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"?