Daily Archives: Monday February 13th, 2012

Airplanes above our heads

“The idea is to remain in a state of departure, while always arriving. It saves on introductions and goodbyes.” – a quote from my favourite movie Waking Life.

It’s really hard to say good bye to Guenther who’s been with us for two weeks. We had a great time together and the days passed way to fast. So here we are in St. Maarten and we have to say good bye again.

The journey from Barbuda to here was nice downwind sailing again. A real treat after the upwind sailing of the past weeks. During the night we had a guest on Rancho Relaxo: a small seabird circled our home a few times and finally came to a rest on our outboard engine. We arrived at the Simpsons Bay shortly before sunset and sailed into the lagoon at 17:30 when the bridge opened for the last time that day.

Inside the lagoon we met our friends from the SY Express Crusader whom we had been in search for over the past weeks. And when we dinghied Guenther to the airport, we met Armin and Lutz from the SY Jaqueline. Haven’t seen them since Teneriffe. Heh.

The journey to the airport had a second goal: The landing stripe starts directly at the beach where there’s a nice little bar run by three beautiful girls. And this is where plenty of people stay to watch the planes come in or take off. Our friend left with the only 747 on that day and the police came right before take-off to ensure people wouldn’t climb any fences or try other funny things. The blast was enough to send a few towels and caps into the sea but besides that it was mostly just very loud.

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Fitzcarraldo on Barbuda

I already announced it, so here are the photos of the eleven mile beach. Maybe they make the cold weather outside a little more bearable for you.

The beach doesn’t need a description, I guess. So I’ll tell a little of what we did on Barbuda. This island is the complete opposite of Antigua where there’s the high society of sailing. Here on Barbuda theres NOTHING ! There is a hotel on the beach but it’s far off and there’s no village. But we had a todo: We needed to clear out and thus we had to get to Cordington which is seperated by a lagoon.

So what to do ? We all saw the amazing movie Fitzcarraldo and had the splendid idea to take the dinghy and carry it over the beach and into the lagoon on the other side. This was quickly done and despite being a little exhausting it was fun. We should do that more often. Hehehe.

We drove the dinghy about 20 minutes towards Cordington. This village consists of maybe 200 houses and the offices of immigration, customs and the port office were spreaded across the whole ‘town’. So I ran through Cordington in midday’s heat and filled all needed forms. Afterwards we had a cold beer and soon after drove back to where we came from. Same game: 20 minutes ride, 10 minutes to carry the dinghy back to the beach. And then of course an exhaustive bath in the turquoise water.

And that was prettty much all we did on Barbuda. Spending time on the beach, searching for crabs and shells, swim… It would make a great place to have a beach party with friends. Unfortunately ours are all far away or sailing the south of the Caribbean…

Posted in Animals, Kids, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | 1 Comment