On Friday morning December 18th 2020 around 09:30 local time the German flagged sailing vessel “Pantagruel” sunk in Vanua Balavu during the tropical cyclone Yasa. In this report I would like to describe the circumstances of the incident. Am Freitag morgen den 18.12.2020 gegen 09:30 Ortszeit in Vanua Balavu / Fidschiinseln gesunken. In diesem Bericht möchte … Continue reading Sinking of Sy Pantagruel / Havarie SY Pantagruel
We remember the Panama Canal lock gates opening and releasing us into the Pacific for the first time. We remember the unique and lovable creatures of the Galapagos... ...and the volcanic landscape they live in. We remember anchoring in the middle of it all. We remember diving with hammerhead sharks. We remember the longest crossing … Continue reading 50 Shades of Blue
After 6 weeks travelling around Cuba and several bottles of Havana Club later, it was time to sail away from the shores of the largest Caribbean island. Cuba was one of the destinations I’d been looking forward to visiting the most, and it didn’t disappoint. We only saw a fraction of this great country, and … Continue reading Ode to Cuba
We approached the Cuban coastline and sailed past Guantanamo Bay as the sun rose out from sea behind us. American voices sounded on the VHF and we found a note on the Navionics chart “Cuban territory illegally occupied by USA” as we poured our coffee and made the mandatory call to the Cuban Guarda Frontera … Continue reading Salsa, old cars and fat cigars
‘Unfrequented’, ‘remote’ - these were words that started to crop up more often as we scanned the cruising guides for nice anchorages in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba. Finally it was time to leave the Lesser Antilles and head to destinations where neither Micha or I had been before. I was excited. We … Continue reading Antilles: from the lesser to the greater
I woke up moist and achey. It had rained during the night and my sloth-like closing of our porthole combined with the slow drip from our leaky teak deck resulted in a soggy bed. The joys of old wooden boats. Our body clocks are quite in tune with the sun’s presence out here, only Micha’s sun … Continue reading A day in the Caribbean life
“What about skipping Brava and heading straight for the Caribbean instead?” voiced Inge during our sail to the southwestern Cape Verdean island. The situation onboard was so relaxed that within 5minutes we’d all agreed and had a new way point programmed into our chart plotter, 2000nm further west... we didn’t even have to change the … Continue reading Into the great wide open
We arrived at the bay of Palmeira on Ilha do Sal, the northeastern most Cape Verdean island, just after the sun had come up. After 5 days at sea without seeing a single other vessel, we suddenly found ourselves in a bay full of foreign sailing boats from France, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, America, England, Belgium, Netherlands … Continue reading Cape Verdes no stress
The wind blew a pretty consistent 20kts from the NE for almost the entire 800nm from the Canaries to the Cape Verdes. This allowed us a fast downwind sail, arriving in less than 5 days after we set off from El Hierro. Once the sails were up and the outer jib poled out, we barely … Continue reading When the butter melts
Life in the Canaries meant waking up (almost) every day to sunshine, blue sky and temperatures in the 20s. Starting each of our week long trips from San Miguel in the south of Tenerife, we roamed to La Gomera, La Palma, Gran Canaria and finally El Hierro. Famous for having good wind conditions, the Canaries … Continue reading Cruising the Canaries
Pantagruel 