26/02/2020
Antigua – where to begin? It is saying something how much we loved this island in spite of the decidedly inauspicious start, the near constant rain, and the fact that we spent most of our time here fixing things on the boat. The first word that comes to mind when I think of Antigua is turquoise – bright turquoise water for as far as the eye can see. But first, we had to get there…
Our early morning start from the north side of Guadeloupe gave us a good chance of covering the 70-odd nautical miles it would take to get us to Antigua’s southern coast before nightfall. It was Valentine’s Day, and I thought we’d celebrate with a couple of chocolate croissants I’d snagged at the bakery the day prior. As we pointed Flo north and made sail, we enjoyed our coffee and pastry and were looking forward to an invigorating day at sea. The forecast showed strong winds of around 20-25 knots on a beam, which should get us well on our way. One thing we forgot to check, however, was the sea state, and as soon as we were out of the lee of the island, we realised our error. It was seriously choppy! The channel in between Guadeloupe and Antigua is open ocean and has proper Atlantic swell. We were crashing nose first into big and confused swell, making for an uncomfortable ride. Stephen remembered to check the forward hatch with the failed seal to see if the epoxy we’d repaired it with pre-Atlantic was still holding. It wasn’t – he came back up damp and told me we were again taking in water through the forward hatch. I took the helm and tried to steer Florence’s nose away from the smashing waves to give him time to try to re-epoxy the gap. It was a long and messy job for Stephen, with the pitching seas and near constant water ingress making the task both difficult and unpleasant. He came above deck 30 minutes later covered in sweat and looking a particular shade of green. In big seas, below deck is the worst place to be, and the noxious fumes from the epoxy didn’t help matters. He said he thought he’d managed to re-plug the gap, but he was pretty sure he was going to be sick. I’d never seen him looking this rough, with sweat pouring down his back and his head rocking back and forth as he resisted the urge to blow. I got him the biggest bucket I could find, and within minutes, our lovely breakfast of chocolate and coffee came up the other way, looking significantly less appetising this way around. This was the first time Stephen had been seasick on the boat, and my heart went out to him. Being seasick is without a doubt one of the most awful feelings: when it takes hold of you, it’s all-encompassing and just keeps falling over you in waves. You can’t concentrate on anything else, and the only thing that really helps it go away is getting ashore. At this point, we still had 65 nautical miles to go, so Stephen was far from out of the woods. I took over as skipper for the passage and put out full sail to get us to the other side as quickly as possible, trying to keep our nose out of the waves to improve the pitching motion and periodically plying Stephen with water and cold washcloths. This would be us for the next several hours. So much for our romantic V-Day at sea.
If the sail was choppy as hell, at least it was fast: we were going over 9 knots for most of it, and I resisted the occasional urge to reef, as I just wanted to get us there ASAP.
By 3 PM, we were approaching the coast of the island, with Stephen still feeling dreadful but better enough to help with the pilotage into the harbour. Falmouth Harbour is large but very shallow, with some serious reefs to avoid to starboard upon entry. Close attention to the navigational buoys was essential, as Flo could have easily run aground if we had missed even one marker. Once inside, it was tricky to find a place to anchor, as the bay is dotted with reefs and shoals. We had to weave our way around for a while before finding what seemed to be the deepest part of the bay, which still had only a meter below our keel. The good thing about shallow anchorages is that you don’t need a lot of chain. How different to anchoring in 20+ meters as we’d done in Guadeloupe! Once we had let out 15 meters of chain, we could feel the boat dig. It was also really easy to dive on the anchor – when I jumped in to check, my feet easily hit the bottom. We had made it, and we were well dug. That had to be one of our least pleasant sails to date.
We both slumped down in the cockpit, pretty fried. Once Stephen had rinsed out his bucket, we admitted that neither of us was really in the romance mood. We decided to put off any attempt at a romantic dinner for the following day and instead to just get off the boat for a bit to decompress. We hopped in the dinghy and headed towards the marina.
Another benefit of shallow water is the colour effect – Falmouth Harbour was gorgeous, just an expanse of bright turquoise water in every direction, the picture of Caribbean paradise you see on the cover of brochures. We dinghied past the marina chock-full of superyachts, tied up to a pontoon and clambered ashore. There seemed to be lots going on in Falmouth Harbour. Customs was closed already so figured we'd tackle that tomorrow. We found a bar hanging out over the marina called Cloggy’s, which to us seemed the epitome of the perfect sailor’s bar - friendly, casual, great staff, cold drinks, full of salty sailors, and with views of boats from every angle. We had a drink there before walking down to the marina and strolling casually past the “No Unauthorised Entrance Beyond This Point” sign that separated the super swank part of the marina. No one stopped us, so we spent a while indulging in some serious boat porn. These were some of the largest and fanciest yachts we’d seen yet, giving St Tropez marina a run for her money. It was astonishing how big and immaculately maintained these babies were. Each one must have a full-time crew of 20 at least.
When it got dark, we wandered over to the yacht club for dinner on their upstairs terrace. We noticed a lot of camera crew and people in dark clothing and headsets milling around setting up equipment, so we asked our waitress what the deal was. She told us they were filming an episode of “Below Deck” there that night - a reality TV show about the lives of superyacht crews and the drama that goes on, I’m guessing, below deck. Interesting…Classic and I decided to hang around the bar for a bit after dinner right behind the table being filmed in hopes of snagging a cameo, high-fiving each other and doing other ridiculous things. Shameful, I know… I need to watch this show, I can only imagine how cheesy and staged and ridiculous it is. I’ll probably love it.
All that night and all the following morning, it poured with rain. We spent the morning trying to find someone in Falmouth Harbour who could fix our windlass electrics that had given up the ghost in Guadeloupe, but we had trouble pinning anyone down over the phone or radio. When there was a small break in the rain, we hopped in the dinghy to head to the boatyard hoping we’d have better luck in person. We weren’t lucky with the weather however. As soon as we took off, the skies opened up again and we were quickly soaked. The dinghy started filling up with water, it was raining so hard. Antigua was shaping up to be a very wet paradise. After a useless couple of hours wandering around various sheds in the boatyard, we came up empty-handed. We seemed to get the same answers from everyone: a big superyacht job had just come in that was taking priority at the moment, yada yada. It seems in Falmouth, super-yachts rule and cruisers drool. We decided to wait until we got to Jolly Harbor on the west coast of the island later in the week to sort our problems, as Jolly is apparently friendlier to us mere mortals. We escaped the rain under the awnings of Cloggy's for lunch and stayed there playing cards until the rain let up enough for us to go check out neighbouring English Harbour, famed as an old military outpost of Lord Nelson’s. English Harbour is absolutely beautiful, smaller and quieter than Falmouth with all the old buildings of Lord Nelson’s dockyard still there and in use. We took a stab at romance that evening with dinner at a restaurant in the harbour before heading up to a place called Shirley Heights, where apparently they have a big local’s party every Sunday night with live music and a BBQ. I’m glad we did. It was quite the event. There was a 30-person steel drums band, by far the most elaborate and talented we’ve seen, drumming the sun down from the cliffs high above the harbour, followed by a reggae band that jammed well into the night. Stephen was wearing his dancing shoes and got right after it in the middle of the dance floor. He’s a much better dancer than I am, but after a bit of tequila, I joined him and gave it my best white girl attempt. What an awesome night.
The next few days in Antigua gave us more rain and plenty of it. The locals told us this amount of rain was atypical and that they hadn’t had rain like this in years. Stephen and I just got used to be constantly soggy. One thing the ceaseless rain did do was point out the various leaky spots on the boat. Being inside felt a bit like being in a carwash, with water streaking down the windows from all sides and little trickles creeping in from various corners. It was a bit disconcerting, but nothing to worry about really, as every boat has its little leaks.
Once we tired of trekking around English and Falmouth Harbours in the rain, we decided to move to Jolly Harbor, which was about 20 miles up Antigua’s west coast. Hopefully there we could find someone to fix our windlass electrics and to service our generator. It was an easy sail up the coast and was actually sunny for a change! It didn’t take us long to reach the mouth of the harbour. Jolly Harbour itself is very shallow, too shallow for Flo’s keel, so we needed to find a spot outside the harbour on either side of the channel to drop the hook. Even this was dicey, as our charts told us the depths were around 2 to 2.5 meters all around, which gave us 0.1m max underneath our keel. Can you really entrust charts to have all depths accurate up the tenth of a meter? Methinks not… So we went more by feel than by chart plotter, with me at the helm inching forwards with my eyes glued to our depth sounder. We crept up as close to the coast as we could before dropping the hook with about 0.6 meters below the keel, not wanting to get too greedy and risk running aground. We dug easily after putting out a ridiculously small amount of chain and stood back to survey our surroundings.
This was truly paradise, with nothing but blindingly bright turquoise water for as far as the eye could see in all directions. It beggared belief. I can see why people wax lyrical about Antigua. Our first order of business was of course to jump into that tantalising water and splash around like dolphins for a bit.
The dinghy ride into Jolly Harbour was a long one given how far out we’d had to anchor. We would definitely need to refill our jerry cans with petrol if we were to be doing this ride a few times a day. Jolly Harbor had much more of a working man’s feel than Falmouth or English – no frills, no superyachts, no attitude. We liked it. We managed to locate a guy to service our generator, which it definitely needed after being used 8+ hours a day on the Atlantic crossing. We booked him for the following morning. We also tried to track down this dude named Wayne who apparently is the only electrics guy in the area to fix our windlass, but he proved to be a tricky man to find. We’d have to try again the next day. In the meantime, an old friend of mine from New York was also in Antigua and on his way up to Jolly to meet us for dinner. My friend Matt met us at the local sailor’s bar lugging about 1,000 pounds of kite surfing gear with him, which the bar staff didn’t really know what to do with. It was great to see him again and to get to introduce him to Stephen. I couldn’t believe it when he told me it had been at least 4 years since we’d last seen each other! I think time must go much faster when you start getting old… We had a fabulous dinner at this restaurant called Sheer Rocks hanging right out over the beach. Matt was staying on the opposite end of the island at the Mill Reef Club where he and his family are members and invited us to spend the following day there. Stephen and I were really keen to see the east side of the island that is supposed to be more rugged and remote than the west, though we couldn’t sail there while our boat was being worked on in Jolly. We would take a taxi over once our generator service was done.
As with most things boat-related, the generator service took a lot longer than expected. We also continued to struggle to track down this Wayne character, who was like the Where’s Waldo of Jolly Harbor. We eventually gave up, threw on our swim suits and taxied over to Mill Reef. It took about 50 minutes to get there, as it was properly on the opposite end of the island, but the trip was well-worth it. Mill Reef is a private members club on the southeastern coast of Antigua. The resort itself is low-key and unobtrusive, blending into its surroundings naturally with a quiet air of sophistication, letting the rugged beauty of the coastline work its magic without the need for architectural interference. Picture the exact opposite of a gaudy, high-rise hotel blaring loud music over the pool sound-speakers. After Matt gave us the tour, the 3 of us went down to the beach for a sunset swim before getting ready for dinner.
Before leaving Flo, Stephen and I had to have a good rummage below the floorboards looking for the appropriate slacks/jacket/cocktail dress dinner attire, as it had been a while since we’d needed to look presentable. I hope we pulled it off… It was a lovely, relaxing evening and a nice break from the stress of fixing things on the boat. However, reality bit quick and hard when we got back to Flo that night, literally. As we opened up the companionway and prepared to go belowdeck, I foolishly forgot that we hadn't put the companionway steps back after the generator service. I took a DIVE when I stepped into the boat, barely catching myself before falling all the way down and in the process scraping up the whole front of my shins pretty gruesomely. Welcome home, Abby! Nicely done. This was definitely the biggest boat bite I'd gotten yet, but nothing that a bunch of disinfectant and some bandages can't handle.
The next couple of days were spent trying to get Florence ready to set sail again. We continued our game of Where’s Wayne while our generator service technician came back out to the boat to continue working. As we should have predicted, this service was turning out to be 3 times as involved and 5 times as expensive as we’d anticipated. While troubleshooting, he took the heat exchanger out, and it was a mess, with bits of old impeller, barnacles and other calcified sea creatures stuck in it and so much corrosion, I’m shocked the generator had been working at all. It had never been taken out and cleaned in the 10 years since the boat was built, so it was well overdue. It would apparently take another day and a half and another several hundred bucks to repair. We were running out of time, as we had to be all the way up in the BVIs 180+ nautical miles away in 3-days time to pick up my little sister and her husband who were coming from Denver to sail with us for a week. There was no way we could leave without a working generator, so we prayed that cleaning the heat exchanger would solve the problem. We did finally manage to find Wayne whom we eventually got to the boat around 9 PM that evening to tackle our windlass in the dark. He managed to fix it within the hour, so that was a bit of a result. The following afternoon, our heat exchanger was ready to be reinstalled, which took a few hours given how awkward the access to our generator is. Once that was in place, the generator sprang to life and seemed to be working fine, which was a huge relief. We wouldn’t get very far without it - our solar panels can only do so much, and with all the rain in Antigua, they frankly hadn't been doing much at all.
The next morning, with everything on the boat finally fixed, we were ready to depart. The plan was to sail 85 nautical miles to St. Barth’s which would take the full day, then to drop the hook for a few hours’ kip before upping anchor around 3 AM the following morning to sail the remaining 100 miles to Tortola in the BVIs before nightfall. Our plan however was thwarted by the wind, or lack thereof. It was as calm as a millpond that day, and neither of us fancied motoring 10+ hours to St. Barth’s. The wind was supposed to fill in the following day, so we revised our plan to set off the following morning and do a straight shot to Tortola, sailing all day and through the night, making it to Tortola around noon the next day a few hours before Katie and Mikyo were scheduled to arrive. It would be tight, but we’d have to get it done. At an average of 7 knots, it should take us around 25 hours, which didn’t seem too gruelling. Honestly, after the Atlantic, every sail seems comparatively short. I’m excited for another overnight sail just the two of us, as we haven’t done many in the Caribbean. After a good nights’ sleep, we upped anchor around 10 AM and headed out into the turquoise beyond. We were both a bit sad to leave Antigua behind. Despite the rain and the boat jobs and the injuries, we’d had a lovely time on this spectacular island. As we waved goodbye and watched her grow smaller and smaller behind us, we vowed to find our way back here at some point. For now, it’s full steam ahead to Tortola. Only 175 nautical miles to go!
