We made it across, and our fuel tanks are full!

Well, we actually made it across a few days ago. We arrived in St. Lucia on Feb 10 in the late afternoon after 15 days at sea. About 99% of the trip was under sail… we only had to motor for a few hours on day 2 when the wind dropped to almost nothing and we had to get out from behind the wind shadow of the Cape Verde Islands. In total, we burned 3.3 liters of diesel in the main engines, and 43.2 liters in the generator to make electricity. We started the crossing with 210 liters of diesel in the main tanks, and 80 liters in jerry cans. Conditions for the entire trip were really great… no rain for 13 days, then a bit for a couple of days toward the end.. and winds were between 15-25 most of the time, except for near the end when we had a storm with almost 60knot gusts for a wee bit. We arrived safe & sound.. no injuries & only a few small boat items to fix. The generator partly packed it in on the last day – no cooling water was flowing at all when I started it up. Back into the generator locker, and take the pump apart (again – for the 15th time). Again, all the impeller vanes had ripped off. So install the spare we got in Cape Verde from the Danish sailors and try it again. But it seems that the spare impeller is no good for us. The generator is mounted fairly high (by sailboat standards), and so the pump has to draw water up almost 4 ft, and this impeller was not up to the task. And no other spare on board. Good thing it was our last day, not our first. After arrival and boat cleanup, I backflushed the cooling loop on the generator engine and got a small pile of impeller blades out of the heat exchanger. A name brand impeller worked great, and the water flow was 5 times what I have ever seen from this beast.

We stayed at the Rodney Bay Marina since arriving… just made it convenient for crew to get on & off the boat without having to use the dingy. Today we moved to an anchorage right in front of “The Landings” in Rodney Bay. We were fortunate to meet Paul and his partner Jana from Toronto at the marina when they were next to us on the dock. Paul was the developer of the Landings and we were invited to their home there this evening. Absolutely beautiful property! Paul and Jana have been sailing for many years and shared some of their adventures with us.

Yesterday we rented a car & did some sightseeing between Rodney Bay and Soufriere where we dropped off our crew Jason & David. Spotted a few beautiful anchorages that look very inviting. Other than that we’ve just been relaxing and trying to get our cellphones going again… we managed to restore all of our data, but not our pictures… 🙁 So all pictures between Madeira and Cape Verde are lost for good.