Puerto Rico is a breather. After the many countries, islands, impressions and short sailing legs of the last few months, we are looking forward to a slower pace.

There is a special chapter in the last pages of our logbook. It’s called “People and Boats” and – you won’t be surprised – it lists the names of people and their boats next to the place where we first met them. This is how we try to keep track of all the encounters we have had over the last few months.

The places we have visited so far are characterized by their British or French colonial past. Today, they are either French overseas territories or independent states of the British Commonwealth. Sint Maarten and Saba are the first countries with a Dutch colonial history that we visit.

In theory, night sailing is great. It’s quiet, the moon or stars light the way, and you can use the day for other things. In theory. In practice, we are often tired after a night-time passage and catch up on sleep on the day of arrival. Then it is not used any better. So it doesn’t make much difference whether we sail during the day or at night.

We have an appointment. It’s a rarity and we don’t want to miss it. Neighbors from our old hometown are escaping the gray German winter and are on a cruise through the Caribbean. During a short stopover in Guadeloupe we want to catch up with them. So the capital Pointe-à-Pitre with its big cruise terminal is our first stop on Guadeloupe.

It all began a few years ago in Greece. A Greek island was supposed to be the vacation destination. But it’s hard to decide when there are so many options. So I took a pragmatic approach: I always wanted to do freediving. Where is there an instructor in Greece? On Zakynthos.

We should actually have a money bin like Scrooge McDuck. Dominica throws so many rainbows into the sky that we don’t even know which end we should look for the pot of gold first. So we refrain from searching and concentrate on the natural treasures that the island has to offer.

Rain does not quite fit the picture. But the day we arrived in Martinique, we could have guessed that it wasn’t going to be all sunshine in Caribbean France: It was gray and rainy.

We spend 19 days on Barbados and wonder every day why there aren’t many more Atlantic crossers calling at the island. The number of ships clearing in at Port St. Charles in the northwest of the island is quite small. At the other anchorages along the coast as far south as Oistins, we are the only cruisers for miles around, except for a friend’s boat. It is a very quiet and relaxed start into the Caribbean waters and grounds.

Farewells, changes and new beginnings characterized the year 2024 for us. In February we packed our life as it was into a few square meters of storage space and built a new home on the boat. Many things turned out as we expected, some things went differently and some things surprised us.