Exuma cays

South of Nassau lays a chain of small islands, Exumas, some kind of a cruising paradise, especially well suited for relaxing before any Atlantic crossing and snorkeling, snorkeling and more snorkeling. 

Nassau

Kiwi will cross the Atlantic back to Europe starting around 20th of May. Sanja is fortunate to have Eva from Netherlands as first mate (mate of honor). Emma and Angela, both Irish and competent sailors, will accompany us.

Few days ago Kiwi reached Nassau to see Mona, Karen and Ireen fly back to Europe and reality. We had an adventurous trip including several friendly encounters with sharks and hunders of different reef fish, crustaceans, slimy worms, plankton and other sea stuff that made these biologists very excited. In between easygoing anchoring in turkish green waters, we also had loooongg passages with seasickness, a night of sailing against a thunder storm and challenging anchor operations resulting in one of Kiwi's 25 kg Bruce anchors snapping in two!

Recovering from all this, and three weeks of constant cheerful chit-chating and laughter onbord, Sanja spends some days in Nassau. Current in the harbor basin is strong and there is very little protection from the easterlies, but neighboring boats are very friendly and issues like dragging anchors, dinners and drinks are addressed together.

Pictures will follow!

Four chicks sailing the Bahamas

 

 

 

After Philipp travelled home from Caicos, Kiwi headed northwest to Bahamas with Mona, Karen, Ireen and Sanja onboard. 

Clearing in at Mayaguana, our first port in Bahamas. The local police wasnt really impressed by Kiwi making it all the way to Bahamas from Norway, but was utterly astonished by two ladies walking the distance of four km (!) from our anchorage to the town where the customs office was located. We quickly become something like celebrities on the island. We were naturally escorted back to the boat in a police car.

Reminents of an oil spill on East Plane Cay, an uninhabited outer island of the Bahamas. There is no island that remote that plastic and other dirt wouldnt cover its shores. 

Sailing with three biologists naturally turns some of the focus of the trip on observing marine life. We all share great interest to snorkeling, but are equipped with slightly different levels of courage when it comes to approaching certain sharp thoothed top predators of the reefs (not in the picture)

This mahi-mahi turned in to dinner and lunch for four days. Mona is a competent slaughterer

Ireen does like the humpback whale

Karen and amazing colors

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.

Guadeloupe and Antigua

Guadeloupe offered some excellent rock hopping/canyoning/river walking. As we rely on the pilot book by Donald Street Jr from the 70s for ideas of where to go (and for sailing conditions), it happens that we find pearls like this river behind Deshaies, with nobody else.

P smears a winch, there is always some maintenance to keep him busy.

Pancake shaped and well ventilated - Antigua in the horizon

Johan and Åse came to skipper the ship from Guadeloupe to St Marting, a well welcomed company of sane people : )

In Antigua we were among the poor ones. Never seen this many superyachs and shiny oversized sailing boats with payed crews

Ants cutting leaves - another exotic bug

Les Saintes - Nous sommes divorces

If sailing around Atlantic with the special person of your life isn't challenging
enough in it self, one thing to do is a go through a process of separation while
sailing. A great passtime in the cockpit is to end a more than a seven years bath
together and conclude that the there is no next sailing trip for us as a couple.
Then, after you have agreed on the divorce, you find out that continuing sailing
together in the Caribbean for couple of months is the only way to proceed.

For the devastation in our personal life, surf beaches of Tartane in north Martinique turned out to be the best cure

In Les Saintes, just south of Guadeloupe, we were lucky enough to anchor next to a colony of pelicans

Until now, most of the anchorages in this side of the Atlantic have been lonely. The one in Terre-de-hout in Les Saintes deserves to be photographed for its crowdedness.

Les Saintes - here you know where the wind blows

Dominica in the background

On our hiking expedition on Les Saintes, we heard several of these lizard falling of the trees from sheer panic while hearing us approaching. I dont take it personally, no matter how impressive, they dont appear very smart.

... as opposed to this one.

Martinique

Kiwi enjoying a well deserved rest on her anchorage at Cul de sac Fregate - since two weeks now : )

While Kiwi takes a break, Eva, Jelle and me got to discover the surroundings (including coral reefs) with Gerald's Hoby cat

Wet suit is not because the water being cold, but to protect from sea urchins and other potentially spiky or poisonous marine life.

indigenous people harvesting coconuts

Hiking in Martinique is not really possible because of all the poisonous snakes. At the same time, nobody we talked to has ever seen one.

Welcome committee at Anonymous Island

skippers log from the Atlantic crossing

A typical lunch: pancake on the floor

More than half of the trip was in the dark

Celestial navigation: sailing towards sun set

Lisää kuvateksti

Later we learned that what fish we caught was NOt a tuna but a dolphin fish - delicious non the less

A fantastic crew

The big genoa poled out, Jelle smokes his last e-liquids and Eva peels potatoes. Another afternoon in the cockpit

Calm number two: fascinating how calm it can be out at the ocean

Editors comment: it's unclear why the skippers log contains only 18 days, since the crossing started 30th of December at 14 hours while Kiwi reached Martinique Cul de Sac Fregatte 19th of January at 10. The winds were light, but mostly there. Conditions easy, the greatest challenges being sunburns and staying sane.

Day 1

If it wasn’t for three hours of motoring in the evening, it would have been a perfect start: good sailing, dolphins, tuna caught. Great to be underway finally.

Day 2 

Jelle clogged the toilet, made rice accidentally with salt water and is sea sick. Not his day. Also reef line wheel and propeller break broke. At least we have projects to work with to avoid apathy. New years eve, but nobody noticed

Day 3

Fregattbird Fredrica (who spend couple of days sitting on the solar panel) fell into the sea. Sanja had to move the solar panel for fixing the cable and the bird wasn’t seen ever since. Singing started.

Day 4

Heading to the right direction after rounding a calm! Did do anything at all today, except the normal life onbord.

Day 5

Slow sailing, gray skys, first signs of apathy and furious attempts to fight it! Crew activation with tasks, Jelle started “noon reports” listing the status of the voyage, first training session together.

Day 6

Have managed avoid cooking until now, put myself together in form of rice and cocos-pumpkin. After two days of slow sailing, wind picked up again in the evening and so did the mood and the spirits. Half way mark expected in four days! (absolute highlight of the day was that the crew had washed themselves in the morning)

Day 7

Week in to the trip. We opened a bottle of wine, we wished we had a bible onbord to check out the story of three kings. Luckily there we have enough stories of our own. Sailed through a float of seaweed. Broke off a thought filling with Dutch teeth killing sweets!

Day8

Jelle made English breakfast for lunch. Its real hot outside. We are roasted. We don’t take grib files anymore, because the captain cant handle them.

Day9

Halfway celebration with champagne and pan cake. Messages send both to Philipp and to the Netherlands. We wait for the possible replies like teen age girls. On and off with wind, sail and engine.  Tried yellow sail too, bad idea. Sanja broke two left hand fingers. Not much wind in the forecast. We are reeeally far from home.

Day 10

Out of fruits. We have two pumpkins and some potatoes. Started a tradition of funny games in the afternoon. Calm, riding on the few winds of the rain showers.

Day 11

Bad night with attempts of sailing and long periods of engine in between. Nobody slept. Forecast full of calm so we need to preserve diesel and tolerate slapping of our dear jib. Wrecks my nerves.

Day 12

Flying big jib through the day. It’s so hot that its hard to stay on deck at mid day watch. We had an hour with animal sounds instead of training hour

Day 13

Day off! After a night and morning with engine on, stopped in the afternoon to drift around, wait for the wind (due next morning), for a swim and barnacle removal. Visited by two minke whales swimming under and about Kiwi- Magical evening with amazing scenery, crazy light and sky and calm and peace.

Day 14 

Think it’s day 15 already and I’ve lost track. Almost whole day on engine. Less than half a tank of diesel remaining. Started sailing after sun set with an agreement of another drifting night in case the wind would not hold. First time term “never ending” was mentioned. We started to dry- practice conversation starters with other human beings.

Day 15

Caught a large tuna, blood everywhere, delicious sushi for dinner.  Jelle is out of cigarettes, so things are getting interesting onbord. I made the laundry, which kept me occupied most of the day.

Day 16

The others think three last days on a voyage are the most dangerous. You loose your mind, become sloppy and worse of all, reach land. If the weather and sails hold, we have entered the period of final lunatism. Kiwi rolls like never before, 10 m/s dead down. one sleepless night knocked me totally out. Guess we are all worn out.

Day 17

Today we deployed a party break: a rope loop behind Kiwi to break the speed below 5 knots. We aim for arrival just after day break tomorrow and cant be too fast. Everybody had regained some energy and the last day was celebrated with pancakes and some serious actions to improve hygiene levels.

Day 18'

I woke up for my night shift to see the lights of Martinique (According to ship rules, mention the word "Martinique" means having to do 10 bush ups). Surreal sight after three weeks at sea. There is some kind of a dark gray turn sitting on a gas bottle. It’s been a fantastic trip, way better than I expected, a lot of fun with Eva and Jelle, great sailing, great scenery and streamline performance!