Sofia has left Cantare

Yesterday morning we reached St. Barthélemy, a former Swedish colony, 1784-1878. We are anchored outside Gustavia the capital named after King Gustav III and after an easy check in at the Capitainerie (filled out the immigration form ourselves on a computer) we took a stroll on the streets. Some of them have Swedish names. Except for a few Swedish flags, the street names, some historical buildings there's not much left from the Swedish era here. But Sweden's national arms "Tre kronor" is still present in the island's coat of arms.

However it is a very small city and we could easely fit in a long lunch together with Sofia before it was time to say goodbye to her. She decided to go take the ferry to nereby St. Martin where she was to meet up with our stalker from Rodney Bay for a romantic weekend. Maybe she will tell you about it later or maybe not, what happens in the harbour....

Catrine and I are hanging out on St. Barths until Monday when we will sail to St. Martin and meet up with Sofia again and Emelie. Emelie is back in the West Indies! Not on Cantare though, but on Alan's boat Starfire. They met in Las Palmas and seem to stick to eachother since then. However her house is on the market soon and she will join us on Cantare somewhere on Cuba and stay with us for our second Atlantic crossing. We are so happy about that! Hopefully it will be another lazy crossing with even less watchkeeping. Have a nice weekend! / The Captain

Pictures from Antigua

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

Time to leave Antigua

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

9th day in paradise

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

The Old Lady says THANK YOU!

Thank you so much for all sweet b-day wishes I have received, not only here but also on e-mail, sat phone, broken cell phone, facebook etcetera. Thank you!!! I had a wonderful day and I must say I don’t feel any older than I did the day before yesterday… Hm, or maybe I did feel little older this morning though, haha, but I wont blame my age, rather the fun party we had yesterday! Also want to thank our friends on Safari, El Mar, Havfrilla, Odin and Matilda for a great party yesterday! And don't forget to have a look at the wonderful cake Maria decorated so beautiful with the right Cantare color! Over and Out! /The Older First Mate

P.S. Maria and Ariana: thank you for giving me one of the best b-days ever!!

Sofias's 25th Birthday!

Today we are celebrating Sofia's birthday here in English Harbour, Antigua. You are all welcome to join us tonight at Abracadabra! If not send her greetings on our satellite phone since here mobile has started to act like our last fridge (badly). If you want to come by and say happy birthday, Cantare is anchored in Freeman Bay decorated with balloons and easily spotted among our Norwegian friends. /Captain Maria

P.S. Message to the Royal Navy Sailors in the hot hot Gulf; thank's for the greeting! D.S

"He insulted me in front of my wife"

What a morning we experienced yesterday in Jolly Bay, Antigua! We witnessed a French sailor, an obviously very inexperienced sailor on a chartered sail yacht, crashing an American yacht at the fuel dock which ended up in a police matter…

After finally having picked up Ariana in the capital St John's we continued south to Jolly Bay. For Cecilia, who has been our guest for a month now, Jolly Bay was the last stop on her vacation, too bad she had to leave us and fly home for work. We miss you Cecilia! However we had some very nice last days with Cecilia together with the Norwegians on s/y Draugen and Fortitudo and even our cutest Alaskan fan showed up. After having waved goodbye to Cecilia yesterday morning we filled the diesel tank. Last time we refueled was in Las Palmas, and I must say that having a 170L tank but just a 12HK engine can sometimes be very preferable. We managed to run empty 5m from the petrol station and since we had totally ran out of fuel we needed to bleed the engine. Before doing that we got a spectacular drama to watch. Suddenly a Frenchman, who apparently doesn't know the length of his yacht (no, not his yacht, the chartered yacht he was sailing), ran into an American yacht and ruined a navigation light. Fine, these things can happen and are easily solved with an apology and a compensation for the damage you have caused, but no… When the French yacht finally was moored at the fuel dock, which also was a part of the story with them having fenders put way too high up, and a shaky wife incapable of handling the lines, the French guy starts refueling as if nothing happened. The owner of the crashed American yacht is standing next to him waiting for an act of contrition, but nothing happens, the Frenchman didn't even look him in the eyes and said I'm sorry, which got the American furious and an argumentation starts. The Frenchman acts very weird and is unwilling to take the blame for the damage. The American wants to sue him and harbor security is called but the Frenchman just refuses to understand what he has done and thinks the American is just rude to him. Then the Frenchman tried to seek some kind of sympathy from me by claiming that the American "insulted my in front of my wife", what nonsense! The argumentation continues but the Frenchman is just acting stupid and in the end the police are called. When we are leaving the fuel dock the police arrive. What we have heard the American finally got a compensation for his broken light. But we don't know what happened to the stupid Frenchman, maybe he ended up in jail or in seamanship school.

Today we have sailed a bit further south to English Harbour, where there will be some kind of a quarter of a century party tomorrow; you are all more than welcome to join! I'm getting old, or I prefer the way my skipper puts it, i.e. I'm turning the perfect age. Nighty night! /First Mate

 

Pictures from the Caribbean

New pictures uploaded! Enjoy!/the Captain

Sailing (motoring) covered in Ashes

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

A wonderful day ending in possible disaster

When we woke up this morning, strangely very early, we noticed how calm it was. There were no waves and we cold easily see the starfishes on the bottom. We spend the morning getting in and out of the water, enjoying our last hours in heaven. Cecilia asked me if we couldn't stay a bit longer. But if we were to take the shortcut through the reef we had to leave when the sun was high so that we could eyeball navigate our way out safely. Yesterday I got the girls to hoist me up in the mast so that I could get a good view over the passage which the pilot book describes as a very narrow channel that requires real local knowledge. Since the trip to the anchorage was tricky I thought this short very distinct passage would be much better and it would also save us hours. Of course the girls were up for an adventure. The conditions were perfect, sun behind us from a clear sky and small waves that made it easy to see the colour of the water. Without any problem we made our way through the reef, big braking waves on our sides. On our way to Port Louis, a small fishing village, we talked about how wonderful the day was and how we wished we could stay another day. Since Ariana arrives tomorrow that's not possible, we intend to sail or motorize during the night to be on Antigua in the morning. We took Volare into Port Louis to check out the village and maybe have a nice dinner ashore. When we had tied up the dinghy we strolled on the small empty streets wondering why there weren't much people around. The village had an atmosphere of long gone splendour and we couldn't find an open restaurant. We bought beer and cheese in an open shop and started to walk back to Volare. The whole time we got small sand corns in our faces and on our way back they became more and more annoying. After a while we could see grey dust of ashes on our bodies. A local we met had told us something about a volcano and that causing the big dark cloud that had blocked out the sun in the afternoon, now that suddenly made sense. Volare was covered in ashes and it was hard to keep the eyes open on our way out to Cantare. Cantare is surrounded and covered by greyness and we can't see very far from the boat, it's like being in thick mist. We all took a quick swim to get rid of the worst dust and now we are hiding inside, waiting for it to get better. After reading a bit in the pilot book we now have a theory. Montserrat a small volcanic island, situated NE of Guadeloupe, resumed activity 1995 and is still active, that must be the cause of the ashes. Our problem, we need to go to Antigua tonight, maybe we will have to do it in goggles. / The Captain

The art of doing nothing

The last couple of days we have been practicing the art of doing nothing, being anchored out in turquoise water. So what are we doing out on Cantare, all by our selves in paradise? I'll try to give you a glimpse of our acts out here. First of all, doing nothing is not true, all days have a few routines. The day starts with long sleep (until you wake up probably around 10 am), after breakfast in sunshine it's about time to get the sun lotion-session, which mainly means me, deckhand Cecilia. Although I think the other to brownies onboard should put on as much spf 50 as I do, to even out the colours here. Me and first mate Sofia have also extended this session by giving each other a nice back massage..!

The day is mainly spent on deck, tanning, reading, girl talking, having Spanish lessons, more tanning, discussing the future, and off course several nice swims. In between that, my mission is to stress Maria and Sofia to get some stuff done, that have been on manana for too long. Life here somehow gets you on permanent manana-mode!

The evening routine starts with a glass of more or less warm wine (our fridge is broken) watching the sunset. Then one of us starts with the cooking and dinner is enjoyed in the cockpit. Every day has one big question to be answered – what should we eat? Having no fridge and too much time definitely makes you focus a lot on food, I don't know why. But we have managed to get great meals every day, mainly something including canned tomatoes and garlic. Maria even made us nice 5-minute caramel for dessert (thanks to the tip one of our readers gave us).

Just about 500 meters from us there is a nice tiny island were I thought we could play Expedition Robinson for a few days, but it turned out to be crowded with people during daytime. So today we decided to make some action and do like the French-Guadeloupe people do here – go picnicking. We made a pasta salad of what we could find onboard, (pasta, tuna, tomatoes, corn and cucumber) and brought it on the dinghy, with wine and cookies. After a great snorkeling trip in the reef nearby, we had the best pick nick ever out on the little island called Il Caret.

Being not as used to the quiet life onboard I sometimes get a bit restless and therefore I made sure to get rid of some extra energy, - by getting me and Sofia some training. A few coralls out in the sand and we could do the so called training "Idioten", followed by a run around the island (tiny), we then wheeled around the beach like kids. Maria just shook her head and laughed while doing it like sailors do – reading yet another good book.

Tomorrow night we leave and are going to sail during night up to Antigua were will pick up our next guest, Ariana.
/Deckhand Cecilia

Prawns and Marinade Chicken

Yesterday was a Monday, the first day of the week, and apparently a Monday doesn't always have to be a day we fear, would very much like to skip and rather continue snoozing in bed wishing it was another lazy Sunday morning. Here in paradise yesterday's Monday turned out being one of the most relaxed and luxurious in a long time. However, the day started fairly early in the sunrise with a sad goodbye. Jane left us for some chic shopaholic days in New York before heading back to Sweden. It has been great fun having you here visiting us Jane, we miss you already! Jane got a special delivery ashore with the dinghy; Maria took her to the closest village from where we are anchored. The next village from here isn't that close though, about 4 Miles away and it took the girls about an hour to get there. Maria brought a handheld VHF and Cecilia and I were stand-by on channel 77 if there would be any problems with the delivery. While waiting for Maria to get back we did some baking and were hoping she would have found a grocery store since we were starting to run out of tasty supplies. We couldn't have been happier when she returned home with a smile on her face and showed us what she had found in the little town. Since we don't have a fridge working at the moment the amount of fresh food we are consuming isn't enormous so to speak. This Monday we big time changed that though since Maria had brought not only chicken but also prawns. When sailing around the Caribbean not having a fridge, small silly things you wouldn't care about at home can easily make one's day, like yesterday having prawns for lunch and marinade chicken for dinner. Yesterday continued lazily with not much happening besides reading, swimming and tanning. Today hasn't been that full of action either, simply another relaxed lazy day in paradise!  /First Mate

　

Can I stay here forever?

Yesterday when we arrived to Guadeloupe we found out that if we wanted to go through Guadeloupe on River Salee it would be best to do it early on Saturday morning since the bridge openings aren't scheduled on Sundays, which was our intended day to do it. Suddenly we were in a hurry. Cecilia's bag was supposed to be at the airport, we needed to provision and Sofia and I desperately needed Internet in order to buy new cameras. Sofia's was stolen on the prize giving ceremony and mine stopped working a week ago. My sister, Catrine, will join us on Antigua on the 23rd of February so the cameras would have to be delivered before her departure from Sweden. Although it was fun to have a camera that worked under water as well as above we decided against it this time. We both thought that the Olympus cameras didn't take as good pictures as our old Canons, and another aspect, the price, made us go for the cheapest available Canon Ixus. For the moment we are glad that Cecilia and Jane both have cameras that we can use. To save time we split up, Jane and Cecilia took a cab to the airport to get Cecilia's lost bag. Sofia and I went to buy food and then found Internet and managed to order new cameras. When we met up again to go back to the boat it was already 9 pm. We had parked Volare very central, close to Place de la Victoire, the only downside was the unpleasant fish smell that came from the quay mostly used by fishing boats to unload their catch. The locals laughed at us while we loaded Volare with more and more things and in the end Cecilia's big backpack, when we finally left the maximum three persons note wasn't visible at all. Back at the boat I started to read closely in the pilot about the passage on River Salee, it's a very narrow river and the depths is in the last part seldom more than 1,8 m. A B31 like Cantare is supposed to have a draught of 1,7 m. But, I foresaw that we would sink a bit deeper when loaded for this adventure and therefore we repainted the waterline 6 cm higher than the old one. The new waterline is almost perfect, it depends a bit on how much water and diesel we carry, so I calculate that we have a draught of 1,76 m making it possible, if only barely, for us to go on the river. Off course I was a bit nervous, especially since we don't have a working depth sounder anymore, now seems to be the time when the equipment start to crack-up. This morning we sat the alarm on 3.40 am, horribly early, since we all were very tired from the last crossing from St. Lucia. We took up the anchor and motorized slowly towards the first bridge and waited for the opening together with four other boats. It opened at 5 am and then we had half an hour to reach the second bridge. After the second and last bridge there were supposed to be mooring buoys, since the last passage is the trickiest we had planned to pick up a buoy and wait there until it was high water and daylight. We found no buoys, instead we dropped the anchor and mosquito secured the boat (the river is lined by mangrove) before we slept a few hours. The last passage was no problem and not once did we touch the bottom. The hardest part of today's short trip was instead to find our way to the anchorage beside the island Illet a Caret in Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin. There where hardly any buoys and our plotter and chart in the pilot didn't show the same things. During the trip on the river I concluded that the pilot book was the most accurate and therefore followed it, but it was tricky without depth sounder. We were totally dependent on eyeball navigation for the first time and when the sun hid behind clouds we sometimes had to slow down and wait until the sun reappeared. I feared that we would in best case end up on a sandbank, like in Denmark, but I also had in mind a story another sailor told us in Soufriere, about how they had fucked up (his own words) on the windward coast of Martinique and lost their boat on corals. I told Sofia to stand on the boom to get a better view over the water and now we are safely anchored on sand bottom. We are surrounded by reefs and azure blue water, it's amazingly beautiful and I love this place. We are the only sail yacht anchored here and solitude and peacefulness is what I expect of the coming days. / The Captain

Busy Party Days

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

Leaving St Lucia for Guadelope

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

Climbing or Drinking the Pitons, that is the Question.

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