Caribbean & Atlantic Panama (2017)

Barbados is the eastern Island arriving from Africa. In the past it was the unfortunate landing and dispatching point of thousands of slaves being taken to work in the sugar cane plantations in all of the Caribbean islands. Previously, Barbados was r…

From Barbados to Martinique Martinique while arriving   It is a long time since we post an update. Many things have happened in the meantime. We left Barbados on Dec 16th and we arrived in Fort De France the following morning. We decided to dock th…

While sailing to Dominica, we realized through the AIS that we were followed by two boats of Suisse friends, two couples that we met in different situations and one of which did the passage with the Cornell Odyssey. We were all heading to Roseau, the…

Les Saints, a group of islands south of Guadalupe, were – for a change (!) – discovered by Columbus and named after the day of his arrival, on November 1st – All Saints day. We arrived in the bay in front of Grand Bourg on January 27th around 11.30am…

On January 29th we arrived at the Marina in Riviere Sens, a cozy village close to Basse Terre – south west of Guadalupe. Here we had the first encounter with pelicans in the wild! They were everywhere, diving into the water to catch fishes. Deshaie…

We arrived in Sint Maarten on Feb 2nd at 4.00am, after about 20 hours of sailing from Guadalupe, and we anchored in Simpson Bay, a convenient but rolling anchorage. When we woke up in the morning, we enjoyed the view of the white long beach in front …

On the way to Antigua we decided to stop for a couple of days in Sant Barthelemy, St Barth, that is East of St Martin. In 1784 the island was given as a present by the French king Louis XVI to the king of Sweden Gustav III, from whom the name of the …

South of St Barth In the afternoon of January 12th we left beautiful St Barth heading to Antigua. We prefer to sail overnight when we need to cover more than 70 miles in order to be sure we can reach our destination in day light. It was the case for…

Dolphin On February 19th we left Antigua heading to Barbuda; during the passage we were approached by two dolphins that accompanied us for about 20 minutes, the first ones we spotted since the Atlantic passage.     Cocoa Point Barbuda…

On February 21st we left Barbuda earlier than planned as the weather worsened becoming rainy and windy. We headed to Nevis; after about 20 hours of sailing in 20-25 kn of wind we anchored just in front of the capital Charlestown. An historical note: …

We returned to St Martin to pick up our friends Filippo and Mariella who were arriving on the 28th from Rome. We spent about 3 days making some maintenance work and reorganizing the cabins to properly host them. We docked at Simpson Bay Marina where …

The morning Filippo and Mariella left, we continued our journey toward Northwest. The next destination was the Dominican Republic where we originally planned to make a technical stop on our way to the Turks and Caicos islands. We decided to head to P…

Puerto Bahia On March 15th we arrived at Puerto Bahia, about 20 miles from the entrance of Samanà Bay. The marina pleasantly surprised us for the nice facilities and the friendly attitude of the personnel. It features wide berths, several restaurants…

Cockburn town On March 21st we left the Dominican Republic heading towards the Turks and Caicos archipelago. Although a longer route, we decided to pass through the Silver Bank, that is a vast area of shallow water where whales gather to breed on the…

We entered the long bay leading to the city of Santiago de Cuba around 10.00pm on March 31st. While sailing the buoyed channel signaling the path to the marina, we were cheerfully greeted by the several fishermen going the opposite way for a night of…

In the late afternoon of April 9th we sailed to the Jardines de la Reina, a vast archipelago consisting of more than 4000 little “cayos” of coral origin and often covered by mangroves. The passage was a bit rough, with 25+ knots of wind and a few squ…

On the 19th we were picked up at the marina by a taxi that we reserved through a tourist organization for our trip to Trinidad. It took us about 1.5 hour to get to the town passing along a coastal road where we assisted to the crossing of  thousands …

Plaza Vieja at night On April 23rd we arrived in La Habana where we had booked a “casa particular” in the old part of the city (Habana Vieja). A “casa particular” is an inexpensive accommodation provided by private owners who rent one or more rooms o…

April 28th was our last day in L’Habana, and for Clara in Cuba. We accompanied her to the airport on our way back to Cienfuegos. We arrived at the marina late in the afternoon and started preparing Zoe for our trip to Cayo Largo, planned for the foll…