Moonshadow

17:00.81N 61:46.55W Friday 25th Feb Up at dawn after another windy night. The anchorage was fine
and stayed silky smooth but the endless bursts of 25 + knot winds whistling
through all the boats was a little disconcerting bearing in mind we were about
to go out there in the morning. Very reassured to find four other boats making ready and
leaving the bay as well as us, so we were at least not the only ones to take
this trip on. However as we left the protection of the deep bay, it
became obvious that three of these other boats had no intention of sailing to Antigua
and two headed south and one set a course for Montserrat leaving just us and
another poor fool (flying just a bright orange storm jib) heading north into
the teeth of the wind and the fairly large waves the Atlantic so likes to build
up during these sustained blows. As it turned out the true wind never
rose above 30 knots which gave us a peak of 35 knots across the deck as we
sailed close hauled, over and through the rough seas. We did make very good time however and we emerged 44 miles
later into the relative calm of Falmouth harbour at 1.00pm. The bad news was
that several of the small forward hatches had not managed to withstand all the
water crashing over the foredeck and we had quite a lot of sodden bedding and
furnishings below. This has been caused by us using hatch covers to
prevent glazing (eventually) to the ‘window’ part of the deck hatches.
They are attached by a thin elastic which has the habit of working its way into
the rubber surround. As this has occurred to a lesser degree before we
have now resolved to abandon this good practice and if in x numbers of years’
time we end up replacing hatches, well so be it! It is also fair to say
that we had got fairly wet ourselves as the waves had occasionally broken
pretty much right down the length of the boat and so rather too water much had
found us sitting peacefully in the cockpit! Entering the big anchorage that is Falmouth Harbour here in
Antigua is a little bit of a shock. Not the bit where you wind your way in past
the reef guarding the shallow entrance, but the moment when as you round the
corner you first see Antigua Yacht Club and Marina which is home to some of the
world’s biggest yachts. But believe me, big is not always beautiful (and
yes, Maltese Falcon is berthed here at the moment!) but it does make a very impressive
sight. We dropped anchor in the bay, just off the Yacht Club Marina
entrance in shallow water with fairly indifferent holding so we were not
confident of our security for a while as the anchor struggled to get a deep
firm hold. It was still blowing old boots and there was a fair chop because of
the long fetch (it was bumpy because of the small waves). We launched the dinghy and I went ashore and walked over to
English Harbour (Nelson’s Dockyard) and did the Customs and Immigration
bit while poor Sarah started the process of drying things out on board. I also
took the precaution of finding out where we could watch the England v France rugby
match and bumped into Ken and Kay on ‘Coyote’ which had just
finished a 4 day, 600 mile race. Anchored close to us was a Farr 56 called ‘Moonshadow
Star’ and as they had their Cruising Association pennant flying we made a
point of chatting to them as we had just missed a CA Blue Water Section party
in Les Isles des Saints, which had been just two days before we could get there
– it transpired that they were in fact the organisers of the event. Brian
and Sandy kindly invited us over for a drink at 6.30 pm and we had a great
evening before retiring to Serafina and a much needed sleep. |