We had time to visit a fantastic restaurant in St Barts the other night. Bonito is one of our top five dining favorites in the Caribbean. Elegant yet cozy atmosphere, great food with the best selection of ceviche to be found in the West Indies, attentive service and occasionally interesting live musicians visiting. This is the type of place one has to get dragged out from as you're too comfortable to leave. I love bars and restaurants where they've managed to create a feeling of that you're invited into someone's living room.

Preparing the boat for new adventures. We've been kinda locked in one place for too long time so all we can think of right now is to go, go, go.. seems like the pieces in the puzzle are slowly coming together so we will soon be out of here for real. For now only weekend trips back and forth, but in a few weeks we'll set sail towards...... will tell you all about it a bit later. All I can say right now is I CAN'T WAIT.

Breakfast in St Barts tasted better than what I remembered. French people know what they're doing when it comes to food, coffee, bread and all that. Good for us as we will be going to another French island in just a few days.. glad to be back out sailing. It seems like we're slowly getting back out on the seas again. 

We're back in Antigua. Staying for a few days then we're off to Guadeloupe with Duende. Looking forward to it.

We have spent our weekend on Caos with her new owner Michael. Sailed from St Maarten to St Barts and will leave from here to Antigua tonight. Good weather, great company and nice stops along the way. After a new bottom paint, a fresh new stainless steel stove and some other smaller improvements this boat looks better than ever before. She's now going to get her teak deck done in Antigua before she will be delivered home to her new owner. If everything goes as planned, we all will be sailing Caos to Boston, New England later this summer. Was a while ago we were in those areas but will be fun to visit Boston, New York, Newport, Maine and all that. I think many of our readers live around there? 

lazy in the sun. that's our position too today. 

The old backstay chainplate was mounted inside of the lazarette and giving unnecessary extra load to the transom, which of course, with the years had got bended improperly inwards. Alex removed that old chainplate and built a new one in 1/2 inch (12,75 mm) stainless steel that is mounted on the outside of the transom instead of inside. The chainplate is cut from a 316L steel plate and has been bent under heat. The process of bending it, drilling the holes (countersunk) and polishing of the plate took Alex around 12 hours in total. The chainplate is now fastened with six bolts, two of them has encapsulated nuts inside of the new plywood knee which is glassed in place. The four remaining bolts goes through the knee and the transom. Will show you the inside and the glassed knee when that space is tidied up if that could be of interest. Just too bad that we need to remove the boats name from the back and move it somewhere else on the hull, but at least we've got the backstay issue out of the way and the transom has slowly been forced back into its right shape. This installation should definitely give a more even load to the transom.

This is how the boat looked from the back before the new chainplate installation. Nice from a far with the name clearly visible, but not so safe nor good for the construction cause if you looked close enough, you could clearly see that the whole transom was being pulled inwards by the old chainplate. 

Some things that might have been a norm or a common, simple enjoyment in our previous land based life seems like a luxury nowadays. Like Chinese food for example. We just had the best dinner in years, just because it was like two years ago we had the pleasure to enjoy it the last time. The same goes with a hot shower, every time we stay in a resort or a hotel on our travels, we get stuck in the hot shower for hours, because we don't have that luxury in our boat at the moment. Feels good to not being used to it all anymore, makes us appreciate small things in a new type of way.

Some of the mega yachts we had as neighbors in St Barts over New Year. Eclipse first, worlds largest privately owned yacht. And Seanna at the bottom. A tad bit smaller but still enough to have a crew of around twenty. If some of you would ever be interested in chartering one, let's say the smallest of them two, the price is around €450.000 a week. I doubt it's possible to charter Eclipse but I guess the price would be at least the double. Anyone interested? Good price yo! Remember breakfast, dinner and drinks are included.