Progress and sight seeing.

Serenity of Swanwick
Phil and Sarah Tadd
Fri 28 Oct 2016 12:35

Well, we’ve been back almost two weeks and I’m sure we have made good progress. The bars to hold the solar panels are in place, Sarah  fitted the new shower in the after heads and Phil installed the new fridge which is working well on air cooling: we will have to wait ‘til we are back in the water to see how the water cooling works. Half of the floorboards are re-varnished having had the old stuff, which went white everytime it got wet, stripped off. The yard have given us a price for polishing the topsides, rubbing down below the waterline and applying the antifouling. We’ve never paid anyone to do this before but felt that life was too short to be rubbing down by hand in these temperatures!

 

To celebrate such good progress we hired a car for three days at the weekend and on Saturday went on a major shopping expedition to St Johns. The galley tap is leaking and needs replacing so we needed to find a plumbing shop plus now that we have a working fridge we could stock up on food both in the market and at Epicurean, a massive (by Antiguan standards) supermarket. Driving over here is interesting, as some of the roads are excellent but elsewhere there are large potholes to be driven round and mega speed bumps and gulleys which are passed at dead slow.  Indicators are rarely used and brake lights do work on some cars.

 

Having survived this expedition we just had time to make it to Falmouth to run with Antigua Hash for our third time. The trail went round in circles then up hill toward one of the many old forts, along a ridge before descending again. Sarah had by this time stopped to join the walkers, to accompany some young girls who had inadvertently lost their mother and strayed onto the runners trail. This meant that she ended up finding the right trail back which involved a boat trip across Falmouth Harbour while the runners, Phil taking advice from an experienced local ran all the way back to the on down.

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Hash On Down at Papas by the sea

 

On Sunday we did some sight seeing.  We visited Shirley Height’s Fort, drove up the east side of the island and then along Fig Tree Drive to see the west side. Being Sunday not much was open. In the evening we returned to Shirley Heights for the regular Caribbean evening something we have been meaning to do for ages. You watch the sunset while drinking rum punch and are entertained by a steel band. Superb atmosphere.

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View of English harbour from Shirley Heights

 

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Steel Band at Shirley Heights

 

Monday, making the most of the car we went over to Jolly harbour for more shopping, this time parts for the boat, and visited St James Fort, which protected the harbour at St Johns and walked up to St George Fort which commands a view over the entire island.

 

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Cannons at St James Fort

 

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Commanding view from St George Fort