Sailing around the world

Hi All,

Woke up to good news today after yesterdays rain and gloomy weather. We have a new transit date of 30th May! Still hoping that it will come forward a little but even if not, a one month leap forward is fantastic.

Regards

Lorna and James




I wonder if the Panama canal authorities are starting to get some pressure put on them by the yachties delayed by the "working to rules" action.

Yachting Monthly are mentioned in the following article:

http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20080429114645456

A Panama Canal Authority spokeswoman has assured Yachting Monthly that they are 'concerned' about the bottleneck of yachts piling up at the Caribbean end of the canal, which we reported on yesterday, and are 'working aggressively to reduce the backlog.'

The response to the article from Chantal is quite amusing.

Ms. Arosemena explanations to the yachting world for the "momentary" slow-down are complete BS...
The pilots in their overzealous compliance "non-strike strike" are the ones who decide whether or not to refuse or accept to take yachts thru the locks along larger vessels and right now the pilots "non-union union" recommends to flatly refuse "FOR SAFETY REASONS" to take more than one small craft a day thru the canal, thus opening a whole new and lucrative market for the new DRY CANAL operator... If this is not a conspiracy to force the hands of the "poor" yachties, I don´t know what is !

I think Chantal is right, additionally for every ship that goes through there is space available for at least another three yachts. Unfortunatly they need rope handlers onboard, and these guys are not willing to do the work. Someone must be pulling some strings for James and Lorna's date to jump so far. I don't think they will be the only ones to have had their date shifted either.

Regards

Charles

We left St Maarten early on Sunday the 16th March heading for Margarita. We had planned to leave a few days earlier but Andrew offered to take us for a flight to the British Virgin islands as he had some work to do out there on of his clients boats.

Unfortunately the boat let him know that it would not be able to make the rendezvous so we cancelled the trip and decided to have a leisurely breakfast with Andrew on Mind the Gap. While he was aboard he also resolved a charging problem on the starboard engine’s alternator.

We made good progress to St Kitts and it was dark by the time we sailed past Nevis. The journey to Margarita was only a few hundred miles and we made good time. At dawn we had already passed the islands of Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Vincent, St Lucia, Bequia, Carriacou and were sailing past the coast of Grenada although we could not see it.

We would not make Margarita before dark so we decided to head for Los Testigos which was a little island about 30 miles closer to us than Margarita. We had a good look at the Tsunami chart, it was an interesting shape and with our limited knowledge of Spanish come to the conclusion that the name was very appropriate.

Battling against the current to get there before nightfall and just managed it. We anchored in the fading light as the sun had already set. We were glad to have a good nights rest.

It was an easy journey the next morning, downwind all the way, we arrived in Margarita by noon. This island belongs to Venezuela and the currency is called Bolivar’s, named after Simon Bolivar a so called freedom fighter that liberated the region from slavery. It was a great place to stock up as prices for food and groceries and fuel is cheap.

We also visited the dentist here and Lorna had a tooth fixed. The dentist, Vincente could speak good English. He and his wife Maribel ran this very neat practice. He did a good job on Lorna’s tooth. As he was also interested in boats we invited him and Maribel for a drink onboard and offerd to show them around. As we left his surgery he came running out after us and suggested that it would be better if we came out with him on Sunday and he would show us around the island and we could barbeque some fish.

We had a real good day out and Vincente and Maribel were perfect hosts. We were able to see much of the island that would never otherwise had been possible. We met the local fishermen and were able to get a first hand insight to their humble and stress free way of life.


We left Margarita the Tuesday, early and sailed west to Tortuga, another island in the Venezuelan chain. We arrived before sunset and anchored in a beautiful bay. Two other boats were there already, both French. One of the boats was a cat owned by Christian and Isabelle Picard. They own the yacht brokerage AYC. We went to see his employee, Francious in Montpellier in France back in 2005 just before I bought our boat. It was Franscious that showed me around the Dufour Nautitech 475 and that I became interested in buying one of this type. Small world indeed. We had a delightful evening with them and their children, Lucy, Thomas and Silva.





Photos to Follow

James and Lorna

Hi All,

Spent the day cycling around Bonaire with a stop for a snorkle along the coast. Very popular dive spot on the island. First thing tomorrow we head for Curacao hopefully a night stopover there and then off to Aruba. They are all about a 50 mile sail apart and all downwind. quite easy to do during the day. After Aruba we will have the long sail to Cartagena.

All for now, Love

Lorna and James

With each start 10 seconds to go the massive racing yachts would be on a reach along the line, bow water spraying only feet separating each other and sometimes even less, heading straight for us. We can hear the lines groan as they a eased in the winches just before heading up to cross the line for the perfect start. None of the competitors want to give an inch and neither could we! I watched some of the starts with great concern for the safety of Mind the Gap as sometimes the starters would come past our boat with only inches to spare, would they snag our anchor line, how did they miss it? I thought of grabbing a fender to position it in between us and the oncoming boat heading straight for us but rethought this as it would be too dangerous to even try to fend them off as some of them are almost 3 times our size and weight. They carry such momentum in these conditions that a fender between us and them would have as much effect as a balloon would, reducing the impact of a sledgehammer. We have some great photos of starts and finishes

Lorna was also assigned the coordinator job, to say the least she was busiest person on the boat and suitably named “wonder woman”. We dropped the crew/volunteers off in Simpson bay at the yacht club and proceeded to Marigot with only Lloyd and Ngaire aboard for the partying at Marigot. We had to be in Marigot bay for the start of the final days racing.