Tuesday 15 May: Ooph, half way through May already.
Only 6 weeks till we plan to be up in New England. We are starting to think about how we get there, by which route.
But today’s task is to break new ground and get to Antigua. Another 80 miles to do today, from Les Saints, passed Guadeloupe then the long 45 miles in Atlantic swell and wind to Antigua, our longest inter-island leg yet since Grenada.
We set off again as dawn breaks, at 5am. We are quickly doing 8-9knts off the wind towards the SW corner of Guadeloupe as the eastern sky lightens.
Before 7am we are in the calm lee shore of Guadeloup’s Grand Basse with the sun playing peek-a-boo between the mountains. The island looks very pretty, like Martinique, and we are bit sad we are bypassing it. But we’ve had enough of large volcanic islands with their permenant rain clouds. We want turquoise water and white sand again, so we are looking forward to Antigua and Barbuda.
We clear the NW tip of Grande Basse by 11am and the Atlantic wind comes in VERY strong. 25-30kts and pretty much hard on the wind. With cutter and a much reefed main we are ploughing the waves at 7-8 kts.
Every wave is coming over the foredeck with several washing right up to the windscreen. Occasionally it seems a whole wave rushes over the top of Cloudy Bay, over the spray hood and into the back of the cockpit! Maybe we should rename it the wavehood rather than sprayhood!
Needless to say both crew and captain are feeling the effects of riding up and down the 3m waves – we are feeling green like the water coming on deck!
There are 5 other yachts just ahead of us on the AIS, but we only occasionally see one when we are on the top of a wave.
We can also see the island of Monserrat to the south of us, its active volcano shrouded in cloud. There is still a 2 mile exclusion zone around the southern half of the island, following its deadly eruption in 1995.
After an hour of punishment, the wind gradually reduces to 15-20 knots and the ride gets much more comfortable.
But 1/2 hour later a black squall cloud approaches. We can see a white-out of heavy rain approaching fast and as it hits us the wind raises to 30 knots but also backs, allowing us to free off a little.
It’s always intriguing to see how heavy rain flatens off the waves. We are glad for it to wash the salt off of everything, but as our speed increases again so do the waves breaking over Cloudy Bay’s decks, with yet more salt!
After the squall, the sun comes out and the wind remains steady at 20-25 knots, now firmly on the beam. This gives us good speed but our track is now parallel with the waves. We are getting rolled with each passing wave. One roll is so strong that even the pushpit mounted solar panel has a quick dip in the sea!
By the time we approach Falmouth Harbour only one of the 4 yachts on AIS is still in front of us, but only by 1/2 mile. We still have yacht racing blood in our veins … if there is another yacht on the same course as us, there is a race to be won!
Talking of other yachts, we had one yacht pass us going the other way. But 50% of the time it’s AIS heading was a reciprocal (180 degrees wrong) making it appear one minute as coming towards us and the next minute going away from us. We tried to call them on VHF to inform them but there was no answer. If they were ever on a collision course with a big ship, this error could be dangerous.
Talking of big ships, we forgot to mention an incident yesterday. We were on a collision course with a large ship that was crossing our path (it was going from African Congo to Corpus Cristi in Texas).
We called it on VHF and they said yes, they could see us on AIS. Within 10 minutes of collision they had not changed course so we radioed again asking what their intention was. A Filipino accent replied “we will maintain our course and speed”, to which we replied “please check out your collision regulations, motor gives way to sail, pls advise your intention”.
They again advised us they had no intention to change course or speed! So we backed down, furled the genoa and changed course to go behind them. We would inform the IMO of this incident, but we already forgot the ships name!
After 5 hours of extreme sailing we enter the tranquility of Falmouth Harbour, which is right next to English Harbour where Nelson famously kept the English Antillies fleet in the early 1800s.
We expect to see hundreds of yachts in the bay, similar to La Marin in Martinique. But we are surprised to find both the marinas and anchorage pretty empty.
Just a week ago this had been the site of the famous Antigua regatta. We guess they all fly back to their jobs or take their racing yachts to the next event very quickly after the regatta.
We anchor in 5m of turquoise water, launch the dinghy, put on the outboard and head ashore to clear customs.
Customs lies in the restored Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour. But as it’s now off-season it closed at 3:30pm instead of 5pm.
So we wander around the old restored dockyard. Each restored building from the original naval dock of the 1800s is now used for a new purpose. For instance the copper, lead and rope store room is now a luxury bar & restaurant.
It’s all very pristine and well renovated but pretty much deserted. The season is clearly over. And while we feel a little sad about that, it’s also nice to find it quiet and not mobbed with drunken British yachties!
By sunset we are back on Cloudy Bay relaxing. Oana has her internet back (it didn’t work in the French islands) and Glen does his ritual desalting of winches with his garden spray and tidied up all the sheets. He is surprised to find sea weed in various places from the waves that came over the deck. There is weed even at eye-height, among the halyard cleats!
Everything is very salty. A nice rain shower right now would be perfect!
Then we desalt ourselves in the shower and head off to bed. There will be no alarm tomorrow morning! We will be on vacation again tomorrow!