5 August 2008

Guess how did we get from St. Martin to Trinidad – by yacht hitch-hiking, of course!

Telling the truth, we hitch-hiked the boat at Trade Winds Cruise Club (where we’ve been working till last December, as you may remember) :) We sailed with Carlton,

his wife Jillian

and colleague Cletus

who were delivering 48’ catamaran “Jo” to Bequia. We said goodbye to our friends: Celina, Johnny, Matura,

Brenda, her daughters and husband.

Brenda has been having her little restaurant for 30 years. They are Rasta and not eating meat at all every day she prepares couple of meats – without testing! She says she cooks with her heart and that’s why she knows it’s tasty :) That was also a place where we’ve met Falasha, reggae musician, remember?

The funniest thing is that there were other yacht hitch-hikers on that boat… Kasia and Slawek had just finished working with TWCC and having no other plans, they decided to sail by yacht hitch-hiking on the South of Caribbean with us.

Two days later

(time was precious as usually while delivering a boat), we entered a lovely St.Vincent’s bay,

where Pirates from Caribbean were filmed. Couple of hours laterwe tied our lines in Port Elizabeth on Bequia.

During our short stay there

we have organized an excursion to Turtle Sanctuary.

The idea is great but the living conditions might not be comfortable…

Mr King told to Patrycja’s microphone

about sanctuary’s history and about many difficulties he finds managing that kind of activity.

From Bequia we were trying to catch another boat to get to Trinidad, we nearly went by cargo ship… Finally, we decided to go by plane, we were not able to wait any longer to see our YouYou!

Surprise! Kasia and Slawek flew to Trini as well – they were going to help us in preparations to launch YouYou!

Our friends asked us not to place their photos, even that they helped us a lot and their involvement in making our YouYou a beauty is not measurable!

More about our work on YouYou you’ll find here soon.

In June unexpectedly we got a great opportunity to sail to Panama! Slawek i Kasia got a job to deliver a catamaran

from Trini (from one of neighboring marinas!) So after one month of very intensive works, we decided to have a month of holiday :)

We had not only wonderful cruise but also we crossed Panama Channel. What’s more, “on the other side” we met with Dave, Santana’s owner,

with whom we had crossed Atlantic Ocean nearly two years ago…

While channel crossing we met also our Czech friend from St. Martin –Daniel. Few days later he sailed on his own to Galapagos, Marquises, Easter Island, around Horn – to come back to Caribbean. Pics from cruise to Panama and some comments you’ll find here soon.

After coming back from Panama we experienced something we were waiting for a long, long time. We’ve started our freshly renovated engine!

Recently we got a nice sailing dingy from one of sailors! You can put there an engine (we don’t have it yet) or install it’s mast with a sail! Next time we will publish photos from our first excursion!

Another excursion we made hiring a car and exploring the island. This will be also described soon. We have to mention about a concert in San Fernando – that night belonged to Queen Ifrica!!!

And what happened most recently? We’ve just started a job as a crew of 86’ (26 meters) wooden classic boat!

NORDWIND was build in 1939 for German navy. Lucky enough to survive till today, after complete renovation the yacht is in great shape now. Like “floating museum” she is now the example of great naval art and sailing legend, in the same time.

So again “job has found us” by Internet, even when our new yacht was waiting in Trinidad, literally 3 marinas further from us!

Today we are leaving to Rio do Janeiro!

In Nordwind’s plans there is a circumnavigation. The route goes along the coast of South America, around Cape Horn, Easter Islands, Pacific Islands… We are going to spend here three months. Maybe this is the best opportunity to see magic South America… Time will tell :)