Today I have uploaded pictures from Antigua. You find all of our pictures here; http://picasaweb.google.se/SailingCantare

Yesterday we heared a rumour about us being in this month's Practical Boat Owner, but we haven't seen it ourselves yet. Check it out if you can and want. /The Captain

We’ve had a lovely time here in Antigua and a lot of things have happened since we arrived. Cecilia has left the boat after having spent almost a month on the boat. We’ve met three new Norwegian boats with crew in our age, two of them we didn’t even know existed. Ariana was here for 10 days before she had to fly back home yesterday. We have celebrated Sofia’s 25th birthday together with Norwegian friends down in English Harbour. Ariana and I took a short minivacation from the ordinary sail life and went to Green Island where we discovered an interesting wreck. Back here in Jolly Harbour we have made our 5th and 6th dive together with Ariana, that was great fun. Not so much because of what we saw but more because it felt so good. Although it feels like it was years ago that we left Tobago we hadn’t forgotten how to do it and we were even better than before. Sofia didn’t use her air that quick and I was able to stay down for 50 minutes, the longest ever. Ariana took her Open Water in Sweden so for her it was the first time in warm water with visibility greater than 1 meter, she was very happy afterwards. My sister, Catrine, has now joined us and will be a part of the crew until we reach the Azores. I guess our parents will be a bit worried with their two daughters on the Atlantic, but I feel very pleased and happy to have Catrine with me. I also hope that she will be able to help me sort out what to do when I return to Sweden. At the moment I don’t really know, maybe study (but what?) or maybe work (if I find a job). I will at least try to write a book about this adventure but I guess my grandma won’t be satisfied unless I start doing something ”real” aswell. Anyway, Catrine joined us Monday evening, bringing with her a present from her employer Pyramid, drink money for the crew on Cantare! Perfect,we all loved that and on Ariana’s last night we went out and had some pink drinks celebrating her stay her and Catrine’s arrival. The only downside with this is that it is time to leave Antigua today, and with that I feel that the beginning of our return has come. I know that there is a lot more for us to do here before we start our Atlantic crossing, but we have come to the next phase of our stay in the West Indies. We will now head slowly to Cuba via St. Barths, St. Martin, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos. With that we will soon leave the yachtcrowded harbours for more adventures destination, but also destination without chandleries and supermarkets. Time to make Cantare ready for another Atlantic crossing. But first, of course, we will try to forget everything about that with some more rum drinks and the prospect of visiting Cuba! /The Captain

My journey to Cantare began with 24 hours delay, but then, very excited and exhausted, I finally reached the restaurant Hemingways in St Johns where the rendez vous with the Cantare crew was set. After many hugs, some gossip, other short updates and a couple of Caribs we were ready to go to Redcliff Quay where Cantare was waiting for us. Two neighbouring boats then joined us with Rum and Coca Cola and then a visit to a Night Club where we danced all night long with the locals.

The next day we had a short sailing to Jolly Harbour. The scenery was astonishing and I had to convince my self that what I saw was for real and that I was finally sailing on Cantare in the Caribbean. When we arrived to Jolly Harbour we found out that this is a very well organized marina with a nice supermarket, sports club, etc etc. So the girls were now very happy not only for having a working fridge, but for being able to fill it with nice and fresh food from the supermarket. Me and Cecilia took also the opportunity to play some tennis in the heat. The next two days were all about just hanging out and then sadly saying good bye to Cecilia.

After celebrating Sofia’s birthday in English harbour, that you can see pictures from, me and Maria decided to have a short sailing to Green island. We had heard that the island is very nice and calm. We took off and after only two hours we had reached the island. The first thing we spotted was an abandoned ship that was up on a reef. We decided that we would go closer to the yacht with our dinghy after anchoring Cantare. After some snorkelling and swimming we had a quick look at the wreck from our dinghy. Unfortunately we couldn’t see from which country the ship was, but we suspected that it was recently abandoned but that some equipment was missing. The rest of the night we were discussing different scenarios on the background of the ship, how it ended up on that reef and how it was abandoned. These discussions were accompanied with a nice Cantare cooked dinner and some Spanish sangria.

We decided to spend the following morning at the close by beach. It was beautiful there, looked like a post card. White sand, turquoise water and Cantare in the bay, with two other sail boats. Me and Maria agreed, this was paradise!

In the afternoon we came back to English Harbour, were we picked up Sofia at Odin. She had been baby sitting and spending her time there while me and Maria were away. Then we had some nice drinks with our friends from El Mar, Havfrilla, Odin and Safari at Safari, before we all took off with our dinghies to the beach. The plan was to walk to Shirley heights where they arrange live music and barbeque every Sunday. This walk was not that easy to do since there were different paths to choose between, and they all ended up in a field of cactuses. So the group was shortly split into three smaller groups. I don’t know exactly how the others managed to arrive to Shirley heights by foot, but me and the group I ended up with had a drive with the owner of the restaurant where we had celebrated Sofia’s birthday. Since we had children with us we decided they would sit inside the car and the rest of us had a nice view of the sun set from the back of the pick up.

Now I only have two days left in paradise and I must say that the time here has been absolutely fantastic. I can’t stop being breathlessly impressed by all these long sailors. Boats with children on board, solo sailors, Maria and her Cantare crew. What they are doing is expressing that nothing is impossible. It only takes lot of planning (all though I have also met sailors with very limited preparations), hard work and commitment to do a journey like this to paradise. /Deckhand Ariana

Luckily we didn’t need to wear goggles while sailing to Antigua, it was an interesting sailing though, and we still got fully covered in Ashes. Since we didn’t want to get ash inside the boat we decided to keep everything closed and instead we gathered in our small cockpit to spend the night with the ashes. We dressed the best way we could and used our caps from the insurance company Europeiska to protect our eyes with. Maria took the first watch 22.00-01.00 and then it was time for Cecilia to do her first watch on her own, we weren’t that far away though, just next to her in case she would need any support. Cecilia did perfectly fine, it was just motoring since we had no wind at all and at 04.00 it was time for me to do the morning watch. We tried our best to get some sleep but I think most of you know the size of our cockpit by now and being tall trying to find a comfortable place to sleep isn’t that easy. At least nobody fell a sleep during her watch; however, I was pretty close at some times. We approached Antigua when the sun rose but before we could enter in the capital St John’s we had not only to clean our selves but primarily to clean the boat which was totally covered in ashes and not white anymore, instead it had adopted a kind of grey color. It took a couple of hours to get rid of all the dust but afterwards both Cantare and we were shining. And our theory was right; the ash was volcanic and came from a volcano eruption on Montserrat. From what we have heard no inhabited areas were affected by the volcano explosion, however the volcano eruption did not only cause problems for us, volcanic ash from the eruption severely disrupted air traffic due to concerns that ash could seriously damage aircraft motors. And who was about to land on Antigua yesterday? Our friend Ariana of course! But unfortunately she had to spend the night on Barbados since the plan couldn’t land here in Antigua. So our plan to quickly pick her up and continue to a nice bay was ruined. However, we had a very nice time her in charming St John’s waiting for her with our new sailor friends from, yeah, surprisingly Norway… What is it about Norwegians and sailing this year?! Why aren’t there any Swedish young sailors this year? Not that we don’t like your Norwegian friends, they are great, but we are just little surprised we haven’t met more Swedish sailors in our own age. This time we met two new boats we haven’t met before, s/y Draugen and Fortitodu, and our friends on the boat Fortia we met in Bequia where also moored on the little vistor’s pontoon in St John’s harbor. So here we were one Swedish boat and three Norwegian boats having a good party at the pier.

What we have heard Ariana should finally be here any minute now, so I am gonna go welcoming her now. And do you know what? In her luggage is our new fridge and if this one will work there will be no more fridge discussions, haha, but we very much like the comments we gotten about the fridge, keep make comments folks! We just love your feedback! Love// First Mate Sofia

Since you last heard from us we've been in Marigot Bay and Rodney Bay in St Lucia and have now arrived in Guadeloupe. We arrived in Marigot Bay sunday afternoon and decided to take a moring bouy. At the arrival we celebrated with Sangria. That was lovely! The evening continued with some locals in a karaoke bar. Luckily for us, and the locals, they closed down the karaoke session before we had drunken enough rum drinks to have the courage to sing out loud in public. In the morning we decided to leave Marigot Bay early since no cooling winds could reach us inside the bay. By that time I was starting to learn that there is always at least one more thing to do before taking off. This time it was me who delayed us since I had realised that I hade made a mistake when booking my flight to New York and had to fix it. It all turned out to the best though, we will be able to stay one more day in Guadelope instead of rushing to Antigua and I will not have to do one more night of sailing and seasickness. When we finally left Marigot Bay we had to take a swim as soon as we got out of sight from the boat boys. In Rodney Bay we weren’t greeted by the usual bunch of boat boys. Instead a Scandinavian looking American greeted us with the phrase “Are you the four Swedish girls that I’ve heard a roomer about?”. We ended up having a drink with him and found three more guys which wanted to have dinner with us. For two nights we had great company by a mix of guys from US, Spain, Italy, Britain and France. We hade rum dinks, barbecue and baileys on big and fancy boats. We also had a tour on the boat previously called Great Britain II, nowadays Whitbread Heritage. Overall, it was some great days and nights in Rodney Bay. The Captain and First Mate walked down memory lane and pointed out docks and other memorable places from when they reached Rodney Bay after finishing the ARC. Sadly, they realized only hours before we had planned to leave St Lucia that they had missed some dear friends. We left St Lucia in the early morning after we had redone the math on when we had to leave in order to arrive in Guadeloupe in day light. We have now sailed 34 hours and recently arrived in Guadeloupe. Both me and Deckhand Cecilia have had our own watches during the days and I have been feeling a bit better thanks to calm winds, sea bands an seasickness pills. To finish this story telling off I can tell you that just before we arrived in Guadeloupe we stopped the engine and took a swim and it felt cold in the water, it was 30 degrees Celsius!

Lots of love / Deckhand Jane

We have had a couple of wonderful days here in Rodney Bay, the place where it all started when we arrived after the Atlantic crossing. Now we are heading out to sea again so more updates will come regarding what we have been up to the last couple of days. Later! /First Mate

Yesterday was devoted to the theme of the Pitons. However, the four of us decided to interpret the theme little differently. In order to give you readers a little background the Pitons are two volcanic mountains, the Gros Piton (771 m) and the Petit Piton (743 m) which beautifully rise up next to the little village called Soufrière in St Lucia. I have been talking about climbing these mountains since we entered the Carribean and ever since Maria has claimed that when I would be climbing she would take care of the other Piton, namely the local St Lucian beer called Piton. And indeed she did, but at first both Maria and Jane joined me and Cecilia a quarter of the steep climb towards the top. Yeah, the climb up the Petit Piton was a lot steeper than we imagined. At first we thought we could climb the mountain our own but on the way there a local Rasta man called Pascal insisted on guiding us even though we explained to him we wouldn’t afford paying him as much as the passengers from the cruise liners can. Thanks Pascal for guiding us, without you we would never have made it! When Maria and Jane left us for the little more refreshing and tasteful Pitons at a restaurant in the village, Cecilia and I continued the climb with ropes and shortness of breath. At least I felt that the last six months’ lack of greater scheduled physical activity and increased beer consumption have left their mark on me. However, eventually after having had to use ropes in order to climb up the steep rocks we made it to the top with sweat pouring down all over. The top of the Petit Piton gave us a fantastic view of St Lucia and we could also see all the way to St Vincent. The way down was a lot easier than the way up and after Pascal had shown us some of the delicious local fruits that can be find in the forest the three of us joined the tipsy girls for some cold tasteful drinkable Pitons.

Today we have left Soufrière and continued to a little famous bay called Marigot Bay, in any time we will go limin’ with some locals. But before leaving you I would like to take the opportunity to send a special greeting to my aunt Agneta Lindström and Maria’s grandma Kerstin Ingerup who helped us sew the courtesy flags for the countries we are visiting now. Thank you so much! Love / First Mate