sprechen Sie dutch?

looong time no post! sorry about that, but it still amazes me that you guys are still interested in what feels like "the same old sailing-story" when i write it.

and on top of that...well it has just been way to nice to sit down below on the navigation-table when there were beaches to be conquered and reefs to be snorkeled, cocktails to be tested and hang-overs to be cured;)  - simply: we had a great time getting into the carribean nexus, where time is relative and worries evaporate like a cold beer from the bottle.

our second week in grenada already started to feel like being home.

after moving around a lot we were "confined" to this beautiful island, anchoring in Prickly Bay waiting for our sails to be repaired.

spending a longer period of time in one place has it's ups and downs. "up" is definitely that you get to know a place better, find your way around and know the logistics of getting some shopping done, doing laundry, getting those fancy stainless steel screws you were looking for forever...etc.

a slight downside would be that this means spending less time in another place that might be just as beautiful...or maybe better?

the best thing about it was having spent time with our new friends from fabiola, chillicat, senta and tegan before itineraries and (hopefully fair) winds would blow us in all different directions - what is left is great memories filled with months of laughter ringing through the nights, stories shared and also experience had together.

so a few sad and teary goodbyes later it's not all that sunny in the caribbean. 

but the same feeling and the same tears will make sure that our paths will cross again!

and luckily, some paths are shared and i can look forward to some more wonderful warm evenings...

after we got our sails back, new adventures awaited maloo, mark and i. 

we headed off for a a 2,5day sail - just the right length to get into the groove again - setting course to bonaire.

some surprise visitors got on the plane to meet us there and enjoy the 3rd best divespot in the world!

so we got the diving gear out and went submarine!

having christoph, marc and evenline with us was great great fun and no one would have guessed it was their first time on a sailboat - knowing their way around like old sailing pros after just a couple of days.

we snorkeled the beautiful reefs of bonaire and saw barracudas, porcupine fish, angel fish you name it!

the crystal clear water is just amazing and boniare will definetly be up on top of my list of places to return to.

just clearing in with the customs people is worth a stop - no charges and tones of information about the best carneval-parties on the island (including private photos to give proof!!!!) 

a warm recommendation if you visit is to book a rental car loooong before you get there as we were unable to get hold of one...but our friend from customs (the one with the photos)  organized a taxi for us so we could visit a few landmarks like the salt-factory or the slave-huts.

i probably could have stayed another 3 weeks in bonaire - just not getting bored with snorkeling the clear water seeing all these fish and beautiful corals....but curacao started calling out for us!

so off we went for a day-sail over there taking our guests out for their first real passage...."nice" and rolly in front of the wind with serious sea-sick potential...but no green faces to be seen - makes you wonder if austrians are in fact real sea-people!

curacao is unbelievably dutch...which is kind of obvious being a former dutch colony - still rather surprising though, when you come from the windward islands where a rather different culture has developed incorporating the (and i have to guess now) best of african culture.

if any other culture would have had an impact here on curacao it would have to be venezuela and columbia being the closest neighbors.

you see it in the people, you hear it in the music (the version of "gangnam style" played here is rather samba-ish ;)), you feel it on the streets.

nevertheless people are as friendly as on every other island in the caribbean we went to.

just a couple of days ago we missed the hourly bus going into Willemstad and after not seeing a taxi for quite a while, we decided to give it a try with hitch-hiking. mark and christoph said they would feel safe enough as i was there to protect them, so up came the thumb. the second car passing stopped for us and even though the driver had no intetion of going into town, he took us anyway, as it was his lunch break (honestly - i don't know how you are going. but i surely had better things to do in my lunch break when i still had a job!) after we arrived we wanted to give him a bit of petrol-money he didn't even wanted to take. we basically had to throw it at him and quickly shut the door;) - but this is just one of the exceptional stories we have in our "carribean diary".

sadly we had to send our "kids" christoph, marc and eveline back to a real life again - all our offers of staying with us were denied...oh well! it was great having them on board and for me to talk a great deal of german again, catching up on some news at home and just having a real ball together...thanks again dropping in and also for all the goodies you smuggled into the country for us. (if you expect drugs now you are kind of right! I reckon that manner schnitten, appenzeller-cheese, black bread and really really yummie strawberry jam classify as highly addictive substances for an austrian girl - mark preferred the salami over the cheese though)

tomorrow we will head of to santa martha on the columbian coast, leaving out the first island of the abc-s and even more important the first island in the beach-boys song "kokomo": aruba.

we plan to do a bit of columbia sight seeing...can't wait! - then it will be off to kuna yala (san blas) for us before we get to panama - leaving the great atlantic and carribean sea in our wake.

before we get that far though we will have to cross quite a bit of sea with a horrible reputation. the waters in front of the venezuelan and columbian coast are supposed to be the 5th worst in the world (the other 4 being above or below 50° north or south -according to Jimmy Cornell, one of the blue water sailing gurus)

the high mountains in columbia in combination with a rather permanent low system above it can create a great deal of breeze....but surly not when we are there - because we booked the "nice cruise down to oz 2013 - package" including some free drinks and flat seas - so not to worry for us.....or?

before going to petit saint vincent on our way to grenada, we had to stop in union island for a cold beer in this "crazy" bar

a taste of luxury - the high end (and high price) resort on petit saint vincent

georgetown on grenada

the crystal clear water in bonaire

snorkeling in bonaire

a porcupine fish - apparently puffs up when annoyed

still one of the nicest things - swimming with turtles

a brain-coral

changing flags (curacao and the yellow q-flag for "quarantine"  (needs to be up when entering a new country)

loud evenings at the carneval of curacao....

......and quiet days at the beaches

curacao

pelican on curacao

willemstad...or amsterdam?

going local for lunch

choosing from the pan

our neighbor in spanish water anchorage - a pipeline-laying rig

st.lucia - the door to the caribbean

Happy 2013 everybody!!!!

now, what a few of weeks!

arriving in st.lucia was definitely a highlight.

never, after having left turkey, have i met so many truly friendly people and colorful characters.

so colourful the people, so colourful is the island.

on the west coast you find this lush dense green, a mixture of palm trees, mangoes etc. and the greatest conditions for sailing: 15-20kn of wind on 90° and no waves!

the east coast is windblown and not as lush, the sea is rough and colder but never the less Mark and I felt reminded of the NSW coast around Byron Bay.

after a great week of welcoming parties and getting togethers sharing stories of the great crossing, my Mami arrrived and we did a wonderful island tour getting to see the highlights and eating great local food. the remainder of the volcanic activity on this island is a hot mud bath. with a strong sulfur smell we preferred to just look at it from far though. Mark and I have seen (and more importantly smelled) similar things in Vulcano... and my Mum - well, you can't impress someone who's been to Iceland recently with a bit of boiling mud;)

Christmas was relaxed with a nice dinner with family and friends in Marigot Bay on the 24th and a beach bbq on the 25th. one outstanding present i got from my sister in law Barbara and my brother! as if they would have read my mind, they picked the perfect gift! - before leaving las palmas i was desperaty looking for a small nativity set for christmas - but the spanish like it biiiiiig when it comes to that kind of stuff. so having limited space i missed out!

a few weeks later i open one of my presents and what do i find? a wonderful nativity set...in a snow ball - and now comes the best: it plays "silent night"  - just wonderful!!!!

and with my mum bringing a glowing chistmas tree with her - the 24th was picture perfect!

we also tried to discover the beauty of the capital city of St.Lucia called Castries -having arrived too late for the local market we unfortunately failed tragically. the only thing that was left was heaps of people on the street listening to ear-defening loud music, which was fun but not pretty as such. The only restaurant open served us pig-tail-soup for Michael and Mark and cold (not sooo bad) cheese Macaroni for my Mum and me.

the St.Lucians love their loud music! so many times have we seen massive stereos on the porch of houses ready to blast the soul out of passing-bys ....i suppose you can't file a complaint at the local cop-shop about that;)

even though it would have been rather tempting to stay in a beach chair and get carried away by rum punches and cold beers we have to move on - there is so much more to see!

our next stop was Bequia where we had a lovely New Years and relaxing days swimming, snorkeling and eating good food - sitting on the beach in one of these comfy beach chairs was also not too shabby.

we did a short trip to Kingstown for a sad sad good bye to my mami, who proved to be absolutely seaworthy and able to climb into any dinghy around!

we had moved our boat to a mooring while away just to make sure maloo would be safe. when we came back we got approached though by the owner of the bouy asking us if we could move as a volvooceanrace70 would need the buoy. they had moored in the marina the night before but with 4,5m draft were touching the bottom (which is not too nice, especially if you have a canting keel) surprisingly we draw much less ;) and therefore had no problem giving up our buoy and take their marina spot instead....we thought!

at first we struggled getting the anchor in as there were no mooring lines on the ground....and once the hook was in, there was such a surge from the beach that our poor maloo was thrown about almost hitting the dock and being launched into the ropes that we were fearing the cleats would break out.

so we moved again in complete darkness onto another buoy.

the guys on the Volvo however made up for it big time by taking us out for a sail the next day. "true north" was originally "green dragon"  - the chinese-irish entry for 2008-09 volvo ocean race.

and even though it was the slowest boat in the race...what a machine! it just takes off with 20kn like an airplane! - and the best thing: mark and i got to helm it!!!! - unfortunately our maloo felt terrible slow afterwards!

the day after we moved on to the tobago cays - loosing the clew on the mainsail just coming out of bequia. lucky as we were it ripped out with little wind and in bright daylight allowing us to furl the sail away without any other damage. i hate to think what would have happened if this had ripped in the middle of the night with a 35kn gust (like those things usually do) - we probably would have had big damage as the sail would have caught on the rigg surely...but for some reason we seem to sail under a bright lucky star that so far has prevented us from serious damage....and i hope it will shine our way in the future too!

snorkeling in the cays was just amazing! lots of turtles to swim with, beautiful corals and the most colorful fish. unfortunately it was a bit blowy...nevertheless we had the best lobster dinner toghether with our friends from Senta. Karen, John, Finn , Lizzy and Nathan - thanks again for a wonderful night on the beach!!!! - truly to remember

so with the view of Petit Tabac (the island Jack Sparrow go deserted on in i think the second part of " Pirates of the Caribbean")  Betsy from Union Island cooked us the freshest and best lobster i ever had and let me sneak peak in her pots.

we then moved to Chatham Bay on Union to spend another couple of great days snorkeling....a highlight was to swim in what would have to be the biggest swarm of fish i've ever seen - just an amazing experience.

we currently are in Clifton on Union and will move on to maybe Carriacou or straight to Grenada....wherever the wind takes us :)

I can only say: different to a lot of things I've heard about the carribean - i love it!!!! - people are friendly and even when they try to overcharge you, you can still meet in the middle. after all they are just trying to make a living too - the landscapes are stunning and the islands all have a different character. the sailing is great and i can only recommend to come here - no matter if on a boat or without - there is lots to see and great places to also do nothing and just enjoy life! 

St.Lucia, Anse La Raye

St.Lucia, Soufriere

caribbean building style

the famous two Pitons

sailing Mami - on the way to Bequia (mind the speed - bottom right....yes,8.8kn and still relaxed)

"true north" alias "green dragon"....with a great helms(wo)man

Tobago Cays - the caribbean paradise

Petit Tabac ( the Jack Sparrow Island) just after the daily rain

learning how to cook from Betsy

very fresh lobster soon to be found....

....on the bbq!

sunrise with waves breaking over the outer horseshoe reef of the Tobago Cays

happy new year every body! bussi karline&mark

frohe weihnachten - merry christmas

christmas is a wonderful time - not only because of great biscuits (which of course my mami makes the best ones of!) and holidays.

for me it is also a time to be a bit humble and grateful for my family and friends - for my fantastic mum, who came all the way to st.lucia to celebrate with us -and for many many other things, for my great brother pauli, who was the greatest support for me in the last weeks and deserves the "brother of the year award 2012", for his wife barbara and my two nephews theo and emil, who we miss dearly -they not only sing the most beautiful sailing-songs in the world, for my brother christoph, who also had a big year with lots of news and came to be with me on my wedding with his new lovely partner, - for my dad, who had a hard year, but nevertheless  breezed through it not only because of his partner astrid -

for my australian mum gerda, who is the best mother in law one girl could have, and also came to see us with pete and shannon, who i can't wait to see in fiji - for nicole and fin, my sister in law who took my lovely nephew on his first long haul flight to be the biggest surprise on our wedding and rick who made sure that she would be able to do so, as they were setting up a new business just then with lots of work involved - for terry, being a great brother in law and a great friend to mark and me, for gisi, who is a great support and my sister! and made our wedding the most special one in the world! - for sarah, nina and laura, my most beautiful nieces, whom i thank for being so nice to their weird aunty charlie! you girls are great friends:) - for mark's uncle col and aunt lynn - words can't say how thankful we are for what you've done for us!

for my friends helmut and elke, who have not forgotten me already and are always welcomed on maloo - for tobi and barbara, who themselves are about to face the biggest challenge in life, and i know you will be soooooo good in it! - for daniel, who helped me through the last years so much!  for cornelius, who writes the best letters, that read like being written on paper - all the guys at the bsh PCP/MA-DS who make me miss work every now and then - 

for all my friends like ina, ronny, christoph, chris and anke, katja, elisabeth and julian, and all of those who won't be angry, that i forgot mentioning them - for all the new friends that we made on the way from the yachts senta, fabiola, azzurro II, island lady too, chilli cat, sirius and many many more...

dieter and monika, who we think of with great admiration every day, as they gave us their wonderful adaco/maloo to take care of - and she takes great care of us!

of course and especially for my brave uncle michael, who helped us across the pond and made sure we'd have the best fish to eat when we ordered it (....I don't know of any fisherman who fishes to order :) )  -and my aunty liesi, who let him do so and who though of getting us adventskalender and especially an adventskranz! my cousin tina and her husband klaus and son killian, who let the nonno go, and will add a surley wonderful person to all our family celebrations soon! for luki - who showed his dad how the fishing is done in the med, so michael could feed us!

and for steve, who was a great help with boat jobs and doing the graveyard shift.....without you guys, we would probably still be out there!

for my friend with the rose garden - who not only inspired me but also dared me to dream of a rose garden of my own some time in the future!

my lovely buddy - behave!!!!!  - we've heard you've been a bad boy! not sure if the christkind will bring you a bone this year ;) - we miss you dearly every day and you are in our thoughts wherever we go!

and last but definitely not least my husband mark, the love of my life, my best friend and the greatest husband of all times, who not only makes sure that maloo is not sinking, but also always keeps me afloat!

to all of you  - frohe weihnachten - a merry christmas  - and thank you all for your loving and lasting support! - all your little messages make sure, we still feel safe and never lonely even when things go wrong.

lots of love,

mark and karline 

17days 9h 34 sec

at 16:29:34 seconds maloo crossed the arc finish line in st.lucia.

apart from being happy that we are here - we are even more happy that neither crew nor boat suffered from any breakage in what would have to be renamed "the atlantic destruction derby for cruising yachts"

the conditions were rough and the crossing was fast - never ever would we have thought to do it just under 18days as we are only a 42 footer and nowhere near a racer!

a lot of boats suffered serious damages and we wish especially the yachts that are still out there all the best for the rest of the journey!

so...how were the last hours?

it started of with probably the longest 5nm in my whole life. sitting and staring on the screen, watching the "distance to waypoint" go down it felt worse that waiting for the christkind and the easter bunny all together!

i have to admit i hardly had an eye for the beauty of the island, as i was just nervously waiting to see the end.

coming into the bay, we could see the yacht that marked the finish line and with a wonderful reach doing 7,5kn i had the honor of taking us over it.

what a welcome that was from the arc (thanks for that!!!) as we opened a well deserved bottle of piper heidseck and proceeded to the marina.

to get into the marina one has to go through a rather narrow channel - with people sitting left and right and congratulating us on our trip we arrived in a totally different world than the one we left 17 days ago.

the best though was definitely all our friends from senta, fabiola, sundancer II, open blue and many more welcoming us on the jetty. (that is surely the best thing of not arriving first!;))

and here we are! it`s 29°C, the sun is shining, the water is lovely 26°C, the rum punch is on ice... and finally our world is not moving anymore. you can not believe how great it is to have a bite to eat without holding onto plate, food and cutlery, to drink a glass of water without spilling most of it....

in short...st.lucia feels like pure heaven!

how is it to sail across the atlantic?

mark answered me the same few things that came to my mind ad hoc: blue, sometimes grey, sometimes petrol colored... but never boring.

days go by faster than imagined - the scenery of the ocean is wonderful and I really enjoyed being out there!

but it is physically also much more demanding than expected. not only because the conditions were mostly rough, you are in a 24h gym - even sleeping you are exercising. 

the result: we all lost weight! - so did everyone I have met so far! even though we ate really well, a couple of kilos were paid to neptune.

I also think that some of us underestimated what they booked in for...having had a rougher trip to lanzarote already, mark and i were pretty well prepared, and although we hoped to have a smoother one, were not that surprised (i wonder if that's purely a good thing ;)

there is no cm on my body that has not seen a bruise in the last 2 weeks...but no serious injury was done.

and even though there's no lie about that fact that some hours were just awful and I wished myself on a couch with buddy at my feet, I do not have a single doubt that I would do it again...in a heartbeat!

and in fact, mark and i are going to to it again - even being out at sea longer: in approximately 3 months from now we are to cross the biggest ocean of our great blue planet - the pacific.

3 months is a lot of water under the keel though and before that, there is an awful lot of caribbean to be conquered!

where the hurricanes are born....becalmed on the atlantic in the first week

st.lucia ahead of us.... the last 3h that felt like 3 years

st.lucia, here we come! DAY 16 to 18

at 12:42 pm local time we have 32nm to go

and although it's not that much any more these miles seem to take for ever!
some of our friends have already made it and probably enjoy their well deserved cool drinks on land....how I wish we'd be with them already;) - good on you, guys - congrats from the maloos!!!!!
it is time we'd arrive - with the boat rolling heavily over house-like waves (surely some over 8m) sleeping has been quite hard and doing things below like cooking is just no fun anymore.
if the distance would be any longer we'd probably try to find a nicer angle to the waves to keep the boat still for a day, but I was promised a breakfast in rodney bay on saturday....so no way we can make extra "comfort-miles" ;)

the sailing has been quite good the last couple of days. with only the genoa out we managed to go pretty much straight line for st.lucia - having a record day of just over 180nm in 24h the day before yesterday

unfortunately the wind eased off (as predicted) and for the last hours we had our penta helping us on and off.

there have been the odd squalls and gusts, but I actually enjoyed riding them out. with never more than 32kn it was good fun surfing down the waves doing just over 12kn.

what turns really out to be a shocker are these flying fish! just last night again I had one hitting me from behind on my shoulder costing me at least five years of my total life expectancy.
they really seem to enjoy scaring the sh... out of us by hitting us in the middle of the night.
in fact I do believe they are drawn to the lights on the boat... still you could never be sure about a mean element in these fishy kamikazes now could you?

we are out of fresh fruit - but canned peaches and pears are just as divine! there is still fresh vegetables left - some of it I am going to cook tonight...maybe as a chinese noodle stir fry!?
yesterday we had chili con carne...still a bit of meat left too!

thank god the fridge is getting emptier now, as I had to fit in the bottle of piper heidseck for our arrival! - it is still very abstract to think that we would soon (hopefully) have crossed the atlantic and find ourselves in the caribbean...I keep staring at the chart in our salon and the reality of it still hasn't hit me....most likely it will though in a couple of days like one of these flying fish!

st.lucia, here we come! DAY 14 to 15 - what comes after the calm?

what a night! - after having rather little to no wind the last days, the evening of day 13 started with a nice breeze and grey skies which almost had us thinking we took a wrong turn somewhere and are in the irish seas.
towards the night the wind increased to high twenties/low thirties and rain fronts (so called squalls) passed us by.

Mark had gusts up to 37kn in his shift and with only a tiny bit of sail out did over 12kn down the steep waves. I tried to get some rest in the front of the boat, but the noise of maloo running down these waves was almost deafening.

in the morning the wind was still around 27-30kn with the sea now being very messy and the rain fronts changed into walls of water coming down on us. I don't think I have ever seen so much water coming down as rain - which left me rather amazed and totally soaked. our hands swelled up from being wet constantly, making it hard to pull sheets or hold the helm.

this was probably the hardest night of our trip so far (knock on wood!!!!) for us and for our maloo, leaving me absolutely exhausted after a night without sleep and heavy conditions on watch. but luckily maloo went through it all without any damage or complaint, which is quite amazing given the fact the we were thrown around like a rubber duck.

with all that wind though our progress was fantastic....I almost saw us there in rodney bay drinking our well deserved rum punsh. but things come differently then expected - and so the wind left us for the major part of yesterday....so did the rum punsh in my hand! - as we want to keep the fuel for maybe the last day before st.lucia using our penta is out of option.

in the evening a steadier softer wind returned and since then we are under genoa only (rolling less than goose-winging) and making about 6,5 to 7kn straight for st.lucia.

with 587nm to go (at 5:45 UTC-2) we hope to get into rodney bay by saturday morning (if the wind god is with us even friday) - in both cases a really good result for maloo and us!

so on the menu we had potato-salmon patties (which turned our to be rather tasty but otherwise a disaster) with tomato-salad and given the fact that we were all rather tired last night, penne with pesto!

st.lucia, here we come! DAY 10 to 13 - becalmed

after the first mahi mahi, Michael caught the next one - this time a 85cm and app.4,5kg fish - almost too pretty to be eaten, but it was very very tasty!

we had a great sail up until the night before last night. after a big rain shower the wind disappeared completely. also the swell died down a bit.
so far we tried every possible sail-setup to keep the boat moving with only 8-10kn of wind. but the rather big waves (for this light wind) cause the sails to flap heavily, because the wind just can't keep them full.
rather exhausted and frustrated we have decided to give our trustworthy volvo a go as the rolling over the waves is easier to handle when the boat is moving.
unfortunately this will mean quite a penalty for the rally across the atlantic, but as we saw the other day, also a lot of other yachts made the same decision.

it is quite an amazing sight though being in the middle of the atlantic with wonderful cloud-structures around you and a rather calm sea (I will try to post some pictures when we are in st.lucia)
however, after a couple of days we are all waiting for the wind to return which should happen some time today (sunday) according to the grib-file of our weather program.

on my night watch tonight I got almost hit by a flying fish jumping onto maloo. he only missed me by a couple of centimeters before slamming into the bimini and landing on deck. lucky I could quickly return him to the water.

at the moment we only have 889nm left till rodney bay and with the temperatures rising to 30°C (water is 26.1°C) we can feel getting closer to the caribbean.

If the wind returns we hope to arrive on the 14th/15th of december!

as promised here also our menu update: it has been fresh mahi-mahi (dolphin fish/dorade...however you want to call it) with tomato-onion sauce and couscous, chinese stir fry with gingered beef and lamb chops with tuscan string beans and gnocchi.
so - still no signs of starvation on maloo!