as some of the other islands because it is an ol...

Jolly water is a marina in a kind of channel which is part of some waterways with appartments at the front. These appartments have a private dock but they are not so nice. I tooks some snaps of the nicer ones. You can still buy property here and one of the row houses goes for around 275000US Dollar. Jolly harbour is good for getting fuel since the fueldock is at a corner and so no matter how the wind blows, it is easy to dock. Well, i only got fuel for the outboard of the dinghy here. The water in the anchorage and and the harbour is not as clear as in other places. Looks like there is a lot of sediment in the water, so it is not "dirty" but just not clear either. Maybe we are now also spoiled with crystal clear water? Near the fuel station there is also a boatyard with the laundry which is ok priced ans quick. A big bag of laundry costs around 35EC Dollar including drying. If you like good coffee, there is an espressobar called Java Jojo in the marina and their coffee and le...

The admiral Lani and skipper Michael steering towards the Jolly harbour anchorage. This is the anchorage from a distance. Nice water in front of green hills. Lani getting tired :-) Time for the skippers and admirals nap!

Some people have asked what happened to the Tuna. Well, he gave nice steaks yesterday evening and this lunch he participated in a tomato-tuna salad with toast bread and tonight he was again our guest star in good indian CURRY! YUMMYYY So we still expect him to be with us (partly) tomorrow with another rounds of steak. Maybe this time on the grill insetad of the pan. This is our anchorage at the moment. The beach is right behind to the right and there are almost no waves since it is also protected. So Lani had fun altough she managed to fell in the saltwater in a way that she was completely submerged. Well, she did not even cry. What a tough cookie! This is the beach and one of the boats in the back is LinoCat. The dark part in the water is sea grass. Lani enjoying playing in the sand. One of the classic boats which participated in the regatta. Athena, the worlds biggest private owned gaff rigged schooner. 90m long she belongs to James (Jim) Clark, Founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphi...

This the flag of Antigua. In Jim´s Locker, a local bookstore they sell nice flags, which are not pöainted but stitched from different colored clothes. Looks nice! English harbour still has preserved many of the old buildings and around Nelsons dockyard these can be seen. It is by the way THE Lord Nelson which is the famous admiral of the UK. It is nice that these buildings are kept in good shape. In Nelsons dockyard you can also find immigration, customs and port authorities. Clearing in was not a problem at all. The guys from "Northern Star" wer ejust checking out in front of me. I mentioned this huge motorboat yesterday. The customs guy asked: is these a motor boat? And the guy answered: "I think so" :-) When Lani saw the "Northern Star" she said it was a ferry :-)

The Northern Star, a german built Lürssen yacht is just in Antigua. In german you can read a nice abstract: http://www.luerssen.de/presspics/Pressebericht_15.pdf The other Megayachts here i might cover the next days. By the way, the charter for this one is only 600.000USD per week.

WOW what a nice welcome. All racing yachts came out just greet us! Even a helicopter! Well, not exactly, there is the Antigua race week going on and we saw some of them pretty close. First we checked out English harbour but that was pretty full. Now we are just a few miles west in Falmouth harbour and acnhored near St. Annes point. So after checking the WiFi possibilities the next thing to do is customs, immagration and port authorities. Have you checked the tuna pictures which we added in the last post?