Once Mormor and Morfar had left St Maarten we started with the big job: stripping the boat and preparing it for the Heineken Cup. This meant from a family point of view: leave your home and take everything with you. By everything it means everything: clothes, toys, books, bottles of wine, bottles of aloe vera, food…everything thaw weighs! After 2 days of hard working we managed to strip off nearly 600 kilos including the vimi top (our roof in the cockpit), the spray hood and the anchor with 60 m of chain. 

  

And where to store all this? Some stuff went over to another boat, some under a plastic sheet that we bought and all our personal stuff went with us at the hotel. Yes, we had the luxury to stay a whole week at a hotel: in a big still bed, with a kitchen and a dishwasher (!), a toaster and especially … space! 

   

We were lucky to get a balcony with a lovely view over the harbour.

  

The Crew of Take Off: Elisabet and Karl-Axel from Spray, Gustav and Edward who came all the way from Sweden (!), Julian from Khujada, Carl and Jake from Nisida, Anders from Chili and a good sailor girl Vicki. What a team! All very excited they had as no clue how things were going to turn out as noone had sailed together. The Crew didn’t get anytime to train before. As long there are happy minds we will have fun, said the skipper Jörgen. 

  

The first After Sail and the Inauguration of the Heineken Cup. These kids were very popular sitting on the bar!

  

As for the rest of the family Wennberg, we found our routine during these days. Waving Daddy goodbye and good luck with the sailing early in the morning, we had breakfast and moved on to schooling all morning.

 

Lunch in our kitchen and then we joined the rest of the ”grass widows” as we say in Swedish. Albane from Khujada and Tina from Chili joined us at the pool with their kids. 

   

Asta with Inez. Tina with Gustav.

  

Gustav with Alex and playing with Inez.

  

In the evening we got the privilege to have Daddy home for dinner with Edward and Gustav.

After 5 days of sailing we managed to get a glimpse of Take Off when they came back for the last time through the bridge. The kids were really happy to have their Daddy back!

    

And the Crew seemed to have had a great time!

We ended 10 out of 16 and damaged one spinnaker, inn part of the kick and a part of the main halyard. We were sailing in wind speed between 18-27 knots (11-16 ms).

  

We finished off the Heineken Cup with all the Crew as well as our friends 99 Bottles who joined us for the last night at Jimbo’s. 

The kids at one table… 

  

…the grown ups at the other.

   

  

  

Alex having a little crush on Noor (4 years older!), they preferred ”chambre séparée”. 

  

The Prize giving ceremony.

    

The day after, we moved back again into our home with all our stuff!

   

The last day before leaving we were a well deserved a lazy day. We started off with swimming at the Marina’s pool. Alex and Inez all excited to show Daddy that they had learned to snorkel!

While Mummy took some time off for herself. Notice that the massage is done with the inner gel of the aloe vera leef (the leef at the right of the leg). Really lovely!

We had a nice time in St Maarten. This was our last view from the Marina where the pool was: huge privately owned yachts with staff polishing everything on the yacht. These are only a few of them.