17 01N 61 47w

Osprey
John Bowering
Sat 22 Nov 2008 12:22

Arrived in Falmouth Harbour, Antigua at 1330 on the 21st November. Jonathan will not be surprised to hear I again had trouble furling the mainsail and eventually pulled in behind a headland to get a lee and managed to get a reasonable furl. There is definitely something amiss with the way it has been recut to accommodate the new furling system, but at this stage I am still not sure what. I will get North Sails to have a look at it whilst we are here as it will have to be properly sorted before we head for Europe next year. Another of those seemingly endless loose ends from the work we had done in Florida. The anchorage in Falmouth was reasonably crowded and I had to adopt my old single handed anchoring technique – go upwind – upstream of the desired position and let the boat drift back to the correct location then let go three times the water depth even if it means powering out the cable on the gipsy. Then back to the controls and dig it in with the engines. It certainly makes the adjacent boats look at you quit hard as they realize there is no one on the helm as you drift back down on them! Antigua is a great place to arrive at – as I walked away from the Dinghy to go to customs Mr. Big who owns the local car hire company came up to me and said simple welcome back John – still on schedule I see. How he remembered my name is beyond me as I have only met him a few times. Incidentally and by a pure fluke rather than design Osprey arrived at 1330 on the 21st having given an ETA on Departure from Falmouth last year of 1127 on the 21st. Unfortunately our friendly competitor Lions Whelp will not be here this year so I wont be getting the free drinks from them. For Jonathan – Hound from Vinalhaven (hope I spelt that correctly) is already here having beaten here ETA by two days. Again she has a female skipper but a different one from last year – I wonder what the owner has that’s so attractive. Cleared customs by 1500 and they were their usual cheerful selves, remembering both me and Anita and wanting to know all the news. The chatting took a lot longer than the clearance! From customs I went straight over to see Helen Bailey who had a nice outside berth ready for us and we were alongside, washed and tidy by 1800  by which time I was fading fast from little sleep over the past 30 hours. Nevertheless I went up to the Cat Club hotel for a drink and a meal. The only remaining staff member there from last year was Fiona, the manager. They had apparently had a pretty dire summer with the hotel being empty most of the time. It looks as though the global recession has hit home here quite hard. Neville our driver here was down at the boat at 0700 this morning just say hello and to say he had seen us coming in from his house yesterday. I plan to stay on this berth through the weekend and perhaps Monday to service the machinery, dry and fold sails etc. Then I plan to go out to anchor for while in some clean water so that I can give the water maker a good run for a few days and then pickle it so it is ready for our next travels. The blog will become a little irregular from now.