Namani in mid Pacific between the Galapagos and the Marquesas (photo by E Capoe)
NaMaNi on Maupiti
Namani on the home stretch between New Caledonia and Australia
Finally, the Photo Gallery is up and running again and we have added two new albums, "Atlantic Crossing" and "Antigua". We also updated "Krabbelgruppe at Sea" with new Wimpelkette-pictures off Les Saintes
#######
Zwei neue Photoalben in der Gallerie ("Atlantic Crossing" und "Antigua"), plus neue Wimpelkette-Bilder im Album "Krabbelgruppe at Sea".
Some video footage from about 10 days ago at Shirley Heights/Antigua where Nicky, Beth and Pearl were dancing to the steel drum music:
Our Caribbean cruising has officially started today, with a day sail to France - more exactly, to one of its overseas territories, namely Guadeloupe. After a very nice 43 nm sail from English Harbour/Antigua we arrived at Deshaies at 1700 local today where we are now at anchor. We had spent New Years Eve aboard Seabright, moored just outside Jolly Harbour/Antigua. New Years Day was then spent at a beach BBQ with the crews from Hakuna Matata, Heidenskip, and Seabright before we sailed to English Harbour on the southern coast of Antigua on 02JAN.
A (belated) merry Christmas, happy holidays and all the best for 2008 to family, friends and readers! We had a very nice week with Nana's family who had visited over Christmas and left this morning. Now we plan a few days at anchor around Antigua before heading south towards Guadeloupe. Stay tuned...
Frohe Weihnachten und alles Gute für 2008! Nana's Familie ist nach einem sehr schönen Besuch über Weihnachten heute morgen wieder abgereist. Jetzt planen wir noch ein paar "Ankertage" um Antigua herum, bevor es nach Süden Richtung Guadeloupe geht. Stay tuned...
After crossing 3200 miles of open ocean, there is a lot to report, so I organized sections below covering the passage, the highlights, the low points/problems we had, and Nicky, if you want to skip around.
The folks at work might get a good laugh out of this... During the Atlantic crossing all the Rally boats would check in via SSB radio every morning at 1000, reporting their position and current weather conditions. As you may have guessed it didn't take long before I had a spreadsheet that would give me relative distances, distance made good, etc. for each boat and also plot positions and weather conditions on a LAT/LON grid (see picture) - old habbits die hard...
A few short video clips taken during the crossing...
The first one is of a group of dolphins playing off Namani's stern between the Canaries and the Cape Verdes:
A short voice over on day 6, still between the Canaries and Cape Verdes:
A view of our double headsail setup in happy tradewind conditions:
We finally did arrive at Jolly Harbour at approx. 1330 local yesterday (Wed, 12DEC)... very nice place, very nice to be on land again and see the other rally boats & crews. Unfortunately, Peter had to leg it last night already to catch his flight back to the UK - 26 days at sea and 6 hours at the destination, that's got to be some kind of a record... Very nice to meet Ralf here who will be staying with us until Sunday.
We raised Antigua (or a land mass that we hope to be Antigua) at 0815 local this morning and will have English Harbour abeam in one hour with an ETA at Jolly Harbour, our destination here, at 1500 local today. Another good 24 hr run with 147 nm on the log finally saved us and we hope to make happy hour tonight!
After some favorable winds and keeping the "pedal to the metal" for the past 36 hrs we now hope to be in Antigua tomorrow (Wednesday) late afternoon. The final sprint is taking a bit of a toll on boat and crew especially with having had to hand steer in big and confused seas with the boat going 7+ knots. Doing a 3-hour shift of that at night leaves you somewhat jaded especially while it is hard to get decent sleep during the off-watch as the boat is tossed around in the waves.