DELAYED DEPARTURE

We were up early on Wednesday morning, ready to set sail for Panama only to find the navigation screens were not working!  The technician had to come back on board, twice, and believes there is a problem with the Furuno black box.  After hours of tinkering Robin managed to get the screens on deck displaying the chart and our position but nothing else is working.  We were finally ready to leave just after 2pm.  Light winds necessitated the huge spinnaker (480 sq m!) being raised and remaining up until half way through day two of our passage.

We have agreed our watch system, 3 hours on, 9 hours off.  Nic has 09:00-12:00, 21:00-00:00 and I have 03:00-06:00, 15:00-18:00.  At night we wear lifejackets and safety harnesses.  The vast aft deck of Spiip is fantastic for boogieing to music on our Ipod to keep awake.  Our days are spent reading and chatting in the cockpit.  The fishing rod is always out in the hopes of catching a fish and we’ve hooked a couple of bonito but thrown them back in the hopes of getting something that’s better eating.

RAINY SPELL IN MARTINIQUE

Sadly it was pouring with rain on Sunday morning for Nic’s birthday so no pre-breakfast swim, indeed no swim at all.  After a leisurely morning we set sail for Martinique and covered the 26 miles in less than 3 hours in time to have tea and cake.  A delicious steak dinner rounded off a great day.

Monday we were back in action.  Miranda and I rented a car and set off for the supermarkets to finish provisioning the boat.  It was somewhat of a frustrating trip as stocks were low after the weekend and holidays.  Despite that we filled the car and have somehow managed to fit it all into the lockers, refrigerator and freezer.  We even topped up with more today from the market.  We certainly won’t be going hungry on our forthcoming journey!

Robin and Nic have been working on more technical jobs.  We’re waiting for the return of one of the navigation screens which has been removed for repair.  The two spinnakers were back this morning and have been stowed in the sail locker. 

If all goes well we will be able to leave for Panama early tomorrow morning.  We plan to stop in the San Blas islands for a few days before transiting the canal around the 19^th May.

FAST SAIL TO ST LUCIA

We were up at 06:00 and set off at 06:30, all feeling a bit shell-shocked after a restless, rolly night in St Georges.  Winds were favourable and we had a great 14 hour sail.  We are looking forward to a calm, quiet night and will be celebrating Nic’s birthday tomorrow.

OUR JOURNEY BEGINS

Welcome to our new blog site.  Our adventure on Spiip begins in Trinidad but somewhat slowly with a prolonged check out!  We headed off first thing this morning to Immigration where Robin filled out the varying forms for Spiip to leave.  As we waited for everything to be stamped we caught a little bit of the royal wedding on TV – very surreal.  Then it was our turn to get ourselves booked off Irony and onto the new boat.  Despite telephoning the boat yard this morning to find out if we needed any paperwork from them for the check out and being told, “No, nothing”, we immediately discovered we were missing a form so that we can get back in the country at the end of the year.  This meant that Robin and Nic had to go across to Peakes office, then back to Immigration and then to Customs.  We finally set off at 10:30.  Light winds on the nose had us motoring to begin with but it wasn’t too long before we could start sailing.  What a change for us to be doing twice the speed we would in Irony!  We arrived in St George’s, Grenada at about 20:30. Tomorrow we have an early start at first light so that we can reach Rodney Bay, St Lucia in the evening.