winny’s blog

Last Thursday afternoon I was back home. For the next months Curacao will be a safe haven for de Grote Meid. Panama was to far without the mainsail working and aspecially going back from Panama is not a pleasant sailingtrip so Paul decided to stay in Curacao.

Here is a GoogleEarth picture with parts of the route we did sail. I managed to get my GPS working at the end. Look at the yellow line.

Of course we started at Antigua but I lost those data. So the line is not complete.

A coule of days ago we arrived at Curacao, beautifull island and mostly Dutch spoken. Which is very easy of course.
Paul lived here for a couple of years and knows it very well. So he showed me some nice spots on the island.

The rough North side for example.

And of course Willemstad with the sailing bridge.

and I did dive just from off the beach. this is a picture of the diving school

It all sounds good, doesn’t it? And it is!

Yesterday we went from StVincent to the Tobego Cays. Very beautifull spot in the reef. From there to Union Island in the end of the afternoon. Just a nice hour or two sailing. We will be up and running to Granada or directly to Isla Margarita.

But first see if the motor of the ankor can be made. It was stuck when we want to leave StVincent and it took Paul and Bequia some 5 hours to repair it. It worked again but not as new. And in the bay of UnionIsland it broke again. But of course, this time too, it was made and we are now in Granada, after a very nice day of sailing.

We arrived yesterday in Bequia, a small island south of St Vincent.

When we cleared out at St Lucia there whas a young German guy, asking if he could come with us to St Vincent. The only other way to get off the island was flying and he had done that before, in a very scary small airplane. Didn’t want to do that again. So we examined his bagpack and took him on board. The idea was to get him off the crewlist in StVincent, a good day sail. But St Vincent was not a very friendly island and it did not work out there. So we took him another night on board and went to Bequia. There we finally managed to get him off the crewlist this morning.

The islands we saw from the sea looked gorgious.We even saw dolphins a couple of times.

Last night we arrived at St Lucia. Just in time for Peter to catch his plane back to Antigua.

What did we do so far.
We departed thursday evening with 3 crewmembers, 1 captain and a cat. We planned to go to Dominica first and to arrive there Friday morning. But the weather was worse than expected and because we had some serious rain and wind, up to over 30 knots, we staid in the shelter of Quadaloupe. We sailed in front of the coast during the night and whith sunrise we ankered in a bay and slept for a couple of hours. Then, when the weather improved we sailed on and arrived at Dominica at Friday evening. Beautifull sailing day with plenty of wind.

Dominica is a beautifull island just south of Quadaloupe. We sailed with a little watertaxi up the Indian river. It was as sailing through the rainforrest. Beautifull!

Looking at the weatherforcast it was the best not to leave Dominica in the evening but better in the night. Wo we slept a bit and left at 4 am at Sunday. Had some squalls and some very quiet stretches with no wind so it was sails up and sown, motor on and off but in the end we managed to be on time in St Lucia for Peters flight back.

We stay here for at least the day because of predicted very heavilly squalls with 40 knots of wind.

The next stops will maybe be Bequia, Grenadines, Bonaire etc.

At last, many obstacles with custums etc, we really leave Antigua. With pain in our harts of course.

But Dominica, and many other islands more to come, makes the difference.

We looked at the map, weather is good, not very stable but normale and enough wind to go.

Goodby Antigua, Dominica here we come!

Yesterday evening I arrived in Antigua. Flight was ok with only one hour delay. And flying with Jill on the same flight was really a bonus. We had time enough to catch up.

And Antigua is still beautifull and warm.

We plan now to leave tomorrow in the afternoon. First stop will be Dominica. About 12 hours sailing so we will arrive  the next morning.

Just back in Holland one week. Going back already.

Sailing De Grote Meid to Panama. Couldn’t possibly resist that.

Left pic: draw a horiazontal line in the middel and you see on the right Antigua and on the left the marina in Panama where we are going. Bocas del Toro, the picture on the right.

Long time no write. But there it is, a new post.

Brought the Watermeid to the marina in Barendrecht yesterday, for some sanding and varnishing while I’m away.
Look at the route we took and better still, it shows exactely where she is now in the shed.

On our trip the past week, I come to write more about that in the next weeks, we had something in the prop. Managed to get it out but there were some remains.

The Oosterschelde was sailing to.
Nice clipper.

The man eating gorilla. Escaped in Blijdorp the other day. Yesterday we went to see him. Scary, isn’t he?

They even asked questions about him in parliament, can you believe that? Must be cucumbertime.

It was very nice to be in Blijdorp again after such a long time. For Graham obviously it was his first time.