Antigua
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Thu 18 Jan 2007 22:40
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Dear Friends
"17:01.0N 61:46.4W"
Well, we made slow progress to Antigua as we
stopped in Les Saintes again for 3 nights - it was just so comfortable that we
didn't want to bother moving. It also has the advantage of lots of interesting
traffic to watch. We did manage a few chores and rigged the second wind
generator to give us enough power to make lots of (fresh) water without
running the engine.
This was sunset at anchor in Les
Saintes - you should have been there and watched the sun set with a cold beer in
your hand .......... just magical
 We managed to drag ourselves away eventually
and had a good sail across to the main island and up the west side to anchor off
Pigeon Island. This is the Cousteau Reserve of the eponymous marine biologist
and the snorkelling is pretty good we can tell you! Coral and fish just come in
so many varieties and we managed to escape from what George describes as our
first shark encounter and what Michael thought was a large remora, only about a
metre long, but Very Interested in us! In fact about as interested as we were in
watching a turtle just below us having it's breakfast on the weed on the seabed,
anyway...
We had another good sail up the rest of the
W coast and across to Port Louis in the NW side of the east wing of the
butterfly. We thought this would give us a better angle on the wind for the
crossing to Antigua (it did !) but at the cost of a rather rolly night at
anchor. And Port Louis isn't so much of a one horse town, more a lame donkey
village, though we did manage to get our exit papers there, so can't
complain.
So today we had a great crossing to Antigua,
40 miles from weighing anchor to setting anchor in less than five and a half
hours. Our crossing was enlivened by the loss of our Antigua courtesy flag which
couldn't be found anywhere. So not to be rude, we downloaded a pic from the
internet, colour printed same and laminated it in a plastic sleeve as a
makeshift flag: no one seemed to mind.
This is the view from Blue Sky just before
sunset looking at the huge superyachts moored here.
 There is more money here in boats than you
can imagine (probably): the new 3 masted square rigger on right of pic. is
'Maltese Falcon' (google for amazing stats) and there's hardly anything with
less than five spreaders. They don't look that big in the photo, but it is a
3-shot panorama. George tells me that this weekend is the Antigua round the
island race - we'll see if we can get a ringside seat.
Best Wishes
George and Michael
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