Position 17:03.95N 061:53.07W

We stayed in Falmouth until 22^nd April.  The Antigua Classics Regatta ran from 17^th to 21^st, and for a couple of the days we found ourselves a good lookout point (getting plenty of exercise walking to and fro – although there was a bar at the end), and also on two days we went out in sailboats for “chase the race”.  It was fantastic to see the classic boats in full sail racing each other.  Rainbow was also taking part.  She was in the last start, one hour after the first boats went off and in almost every race by the end, about  90 minutes later, she had powered through to be first home.  On Sunday there was a parade of the boats through Nelson’s Dockyard, and while watching this met up with Nadine

Monday night we went out for a meal at Trappas;  we had booked as everywhere was busy, but got absolutely soaked in a storm dinghying across to the dock.

Tuesday Graham from Antigua Sails visited the boat to measure for some cushions and a sunshade – in anticipation of next season.  We then set off for Jolly Harbour, a trip of about 12 miles (don’t know the actual distance as the log is not working at all now).  We went under headsail alone, all downwind, and went inside the reefs in smooth water.  We are now used to heavily shelving coastlines – a few hundred metres offshore and it is normally too deep for the depthsounder to register, so it was quite scary to find when we passed the Southwest corner that the bottom had shelved and we only had 1.5 metres beneath the keel (the charts showed 5m, so it was pretty much in line), and for the 5 or 6 miles from there to Jolly Harbour it stayed shallow;  we stayed bit offshore where the chart showed it as a bit deeper, but we never saw more than 5m beneath the keel, and in the channel it was back to less than 2m in places.

Arriving, we were met by dockmaster William, who helped us into our stern to berth with clear and authoritative instructions.

So we have accessed our on shore storage, and the task of stripping the boat has now begun.  The marina is partially sheltered from the breeze and rather prone to mosquitos so we are looking forward to moving into the house next week.