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