Azzurra - Day 23 – St.Lucia arrival-

On Monday 16.December at 10:35am we crossed the finishing line and heard the nice tone of the horn just telling us that we made it. It also was perfect to arrive at Daytime, rather than during the night. We carried with us some Voeuve Cliquot, Champaign for just this moment and of cause we consumed it.It is hard to describe all the feelings a man can have after 23 days on sea. Of cause there is happiness, one becomes very emotional, some tears are running and one is proud on the achieved; you feel exhausted but lucky. Most rememberal are the crew members. 23 days with four different characters, together on very limited space. Even your bed is a moving part on sea. Especially this time I felt it much more difficult to find sleep. There were these 3 days where one could not sleep at all.. read more...

Azzurra - Day 21 – Pina Colada

Position Saturday, 14.12.2013 12:00 UTC:15”04’.927 N, 055”22’.674 WDTW St. Lucia:327 sm Two more nights and we will be on landfall in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia.Everyone is ready for a rum punch and a pina colada.However there is still some mileage to go. And what should we expect? Of cause, strong wind with 30 knots; couldn’t it be only 15 to 20 knots? As a result the sea looks wonderful, high waves 5 meter high and rough surface. No sunshine so far. This kind of weather we most probably will have also during the next two days, except the sun will show up. Although we all are used to the shaking and rolling meanwhile, we rather would like a calme sea and sunshine. During the night we ran thru a lot of squalls, making us busy in reefing the main whenever we where near the squall.We only run. read more...

Azzurra - Day 16 & 17 & 18 – Last Lure-

Position Wednesday, 11.12.2013 19:00 UTC:17”21’.387 N, 047”40’.924 WDTW St. Lucia:788 smWe try hard! The last two days we made some good mileage 154 and 164sm,however we have no idea on our position in relation to all the otherYachts. According to the weather forecast we now should have sufficientwind taking us to St. Lucia. Right in the moment we run with 5 to 6 knots.The wind speed is about 15 knots. The waves, 4 meters high, are comingfrom starboard, giving us a hard time as they shake and roll uscontinuously. Especially the Genoa is flapping back and force. In a fewhours the wind hopefully will follow the forecast and increase to 25mknots.The whole day it’s sunny. We celebrated our last 1000m miles with‘Weisswurst’. Brian learns something about Bavarian food and habits. We donot know. read more...

Azzurra - Day 15 – waiting for NE wind-

Position Sunday, 08.12.2013 09:00 UTC:19”56’.627 N, 038”25’.993 WDTW St. Lucia: 1334 smWe are on the edge of a big deep pressure area with lots of squalls and heavy rain. It is a wet course. Most of it we were able to navigate around. Some of it hit us. It is just some sweat water coming from above. The major part of water, salt water we get from the downer part. Due to the healing resulted by the upwind course we are unable to empty the bilge. We have to wait until we run a downwind course. It looks that this will not happen before Sunday noon. We will continue South until the wind will let us. North seems not to be an option; we would run into a heavy storm. The whole day we run thru more or less dirty weather. During the night we are unable. read more...

Azzurra - Day 14 – Hanging around-

Position Saturday, 07.12.2013 11:00 UTC:21”33’.627 N, 038”13’.993;DTW St. Lucia: 1368 smAnother day providing sailors dream; dead calm for over 12 hours, startingabout 6:00 in the morning. The current was the only force getting us movedto somewhere; of cause to the wrong direction. We used the time to get theGenoa down again, taping some problem areas and to take of the leech line.A loose screw on the forestay gave us some problems getting the sail down.Again, someone had to be hived up the mast. We also tried to solve ourSeatalk data transmission problems. We found some things with just minorimpact. It seems like we have to live with it as it is right now. Afterhaving spent several hours in Azzurra’s torture chamber we gave up as wehad no more practical solutions to find the problem.. read more...