We arrived in Antigua on January 11^th and checked into Jolly Harbour Marina. Before we arrived Barrie and Margery put up the Antigua flag and the customs clearance required flag (yellow).

The Antigua flag should be read as follows:

Having frantically dashed from the Grenadines to Antigua to catch our plane back to the UK, good old British Airways cancelled our flight and we were marooned in Antigua for 5 days longer than expected. Something about snow at Gatwick.

Now some might say that was a real hardship but we made the best of it. Going to the beach every day is hard work you know.

 It all got too much so one day we went to St John – the capital.- instead.  It was crowded with buses, cars and people everywhere and all making a lot of noise. Parking is obviously difficult with double yellow lines everywhere.

We visited the cathedral and the museum. The first was shut for repairs so we drew a blank there.

But the museum had some interesting bits of information. We thought about visiting the island of Redonda, which is in the Antigua group. The museum had some facts about Redonda.  We saw the size of the rats there and decided against it.

Eventually we got the Jesus bus back to the marina – lots of ladies singing gospel all the way back. Great fun.

And then sometimes we just used the time to work hard on fixing the boat.

But there were two really good things about staying 5 extra days in Antigua.

The first was that we actually missed all the snow in the UK by arriving late.

The second meant that we spent a lot of time at one restaurant called Mellini’s which served fabulous food. We quickly got to know the owners, the chef and the waitresses. One waitress gave Pat 100 dollars to buy some shirts for her in the UK.. Such trust – what if Pat hadn’t come back? Anyway the shopping was done (even Paul got involved) and the result was over-whelmimg.

And then there was Hester. She came and sang to us while we were eating. Such a rich husky voice. We later found out she came first in the all Antigua Calypso competition. She started singing in her church choir.

Another one of the waitresses was called Sandra. She decided Pat had perfect skin and teeth and wanted to know how she managed it!

The owners were nice too and free drinks started to flow as we became regulars

And finally there was Jose – the chef. He came from Haiti and went through a nervous time after the earthquake until he knew the rest of his family were ok. He used to come and chat to me at the end of the evening. He could speak many languages but couldn’t understand his 3 year old daughter who was speaking broad Antiguan now she was at playschool.

But eventually all the jobs on the boat were done and it was time to explore some new territories so we pushed off to Guadeloupe at dawn on February 10^th. We’ll miss all our friends here.

 Fortunately we have other crew coming out from the UK and we’ve arranged to pick them up in Antigua so I have no doubt we’ll see the Mellini gang again. Watch this space.