With the huge circumnavigation milestone behind us we are now simply taking life a bit easy in St-Martin which is a place easy to relax. Plenty of restaurants and stores to eat and find all those boat parts we needed for all the small repairs that were not fundamentally important but still needed to be done at one point and that’s pretty much all we’ve been doing; eating and boat projects. As someone said; the definition of The Cruising Life is boat repairs in exotic places. St-Martin is definitively a place to prove that statement! 
We did it! On Jan 4th, 2012 Danielle and I officially completed the circumnavigation of the Earth on board our 40ft sailing catamaran Chocobo by sailing across our own wake off shore of the island of St-Martin in the Caribbean where we sailed in 2009. To achieve that goal of a lifetime we sailed 29262 nautical miles (54427 km), travelled for 3 years, 3 months and 22 days or 1208 days, we visited 48 countries, crossed three oceans, sailed successfully though the most dangerous pirated infested waters, met the best and the worst of what humanity has to offer and leisured in the most beautiful scenery of the world. Although it is a major milestone in our journey it is not the end of our trip yet as we still have another six months or so of sailing in front of us. And for those interested in figures our trip so far cost us UD $179976.03 for a monthly average of US $4499.40. It was very expensive but was worth every penny!
We arrived at Grand Case on the island of St-Martin from Low Bay in Barbuda on January 4th, 2012 after a passage of 78 nautical miles (145 km) that took us 14 hours for an average speed of 5.6 knots. Our arrival in Grand Case marks the completion of our circumnavigation of the earth.
If we had known how beautiful were the beaches of Antigua and especially of Barbuda when we sailed in the area at the beginning of our trip we would have taken the time to make a detour here instead of keeping sailing south. Kilometer long beaches of fine sand are there for the visitors’ enjoyment. After two years of fast pace sailing it feels very good just to stop and enjoy the beach, work a bit on the boat and swim with the fishes.
But Barbuda is not only the nicest beaches in the world but also one of the largest frigate bird sanctuaries in the world. Tens of thousands of this majestic bird nest in the wet lands formed by the huge lagoon in the middle of the island. During the mating period the males inflate their red throat to indicate to the females their availability and somehow to impress them. Apparently, for frigates size DOES matter! According to our guide once a female has made her choice things go pretty fast. After the necessary gene interchange ordeal the female will lay one egg but the male will be responsible to sit on it but the female will have to do all the work after to feed both the chick and the father. Well, being a father at home has to have its advantages isn’t it?
As I mentioned before we didn’t have any breakups during the Atlantic crossing and we were all proud of how sturdy Chocobo was and all but if nothing snapped during the last few weeks didn’t mean things were not breaking up! I had to climb on top of the mast to change a VHF radio antenna that died with a spectacular leap of death from the top of the mast right to the deck as we were leaving Arrecife in the Canaries. This was not a very urgent task so I procrastinated until we reached that side of the ocean to actually go up there. Climbing the mast is always an interesting experience. I have to sit on a sort of harness made of a wood plank that serves as a chair hence its name the bosun’s chair. The chair is attached to the main halyard (the rope used to raise the main sail) and Danielle winches me up using our electrical winch. This may sound simple in theory but for one thing the winch is not meant to pull up 86 kg (190 lbs) of muscles and water. All right, maybe a bit of fat too! Anyway, I’m too heavy for the winch and I have to pull myself up at the same time. In the movies we see men pulling themselves up single handed along a 100m of rope. Well, it is not that easy especially for a guy who worked in front of a computer all his life! At the top of the 15m (50ft) of mast I’m totally exhausted and then the work starts which means trying to do detail and precise work while the waves rock the boat. A small balancing of the boat isn’t a big deal at the deck level but at the end of a 15m pole there’s quite an amplification factor. Some people rode their dinghy beside Chocobo as I was at the top and even waved at us “Merry Christmas!” while their dreadful wakes slid toward us and when Chocobo started to roll I had to stop whatever I was doing and to hold the mast with both my arms wrapped around it while I swung like a metronome and withholding the urge I had to tell our lovely neighbors what I thought they should do with their Merry Christmas! Of course nothing was working as planned and I had to go up and down three times before the antenna was all set.
But while playing Tarzan with the mast I noticed that the T-ball attachment of the port shroud was almost cut all the way through. The shrouds are the stainless steel cables holding the mast in place. The picture here shows the cut in the 5/8” (16mm) T-Ball that actually attaches the shroud to the mast. If this last bit of steel that still remained had snapped during the crossing we would have lost the mast! We bought this shroud in Australia one and half year ago and they are supposed to be good for ten years. Luckily for us there was a good rigger in Falmouth, Antigua and we got a new shroud made in one day. Of course, I had to go up the mast twice again but at that point I was getting the trick and somehow my newly discovered muscles had developed and I was able to hoist myself much easier.
I just couldn’t pass showing you this picture of the “STAD AMSTERDAM” we saw in Falmouth, Antigua which is in my opinion the most beautiful tall ship in the world.
After two weeks at sea we could finally relax and recover our sleep and start to use our muscles again under the bright sun of the Caribbean. Somehow I caught a bug or something while in Cape Verde and about mid way across the Atlantic I developed a sort of lung infection and it took me almost a full week after our arrival here to recover from it. But talking about my being sick would start to be repetitive as it seems I get sick in every country we go lately. However, on a more exciting tone I went on a very interesting tour they have here in Antigua. It was called the Antigua Rainforest Canopy Tour and we would basically wear a harness and slide on zip lines spread between hug trees. This was really fun but unfortunately I had to do this only by myself since it was totally out of question for Danielle to do that activity. Danielle wouldn’t mind to go at the bow of the boat to fix a broken line while sailing through a storm, and she actually did that once, but her chronic vertigo prevents her for climbing a 3 feet (1m) ladder! It is then not hard to imagine that she would bail out of sliding on a cable at 100 ft (30m) over the forest! But the miss was all hers because the 12 zip lines and 9 suspended obstacle bridges were exceptionally fun.
On December 23rd it was my birthday and we had a nice dinner in a fancy restaurant with the crews of “Karacool” in the back and “Adagio III” on the right. Not much to say other than I got a few more grey hairs but still have a very young heart and a beautiful wife.
We finally made it; we crossed the big ‘O following the wake of Christopher Columbus on that crossing of 2111M (3926 km). Two weeks at sea were necessary for that achievement and it was with relief that we shouted “Land ‘O!” when Antigua showed up on the horizon. Two weeks at sea and being tossed in every direction by the waves takes a drain on two unfit sailors like us. We should really stop drinking and start exercising instead! In the mind of most people, crossing the Atlantic is a huge life milestone and it showed up by the sheer number of boats we saw jumping in that adventure while we were in the Canaries where they were preparing for the crossing. We estimated that about 300 other boats crossed the Atlantic at the same time than we did, at one point we were wondering whether we needed to take a number to get in line or what. With the advent of the GPS (Global Positioning System) and autopilots such a journey is now made affordable to a larger portion of the population but still remains a serious undertaking. Therefore, soon after dropping the hook, the cork of the bottle of wine popped and it was time for us to celebrate. An important point to notice is that even though we are now back to the Caribbean we haven’t completed the circumnavigation part of our trip. To complete a circumnavigation of the earth it is necessary to cross all the meridians and to sail over our own wake. We did cross all the meridians of the earth but we are still 35M (65 km) from the closest point of our wake when we sailed in Montserrat in 2009. Therefore, we are not yet to the point of celebrating THAT achievement, which will makes the Atlantic crossing look like a weekend trip, and since we want to stay in Antigua and Barbuda for at least until after Christmas the celebration for the big loop will have to wait a bit more.
The crossing itself went relatively eventless. On two occasions dolphins came to play at the bow of Chocobo and on a sunny day of the first week we had the rare privilege of the company of an 18ft (6m) whale who travelled with us for over an hour and half. This was more than what we asked for since sighting a whale is quite a rare event but having her to swim with us for 90 minutes is the treat of a lifetime! On the fourth day we had the surprise of passing another sailboat. Note that even if 300 other sailboats are crossing doesn’t mean we would see them. We can barely see more than 5 miles around us and the ocean is immense. I called them and they appear to be “Moin”, a German boat, who left Mindelo, the same port we left from, but the day before us. In four days we had caught up with them as we were flying with the strong steady wind prevailing in the eastern part of the Atlantic. That was probably only the second time in our trip that we found a boat slower than us and with our boosted ego we wish them good luck and fair wind as they disappeared behind us. We saw another sailboat on the horizon about a week later but we didn’t bother calling them. They didn’t call us either so they were probably not inclined to chat although usually when one spends two weeks at sea without seeing another boat it is usually tempting to talk to another human being other than his or her own spouse!
But beside these few “events” an ocean crossing is quite a boring adventure in itself. We stay on watch 24/7 alternating on 4 hour shifts during the night and a less rigid schedule during the day. In the morning when the night has been wavy I had to go and throw overboard the flying fishes that jumped on the boat in a suicidal leap for survival but end up flapping on the front trampolines. This time we caught a weird fish that I’m holding here on the picture. Danielle cooks pretty much all the meals since I am usually quite incapacitated by the continuous movement of the waves. I appear not to be much of a sailor on long passages although I jump right up when something breaks to fix it in a timely fashion. However, to our great surprise and satisfaction, we didn’t encounter any breakups worth mentioning during that very long passage. Normally, we would have expected to have a long list of repairs along the way or to be done as soon as we touch land but it seems that all the precautionary work we did and the fact that we now know Chocobo like the back of our hand really paid off. Exchanging emails with two of our boat friends, who are also crossing, we learned that one had a flaky autopilot looking for a reason to die and the other had his main sail ripped apart. On Chocobo we had only the spring of a deck block that snapped under fatigue with basically no consequences other than the fact that this block, which is under constant pressure of over many hundreds of pounds anyway would not stand straight up by itself! Chocobo might be a high maintenance chick but she’s a good boat.
