Chilling in English Harbour
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Thu 24 Feb 2011 12:45
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Mission Control has settled in well to Caribbean
life. After an exhaustive tour of the island on Tuesday, taking in everything
from pineapples in the south to abandoned plantations in the east via the
grocklesome capital, St John's, a more sedate pace has been adopted. Not wasting
any time, we drove through the island's chief claim to rainforest - the higher,
wetter SW around the old volcano known as Boggy Peak - where mangos hung from
every tree and pineapple barons decorated the porticos to their drives with
giant painted fruit. The west coast is rich in the deep turquoise seas that
always take your breath away. The old wharf buildings at St John's have been
renovated into little restos and bijoux shops for the enormous cruise ships that
stop here. We always know when they're in, because a huge busload of tourists
appears at the ockyard clutching rum punches, and starts wandering about
photographing anything that moves.
After a classic Caribbean lunch of fried chicken
and fish, macaroni and salad, eaten on our knees, we went to the excellent
Antigua museum. It records the origins of the islands, the early Arawak
settlers, the arrival of the Europeans and the iniquities of the slave-based
plantation system which made the planters so rich. Driving west, we saw the
remains of this system at Betty's Hope, a gigantic sugar plantation with two
mills capable of crushing 12,000 cartloads of sugar cane every day. Greenery has
swamped much of the place, but one of the mills has been restored and is
occasionally used to make cane juice.
We spent much of yesterday exploring Nelson's
Dockyard, where the boat is moored. It was abandoned by the Royal Navy in the
19th century, after a long fall from grace during the Napoleonic Wars.
Successive hurricanes and the unbelievable vigour of the greenery saw that the
place was little better than rubble with trees and bushes growing out of it by
the mid-20th century. But an enterprising sailor started using what remained of
the quay for charters in 1950, living in the ruins of oe of the fine stone
buildings. And before long someone had the idea of doing the place up. Many of
the old buildings are still here, rebult and repaired, and you get the sense of
the thriving odckyard it must have been, complete with three huge 8-man capstans
used to heave boats down on their sides to be cleaned and painter below the
waterline.
Our neighbour on the quay is a friendly American
who has just signed a ten-year contract to skipper a 60-foot motor boat around
the world with its owner. Not only did he offer to do some of our laundry, but
he invited us over for pina coladas yesterday evening. The boat not only has a
gigantic ice maker, but a cocktail mixer as well. This is something we're
seriously considering acquiring to keep Summer Song in iced
punches.
Meanwhile, a chap called Ted hoved up to say hello
yesterday. He crossed the Atlantic in a Moody 33 at about the same time as us,
though not with the ARC. His wife has apparently been following Summer Song's
progress to see how a similar-sized boat would fare on the crossing. "She'd
kill me if I didn't come and say hello," Ted told us.
We're still waiting for our lower shrouds to be
replaced by the rigger. We're hoping for great things today but, even so,
everyone seems very happy not to hurry on to the next place - an anchorage out
on the east of the island which is protected by reefs against the Atlantic
swell. The weather is not quite as benign as I'd promised on the phone, and
it is a little unsettled at present, with strong wind and some reasonably high
seas. So we may spend another day in English Harbour before setting off
tomorrow...
St John's, where the tallest structure by far is
the ship in the background
 Sugar mills at Betty's Hope
  English Harbour at sunset
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