We dropped the anchor at Admiralty bay of Bequia in green water at 3 meters. Lots of yachts anchored in this wide and well sheltered bay. It directly felt like real Caribbean. Long sandy beaches with green palm trees. We took the Dinghi and motored to a Dinghi dock at Jacks Cafe. There’s a nice walk along Princess Margaret’s Beach into town. You walk along the waterfront where Cafés, bars and restaurants attract with wonderful views.
Searching the next Wifi is always important. We stayed some Afternoons at Marias Café, meeting Viking Friends or just enjoying the atmosphere with a lunch or a drink.
Snorkelling at the reef nearby our boat was very impressive. All these different kinds of fish. Like in a aquarium. After some days we passed by the dive center and booked a test dive for Torsten and some scuba dives for me.
The test dive went very well for the captain so he booked the PADI open water diving training. There were even turtles nearby the diving center. During the next week we suddenly hade to pass a time schedule. Theory and practice for Torsten and concurrent dives for me. Very unusual in our boat life otherwise.
A very nice evening we spent at the Floating bar mid in the harbour with two other Viking boats, enjoying the best rum punch ever!
Some Vikings came back to Bequia after have visited other islands more north and south in the Grenadines meanwhile we enjoyed the diving activities and land excursions. It was always great to meet people again and we spent some nice evenings together on different boats.
Climbing Mount Peggy was definitely one of the highlights at Bequia. We tried first via a walk along the south coast to the Friendship Bay but the way up to the top was already in the sun and to hot for me so I took the next mini bus back to Jacks Cafe and waited on the shadowed Terrasse for Torsten climbing down. But he convinced me to try again from the north side and this time we started earlier. It was worth the trouble! A wonderful view to all sides.
After Torsten finished his PADI training we could do our first dive as buddies together. A fantastic experience. ❤️
Another nice evening we had a barbecue together with the crew of S/Y Elara at the beach. Unfortunately it started raining after sunset and we tried to find a tree which wasn’t a Manchineel tree. These are toxic. The leaves can produce a rash like poison ivy. Unfortunately they are on most of the beaches…
Before we left we bought Water from and left Laundry to Daffodils Service.
And we provisioned for the next days, because some of the smaller islands in the Grenadines don’t have shops. There are several Foodshops in Bequia but both prices and supply are very different from Europe. At the market we met very friendly Rastafarian’s who sold their own fruits and vegetables. Papayas, Coconuts, Mangos and Bananas. Life was good in Bequia.
The next few days our to-do- list just increased. Rigg Check, spreader Protection
, fill up with fuel and water, provisioning for 4 weeks. 
Fruits and vegetables should partly be available at Mindelo. New sun panel and alternator-battery-charger needed to be installed. We prepared food for the first 2 days.
And the waves pushed the stern aside. So we had to take over the steering regularly and ended up in 2 hours shifts for 2 days until it calmed down a bit. 
Torsten just felt a bit seasick in the beginning but I ate sea sickness pills all the time. Daily we saw flying fish and during the nights they landed on the boat. Finding them dried in the morning. 
Luckily the full moon illuminated the nights with its silver strip on the water.
a quite windy place. Luckily we got help of the other vikings to berth. During the crossing we got salt water into the aft cabin and we needed most of the time in Mindelo to find and tighten the leakage which in the end was a missing plate under the pulpit screw.
and having diner at the floating bar
were the highlights in between all boat fixing to prepare for the crossing.
So we spent plenty of time lonely in the cockpit watching the deep blue ocean and clear blue sky with its different shapes of clouds, feeling the rhythm of the waves passing by and the wind caressing the face. Often a bunch of flying fish lifted out of the blue beside the boat, airborne for a few seconds vanishing into the waves again. Every day we saw a few lonely storm swallows and sometimes gannets surprisingly far from land which made us happy because of feeling a sense of community spirit. During the night the hours passing by starring at billions of stars drawing pictures in the dark. Sometimes a star came falling down, but impossible to find out which was missing. There was plenty of time for contemplation without disturbances. No internet, Telefone or TV. Just books and music. We slept, prepared food, baked bread, ate, read books and kept the boat sailing. 
We tried fishing but didn’t caught a single one, weren’t not really sorry about that because we escaped killing a fish feeling sorry about that. Through satellite phone we got weather reports, stayed in touch with family and some of the other boats.
Pretty cool to be in company of these creatures just one meter away. Night 18 we saw a gleam of light illuminating the night sky above Barbados on the starboard side and the next day Captain shouted “Land ahoy”. During the whole crossing we got no rain but 3 hours before landfall a rain front with heavy gusts crossed our way, forcing us to get the sails down. 4 hours after sunset we dropped the anchor outside the Blue Lagoon St. Vincent After 2700 NM and 19 days at sea. Cleaved feelings! Hallelujah moment and a bit of sadness because the great journey ended.
Gran Canarias west coast, Puerto de las Nieves. We anchored opposite to the ferry dock for three nights. The third day we tried our way out of the bay in rough weather. Hard winds up to 28 knots from northeast and rough sea with 3 m waves made sailing round the northwest cliffs of Grand Canary a real fight. We got a lot of salty showers right at our backs. But nice to meet again dolfins and which a surprise a turtle miles from the coast in the rough sea. Finally we made it to Las Palmas already in the dark. The bay of Las Palmas is crowded with big vessels at anchor. We had to seek our way between them in the dark. But fortunately they are well lighted and especially lot’s of oil rigs around the port looks somewhat like Christmas trees. Finding our way into the marina we had to stay at the fuel pontoon until the next morning.
But there was time for a guided hike by Micke Vestin (one of the Viking organisers) round the volcano Caldera de Bandama.
After a couple of days we left southwards to pick up our friends at the southern airport. The marina down there was quite crowded and we had to pull up alongside as the fourth boat. So we left southern Tenerife and it’s Tower buildings next day and motored over to La Gomera, the second smallest island of the Canary Islands, well known among hikers. 
During the crossing we saw turtles and some whales.
Weather allowed a stay of 6 days before the next period with strong winds arrived and we sailed along the Wild West Coast with Lava Fields and Vulcanos to Marina Rubicon in the south.
We stayed 2 days and spent next 2 days in the fantastic bay of papageyos at anchor.
Here the water is crystal clear and allows very good snorkelling 🐠 on Sandy ground with lava cliffs. Monday we had an appointment at the boatyard in Porto Calero to lift out the boat.
We needed to change stuffing box and bearing of the propeller shaft and get a new painting of anti fouling on the underwater ship. Happy surprise, Anneli and Jörgen from our home town who were on holidays came over on board for tea time.
Everybody was cleaning up their boats the next days…but we were happy to be in the water again and returned to Marina Rubicon. 
After extensive cleaning of the boat from all sand we hired a car and enjoyed touristic life. 
Torsten could finally surf 🏄♂️ several days, and we did a lot of sightseeing, wine yards in the lava fields, lava cliffs, salinas and did some shopping
. Mostly food and marine stuff. Even enjoyed the swimming pool in the marina which reminded us of summer in Sweden because of the really cold water.
Here we anchored the whole time and our tender was used for every type of transport, fresh water, garbage, laundry, shopping, ….
We decided not to go to Funchal because there it is very common only to get place alongside other boats.
we drove to the lava Swimmingpools in the north. 
Next day it was raining but we anyway did a walking tour along a Levada, the irrigation canals, to the 12 fountains. 
Along the Portuguese coast there are hundreds of fishing nets which are often very badly marked, sometimes just a plastic bottle…we didn’t want to get a rope in the rudder or propeller and therefore avoided darkness. 
Due to strong winds from behind we reached Leixos which is the industrial harbour of Porto after 73 NM.
All busdrivers seemed to do kind of a race, I should have taken my sea sickness tablets even here.
Even interesting is the Livrario Lello, an old bookstore which says has been model to the Harry Potter story’s but the queue was much to long….
In the afternoon we visited the Sandeman’s port wine cellars including port-wine tasting. End of a long day.
Always exciting to enter a harbour which is located in a river with tidal streams by night, but we took the easy way and just followed our friends from the Roede Orm…
We stayed one day to explore Nazaré with its old upper town. 
with wonderful beaches, clear blue water and nobody in. 
Water temperature was 14 degrees. Apparently no gulf streams here. 😉 We did some hiking and cycling and saw several forest fires which are frequent because of lots of eucalyptus trees in this area. They burn very hot due to its essential oils and disturb the endemic forests in the area. Airplanes and helicopters got fire under control during the day.
we could anchor some days, met some German boats and had a very nice barbecue evening together. A bit funny because this is a well known and frequently visited nudist beach. But due to strong winds there were not so many well protected bays in the area and lots of sailing boats were anchoring here.
and Torsten changed in several diving sessions the Propeller anode we crossed the bay into the marina of Baiona. Here we got tips of the crew of Røde Orm that best WiFi was in the laundrette so we spent some time there to update our equipment😂
After 2 days we started crossing biscay, our first long-sailing trip. 78 hours to Viveiro In northern Spain. Our self steering, the Windpilot, did a great job. 
In the afternoon came a whale family across and we heard and saw blows on both sides near the boat. Very nice until I suddenly saw an area of light green water bubbling just in front of our boat. I changed the course very fast and lucky we were nothing happened. Day 3 we arrived to Viveiro and dropped the anchor. 
Sailing Lucky Star 