Falmouth Harbour, Antigua
Lynn & Mike ..around the world
Mike Drinkrow & Lynn v/d Hoven
Thu 22 Jan 2009 13:33
|
17:00.27N 61:45.58W Falmouth Harbour,
Antigua
We arrived in Antigua on Monday afternoon after a great
sail from the north coast of Guadeloupe, anchored and checked-in to English
harbour without a glitch. But then the problems started.... Firstly I
slipped and hurt my foot (very sore but nothing broken), secondly on taking a
leisurely afternoon cruise around the bay in our dinghy, we got our propeller
badly fouled on a gillnet (eventually pried loose with the help of a
fellow yachtie). The last straw was, after a restless night due to the
mosquito's, we were woken up very early to a loud bang... we had drifted
into another yacht. The anchorage in English Harbour is so crammed with yachts
and protected from the wind, that problems were bound to occur. With
no wind to keep the boats all facing the same way, we started drifting
around, hence the crash. Luckily no damage was done, but we decided to move
around the corner to Falmouth harbour.
While English harbour is smaller, more protected and quite
quaint with all the historic Georgian buildings, Falmouth is huge... Not
only is it a big bay, but it has 3 marina's that house the biggest, flashiest
super-yacht collection that we have seen to date. There are luxurious motor
yachts, elegant sailing yachts (old style and new) and then the very exotic
Maltese Falcon ... which is in a league of its own. This ship must be about 80
meters long, and has 3 masts with electronic sails coming out of the masts
down on to each of the cross-trees. The crew have a little golf cart that they
drive off the yacht, down the marina to the roadside to pick up their
provisions. It is hard to imagine what kind of wealth is needed to own any of
these giants.
some classic
yachts...
 The more modern
ones..
  and then .. the Maltese
Falcon
 This morning we took a walk back to English harbour
to see the museum at the restored Nelson's Dockyard, where Mike bumped
into some interesting ladies. This harbour has been used as a hurricane
hole since 1671 and was used by the British navy as a dockyard from 1725 to
1889. The use of steamships eventually made the old dockyard
with its sailmakers and careening facilities redundant. In the 1960's
it was beautifully restored and given the name Nelson's Dockyard, even
though Nelson was only a captain here, a temporary commander for a few years and
hated the place! He was despised by the locals as he had to
enforce a law preventing trade with anyone but Britain and apparently the
mosquito's got to him too!
 Yesterday was the inauguration of Barak Obama as
president of the USA which was turned into a bit of a festival here....i.e.
"all day Happy Hour". We had lunch and watched it on TV at the
local pub "The Mad Mongoose". And following that theme, today we lunched
at "The Last Lemming" ... who knows where tomorrow will take
us .. I wonder if there is a bar called "The Kicking
Kangaroos"?
|