Senta - St Lucia is paradise

Dear friends and family, we arrived in Rodney Bay, St Lucia Thursday morning and are really enjoying being here. Our finish was like our start, a race, this time with Ian, Helen and Dylan from Sundancer II, they beat us in, no problem. The reception on pontoon by our Fabiola and Savarna friends  was just the best and rum punch and champagne does taste fabulous at 9 am. It took us 17 days which was much fatser than we expected. Except from a blocked toilet and some diesle issued nothing is broken, good, old Senta. We all agree it was a real good crossing and no hardship at all.Since then we have been tidying, cleaning and getting the boat back to normal but mostly we haver been socialising with our friends. All the family boats are on dock J and we usually have a crowd of. read more...

Senta - Log Dec 10 Day ? (can't find calendar)

"More rain, more squalls, more wind," our skipper is setting the tone 554 miles from the finish. The good news is we are speeding along with 8 1/2 to 9 knots beam reaching toward St Lucia, the air is warm albeit wet and we have plenty of food and water left. Some of the racing boats have arrived and are already enjoying their rum punches. Can't wait!Due to the torrential rain every so often we have to lock the cabin down which has now sauna temperatures. Nate could not cope in the hot pilot berth any longer and is now on a mattress on the floor below my bunk, so we have happy chats in the middle of the night when we can't sleep because the boat is pitching so much. We have had one full day of tradewind sailing with fluffy clouds and sunshine, otherwise one front after the other. At least. read more...

Senta - Day 11?

The days are flying by now. We only had to motor for a day to get through the expected lull, then 1 day! of trade wind sailing and now it is bucketing down with rain, the brochure has been ling from the start! Morale on Senta is good, though, only 750 miles tp go and John has not even started to read his 800 page book. Kids are content, we eat too much, temperature is over 20 now, no compaints.. read more...

Senta - Day 10

We celebrated half way yesterday with one drink, the first on this trip. After the happy times in Las Palmas we have not missed alcohol at all. Only 1200 miles to go and as our weather guru from wetterdienst had predicted we are in the middle of a low. So back with the reef (we have only sailed unreefed for one day) and out with the No 3 jib. The wind is from the side and we are still doing more than 7 knots, but it is grey and rainy. Inside the boat it is hot and humid as we can't open the hatches due to rain and waves. Last night we had squalls etc and nobody slept a lot. I believe we will not ever get trade winds on this trip, it is just one of those years. Fresh food slowly running out, still have some apples, bananas and a mango. Tonight has chicken stirfry on the menu. the guys. read more...

Senta - Log day 8

On day 8 at sea we got a new position report on all boats, always really exciting to see where all our friends (and competitors!) are and how long to go. It feels like we have been on sea forever but it has not been boring yet, the days fly by. Watches, meals, games with the kids, emails, have not been able to read a book yet. Everybody in the fleet would be really relieved that the squalls are gone, we are scooting along with 8 knots under reefed main and No 2 Gib, movement much steadier, too. We have put our watches forward today by 1 hour and are looking forward to the half way mark.Our only connection with the world is our new SSB, expertly installed in Palma by Joerg from Yachtfunk. We had planned to use the Iridium for weather and emails but we wanted the kids to speak to other. read more...