Antigua 16:59.80N61:46.10W
Lotus
Sat 16 Jan 2010 01:04
|
We had a tight schedule to keep to as we have
arranged to meet John's brother and his wife in Antigua some 250nm North.
We could have done some 24hr passages to knock off some miles, but this is quite
knackering, so we opted for hops which meant a constant 40 to 50 miles a day, 6
to 8 hours of sailing and no time to chill out, that is except for our stop
at the Tobago Cays, which is a pretty special place and easily warranted a days
delay to relax in these breathtakingly beautiful islands and to do
another dive on it's pristine coral reef. Once again we dived alongside a
large eagle ray with fantastic markings. We also payed another visit to
the bay where all the turtles hang out, at one point we had 6 turtles in our
sight. Quite ironic really as when we arrived a departing Brit claimed
that he'd spent all afternoon chasing the lone turtle.
Our northbound trip was fairly uneventful, good
sailing in a fairly brisk breeze with a lazy afternoon check in at each island
and a 6-7am departure the next day. This meant that Martinique, Dominica
and Guadeloupe all flashed by in a blur. The highlight other than John
catching another Tuna ( very exciting our new gaff worked well!) were the
few whale spottings, two of which cruised past the boat about 30 feet away from
us. We think these were sperm whales, others that we saw at a distance
were humpbacks.
 .
We have now reached Antigua and are anchored in
English Harbour where there seems to be a ridiculous amount of very expensive
and very big yachts - there is some serious money here! We spent last
night mooching around the marina in awe of these magnificent rich boy
toys.
John has spent the day fixing our windlass (the
part that winds the anchor in), after it ripped off it's shelf the other day as
we were lifting the anchor. Tomorrow we hope to have a bike ride
round some of the island before our guests arrive.
Unfortunately, the charger for our satellite phone
is kaput and as everything grinds to a halt in England when it snows, our
replacement didn't get posted out in time for Guy and Ann's departure.
Hopefully, we'll pick a new one up soon, but until then our blog entries might
be a tad sporadic.
|