Caicos bank

Caicos islands have a huge but shallow sandbank on their south side (turkish color). The water is only 3 meter deep, bottom the brightest white fine sand dotted with coral heads (uncharted patches of coral reaching almost to the surface). The waters are full of life, dolphins, reef fish of thousand kinds, sharks and rays. And there is no swell! A very bizarre landscape to go sailing and snorkeling with a keel boat...

On the surface there is nothing else to photograph except ship wracks. The depth of the water can be read by the color of the surface (when sun in your back)

Caicos has the richest birdlife we have seen since Scotland, pelicans, flamencos, turns and something like hybrids of a seagull and parrot

Kiwi on her 40 nm passage over the sand bank. Caicos bank is a good reminder of the fact that it isnt really necessary to have all those hundreds of meters of water under your keel. Half a meter is enough. When there is no waves, that is, and none of those sandbanks decided to go drifting and if you have a qualified man in the pulpit interpreting the ocean color... 

Kiwi for sale

Hi all, this is Phil writing from Sanja's account.

We are working on putting Kiwi on the market and have put these two adds out so far:

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f152/40ft-langedrag-steel-sloop-blue-water-cruiser-1989-bahamas-and-east-coast-us-45k-181774.html

https://www.finn.no/boat/forsale/ad.html?finnkode=92884585

Any idea where else we can advertise the boat? Our idea is to try to sell it ourselves, and if we can't find a buyer until June, we will leave it with a broker in Chesapeake Bay or somewhere around there.

Please forward the ads to potentially interested people. Thanks!

Cheers,
Phil

Puerto Rico reached - Kiwi a´un flotando

Johan and Åse drove us around in their rental car in Sant Martin, an island both French and Dutch. They took their flight bag from the Dutch airport of the island to reach a travel back to Norway from Guadeloupe, while Philipp and me headed towards some Spanish speaking islands further west. It's really a mess here with languages, counties and currencies.

Grocery stores on small islands or close to not-so-centrally located anchorages have often interesting selections of pricey items. The store in Isla de Culebra would not have many vegetables or bread, but what they did have was butter made in Finland.

Green turtles are common to see, but really hard to photograph.

Isla de Culebra in Spanish Virgin Islands is among our favorites. It's an old military island with a lot of nature, social sailors, no superyachts nor posh marinas. We found lonely turtle beaches, nice hiking and reasonably healthy coral reefs. The depressing news from our extensive snorkeling surveys at the Antilles so far is that most of the coral reefs are as good as dead. The reasons are many (dirty water because of farming and cutting down the forests, overfishing, pollution ...) but probably all caused by humans.

A friendly dog who took us for a walk on Isla de Culebra

Old town of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, colors colors, everywhere colors! Philipp and Kiwi will hang out in San Juan for two of weeks while Sanja takes a well deserved break from the boat life.