Not that we didn't know about most of them, but Duende has proved to have much more urgent needs of repair than what we had originally planned for. After been sailing with her through pretty stormy weather the other day, we experienced the hull to flex way too much for us to feel safe on a longer passage.

This is what needs to be done before any overnight sail or longer crossings:

- Replace a few bulkheads and re-tab the rest.

- Replace the rigging wires.

- Seal all leaks on deck.

- Replace some of the beams.

- Build some knees at the hull deck junction.

- Build stringers at the bow and the stern.
- Replace rudder fittings and rudder stuffing box (the boat is currently taking in about 20 gallon of water/hour through the rudder post while sailing...)

..... and more.

We both are extremely tired of being in this same place for this long and can't wait to get moving out of here, the only reason why we will stay additional days with the boat on this island is because, as I earlier mentioned, Alex has access to workshops, a good yard and help with parts of the job when needed so we have elected to get these things done right here, right now before the boat gets moved to Sint Maarten to get the rest in order. Do we regret that we got this boat? A second here and another there perhaps, but we're convinced, or at least Alex is, that the boat will be safe and seaworthy if only these few things are sorted out. While Alex have begun the work already, I have booked my tickets to go home to Europe to see my family and friends for a few weeks. I'm not a particularly good help with these kind of physical boat building stuff anyway so will be good for us both to focus on the things we're best at until I'm back here in a few weeks. And what happens after that? We don't exactly know right now and we choose not to think too much about it. We were planning to go to Brazil as you may recall, but rather than making any firm plans until the boat is good to go, we'll see where the winds will take us from there.

I have so many photos and stories from the past months that I haven't used as yet so I will be posting some sailing/boat posts during my time in Europe to not leave this blog all empty and boring. Also I'll send a few posts and photos from Europe too, if that could be of any interest for you all. I got London, Göteborg, Stockholm, Malmö, Helsinki and Barcelona on my flight schedule as it seems right now, and I am very much looking forward to catch up with all my people on the other side of the pond. Alex promised to pass on some images of his boat work in progress too which I will upload here on the blog during these following weeks.