log

From our first landfall in St Lucia on January 6th 2012 to our Panama Canal transit on January 26th 2013 we have had an incredibly varied sailing experience in the Caribbean Sea. Our twelve month tour of this area took us to 15 different countries…

So we talked about it, planned it and worried about it for so long that the actual Canal transit seemed like an absolute doddle (does this remind anyone of all our talk of the Bay of Biscay?). We had decided to use a canal agent as our month in the…

Yes – we’re finally doing it. The path between the seas beckons, we have our transit date for the Panama canal. We returned from the San Blas islands to Portobelo and were greeted by a mountain of admin back in the UK that had accumulated from a…

Those of you who have been jealous of all our fine Caribbean sunshine will feel vindicated by this post. It is rainy season in Panama and we expected a lot of downpours during the time we spent here. However, what we didn’t know is that the locals…

Our arrival into Bocas del Toro Panama is a bit of a milestone. It means we’ve been on the sea for 8 months (at the time of writing it was June 11th) and are almost done with the Caribbean. It’s a natural time of reflection as getting to Panama…

It’s May 27th and we’re still in Isla Mujeres, Mexico (see, when I said a few posts back that we needed a break I really meant it!). Trouble is, the earliest that hurricane season has been known to start is May 29th. What with the dragging incident,…

It is 3:30am and we are both awake. There are storms coming in from Florida and there have been warnings of them all week as a cold front stretches from Miami all the way to North East Honduras. There is talk of 40knot winds, high seas, heavy rain,…

I thought that it was important to write something about our passage-making these days. Moving up the islands in the East Caribbean has been quite a varied experience. First of all because each island itself is a distinct, individual country of it’s…

Approaching Dominica we understood instantly why we were given a warning about tricky anchoring there. It looks like something prehistoric. The island is so mountainous and steep-to that the coastal waters are mostly too deep to drop the hook…

Martinique, our playground for the last week or so was a strange beast. Imagine everything that you have pictured in your mind about a tropical Caribbean island; then add the rastas, resplendent with their dreadlocks and spliffs; include the…

The crossing of the Atlantic ocean from East to West is known among sailors everywhere as the ‘milk run’ primarily because it is supposedly straightforward and simple if approached at the right time of year. The instructions for sailing from the…