TWO YEARS OF MAGICAL MOMENTS........................

TWO YEARS OF SAILING IN PARADISE....................... Two years of doing this cruising blog, wherever and whenever we can find INTERNET, and each day more beautiful than the next......................... IN LOVE WITH LIFE ITSELF....................A bed is now a 'bunk', a kitchen is now 'a galley' and the toilet is now 'the head'.......... And a toilet problem can now truly be called 'a head-ache' ............ But life is still beautiful.....................And it is hard to surpass 'The Islands of the BAHAMAS' for sheer natural splendour and unspoilt beauty...................You can double-click on any of these photos to enlarge them, and then grab them for your screensavers..........I guess you know which one is mine........................



Water and sky that flow into one..................Each reflecting the other, for the sky over the shallows, reflected in the clouds, is a magical aqua-green .....................And the 'Dancing Queen' and a 'Myriad of Maidens' dancing the 'Maypole' move as smoothly as 'The swimming salty porkers' at Stanial Cay............And all the while the pure pink-white sands ease and wind their way, like a silk-smooth tapestry, through the cays and island chains.....................



ARITA'S WITH BOW AND ANCHORS GLIDES OVER THE AQUA-BLUE.................

But true-blue MAGIC takes place annually in Georgetown, EXUMAS, when all the major Islands send their best sailors and their own hand-built traditional wooden sloops, to race for no more than " BRAGGING RIGHTS " ........ A battle far greater than the America's Cup ............... And skills passed down over generations, far more challenging that money simply cannot buy.............



When the gun goes off, the crew raise the sail and simultaneously raise the anchor.........................If it all works out as planned...................And if you can keep your vessel upright, with its enormous sail area, you get to cross the finish line just in front of "ARITA" with all its celebration flags up..............

And after a year in the BAHAMAS we sailed on to the land of HOPES AND DREAMS, and the realities of a life without.............For in the eyes of these Cuban school girls, in a window-less classroom, we saw the unspoken words....................Time that stands still, while the stone walls carry "Revolutionary Art".......................And people do their best to make things work....................The contrasts are enormous, and heart-wrenching, for music and the soul of people is everywhere, and lives on, despite the lack of so many things.................Things we generally take for granted..............



Take a ZEN moment, and count your blessings, before we sail on to Haiti and the millions of hands reaching out with a " GIVE ME, GIVE ME"...............Barren, tree-less hills...................Desperate millions, born into poverty and destined to stay there...........



A BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY, ...... A magical cruise 'In search of palms and paradise', and finding in the middle-ground, some incredible stories of ordinary lives................... So, for those of you that have followed our journey and our ARITA BLOG, comment or send us an email sometime, just to let us know ............ I think they call it 'FEEDBACK' ........... We are coming to the end of hurricane season here in PUERTO RICO, and will shortly continue our journey further south through the Island Chain to Trinidad and Tobago and on to the Central Caribbean and beyond...................

ANOTHER WORLD'S LARGEST ....................

We are beginning to forget what blue water looks like and as the days go by in this muddy brown water at Salinas ............ We long for the beauty of the Bahamas ............. The morning mist rising on the mountains does a lot to make up for that .............Still ...........We took off to go find 'Caja de Muertos' (Island of the Dead) about 18 miles north, along the southern coast of Puerto Rico. This is an island shaped like a person resting eternally on top of the water ............. But on the way we began to smell 'burning rubber'.................. First, check the new exhaust wrapping that I had placed around the exhaust pipe to reduce the heat, next, check on the new rubberised insulation around the water tanks ..........Both appeared to be fine ....................We anchored, went ashore to find the island uninhabited except for a pair of shorts blowing in the breeze.........If the naked owner was around we never saw him ...............



The Bay at SAlINAS, average depth about 8 ft and loaded with manatees (sea-cows) so that even in your dinghy you cannot do more than 5 knots or risk a serious fine........

On Caja de Muertos, we found an array of solar panels that is every yachtsman's dream and high in the hills were statues for sailors lost at sea..............
With serious storms all around us, we left a couple of hours later to get back to SALINAS by nightfall to the accompanyment of 'burning rubber smell'................. We didn't even make it up to the lighthouse, the rain drove us off, though we did see huge cacti along the path................



By the next morning, the port-side cockpit locker has been cleaned out in order to get to the rubber exhaust hose.................It takes another 'HOUDINI' to get it out. but when it does, it is near perfect, no sign of burning, not even the smell of it....................So now I cut off a piece of the 'new asbestos exhaust wrapping' and give it the flame test.......................And nearly die laughing from the smell of burnt rubber...................... Laughing at myself, of course. How dumb can you be..................I will kill the guy who sold it to me..............Unwrap all the exhaust wrapping, that took hours to install, and back to square one..................... Actually, we rent a car and drive to San Juan, to visit the BARCARDI RUM FACTORY for consolation ...............The WORLD'S LARGEST RUM DISTILLERY producing 100,000 gallons of rum a day...................That should give you a headache............85% of all the BARCARDI produced in the World comes from this plant ..............



The original Old man 'Fucundo Barcardi' saw the potential of molasses in CUBA back in 1860, and built his first distillery in Santiago de Cuba, in a little tin-shed factory. ......... There was a palm tree growing through the verandah and he swore he would be successful as long as that palm tree lived........ Meanwhile his wife, in looking for a marketing logo, saw the bats hanging from the ceiling of the small factory and came up with the 'idea'............... So look on the label of your next bottle of Barcardi and that's where the symbol came from...............One assumes that those open Cuban vats of finely-distilled rum were differently flavoured from todays, for shortly thereafter they made the decision to use 'charcoal filters' and to age their rum for at least two years and to put lids on the vats..............They also got out of Cuba in the nick of time, and moved to Puerto Rico................... Interestingly, the rum is made from sugar cane (whose origins are Papua New Guinea in the Pacific) and of which none is nowadays commercially grown in PR.............Although they put in this little plot outside the visitor's centre........This is a huge enterprise employing 37,000 people.....................And is still run by the family's seventh generation. To show their environmental consciousness, they have installed two large wind-generators that provide 5-7% of the electricity of the visitor's centre......... See, they are trying to save the world............And not just make it happy.......................



There are mementos of the historical times, like this vintage weighing machine for a good barrel of rum and there are some ox-carts left in the gardens with some plastic/fibreglass bullocks attached................ Not cool.............

The factory in PUERTO RICO opened in 1958, and the enterprise from its humble Cuban beginnings has been remarkably stable for more than 300 years................Clearly a no-drinking CEO at the helm ....................

With a well recognized brand and an enormous global distribution network, it is hard to find a bar without BARCARDI.................... We even had a drink in the re-created original 'tasting room' from back in colonial days in Santiago de Cuba, CUBA..................And while there may be many who love a drop of rum, and some perhaps, maybe a little more than others,.................Absolutely nothing, I mean nothing, beats the doting and loving affection placed on a new car, by its owner...........Even a Queen............