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