Stuck in English Harbor

As we went to leave for a trip around to the east of Antigua we found that we could not raise our anchor. I donned my snorkeling gear and grabbed a dive light. We had hooked an old anchor chain.... a really old one. About 6 inch by 3 inch links. We worked a line around the chain then lowered the anchor again, swimming it forward and then raising it. It only took about 5 minutes but was intimidating because of the size of the chain we had hooked. I guess that is the danger of visiting ports that have been used for the last 200+ years for shipping and bases for war ships.

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Antigua

Well is was a difficult and dangerous run, but we were able to beat past the gun batteries and anchored caravels to make a successful landing a take, without a shot fired, Nelson's Dockyard. The dockyard and fort areas have been fabulously restored and maintained in the English Harbor area of Antigua. The buildings now house various businesses and services. The park service maintains great trails to allow hiking to all of the various fort, gun encampments and look outs. We are anchored in English Harbor about 50 yards off of the dockyard.

We left Dominica on a disappointing note. There was a tremendous southerly flow in the winds and seas ultimately leaving us rolling gunwale to gunwale in the anchorage there. So after another hiking expedition around the former English fort in the Cabrits we upped anchor and headed north. The sailing was tremendous with a nice beam reach all the way up Guadalupe. We were running for much too early arrival in Antigua, which has several reefs to navigate so we stopped for about 5 hours in Guadalupe, then carrying on at 1:30am arriving in Antigua at 8am, again with nice sailing though a bit more on the wind as we were making quite a bit of easting.

We are planning on staying in Antigua for 4-6 weeks enjoying the sites, sounds and many anchorages. So far we have felt that it will be too little time.

On a side note, I am amazed at the number of forts built by the British/French/Dutch in the islands. Two out of three of these never saw a SINGLE shot fired. I guess an early demonstration of deterrent force. The French forts are usually high on a hill, small and all enclosed. While the British had spread there defenses out, always with several gun encampments, look outs, commandants quarters etc. The islands, no doubt in an effort to improve the tourist trade, have made great efforts to maintain and restore these forts. They are a fun part of exploring each island, picking up a bit of history, a bit of exercise through hiking and expanding the imagination with respect to life styes of 200-300 years ago.

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Antigua

Well is was a difficult and dangerous run, but we were able to beat past the gun batteries and anchored caravels to make a successful landing a take, without a shot fired, Nelson's Dockyard. The dockyard and fort areas have been fabulously restored and maintained in the English Harbor area of Antigua. The buildings now house various businesses and services. The park service maintains great trails to allow hiking to all of the various fort, gun encampments and look outs. We are anchored in English Harbor about 50 yards off of the dockyard.

We left Dominica on a disappointing note. There was a tremendous southerly flow in the winds and seas ultimately leaving us rolling gunwale to gunwale in the anchorage there. So after another hiking expedition around the former English fort in the Cabrits we upped anchor and headed north. The sailing was tremendous with a nice beam reach all the way up Guadalupe. We were running for much too early arrival in Antigua, which has several reefs to navigate so we stopped for about 5 hours in Guadalupe, then carrying on at 1:30am arriving in Antigua at 8am, again with nice sailing though a bit more on the wind as we were making quite a bit of easting.

We are planning on staying in Antigua for 4-6 weeks enjoying the sites, sounds and many anchorages. So far we have felt that it will be too little time.

On a side note, I am amazed at the number of forts built by the British/French/Dutch in the islands. Two out of three of these never saw a SINGLE shot fired. I guess an early demonstration of deterrent force. The French forts are usually high on a hill, small and all enclosed. While the British had spread there defenses out, always with several gun encampments, look outs, commandants quarters etc. The islands, no doubt in an effort to improve the tourist trade, have made great efforts to maintain and restore these forts. They are a fun part of exploring each island, picking up a bit of history, a bit of exercise through hiking and expanding the imagination with respect to life styes of 200-300 years ago.

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Dominica

It has been a busy week. Isabelle turned 4, collecting enough princess, fairy and doll house loot to keep her quite busy and happy. Jake has lost his first tooth, which had been loose for about 2 weeks. He is very proud of his hole.

We sailed to Dominica from St. Lucia and nice 100 mile leg. We took off again for an overnighter, though suffering some rougher seas this time, had great sailing conditions under the still nearly full moon. Fishing has been a bit of bust lately, netting only one barracuda on this last trip.

Dominica is an exceptional island, having been much slower in development of the tourist industry than the other islands. Now with the agricultural base eroding due to competition/changing importation tariff protections from Europe they are feeling the economic pitch resulting in lots of land being sold to developers. The island has 11 volcanos, 7 still active, 365 rivers, lots of water falls and some interesting geography resulting from the volcanic activity such as the red rocks. The island also protects about 60 percent of its forest as national parks maintaining very nice hiking trails and informational stands at the more interesting sites. The island was th site for several of the scenes from the second Pirates of Caribbean movie; 1) the Indian River, which you go up in a row boat, was the site for the visit to "Tia Doma" 2) Hempstead beach where the Black Pearl was beached 3) the area where they battled on the water wheel and fought through the grove of palms.

Guide books lead you to believe that the last of the Caribe Indians live on Dominica, those same Caribe's that were to have been wiped out by Europeans, many jumping to their deaths from cliffs into the sea to avoid forced labor in the plantations. Well supposedly Dominica was just to wild with all the mountains and river gorges so a handful were able to hold off the Europeans and survived. We went to tour their village. It was a made for tourist reproduction, we were led by a tour guide and met several people who did look "different" from the average Dominican of African decent. We were also told that the Caribe's did not practice cannibalism, even though the history of the Arawak Indians tell a different story. The tour guide actually said "the bones that the Europeans saw hanging in our homes were from those that died naturally but were so revered in their life times, like great warriors, we would keep a bone from their body before burying them." Lets say I am a sceptic on many of the Caribe accounts provided in the "tour".

Needless to say we have had some fun exploring thus far on the island.

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The Wait for Weather

We are now in St. Lucia, Rodney Bay. We had decided to stay in Bequia through Jake's birthday and at the time (Monday) had a favorable weather forecast for the passage to St. Lucia which is 70 miles, but very much to windward at about 35 degrees. Jake's birthday was a hit with too many presents for him to even play with them all. His favorite are the legos now that he can build with them more easily. We had a nice pizza party with some cake back on the boat.

Then Wednesday morning the weather forecast, due to a slow moving tropical wave, went pear shaped. With our morning weather guy admitting Thursday morning he had no confidence in the forecast beyond 12 hours. Anyway we were patient (trying to apply those lessons from last year) waiting first for the seas to decline, then ideally a ESE wind, and finally a low chance of strong squalls. We waited until Friday night then took a chance leaving at 5 pm for an overnighter. The seas had settled, which was the only real known, but the wind initially was ENE, which was fine to go across to St. Vincent from Bequia. However, as we came around the north end of St. Vincent we got an ESE wind at 12 knots.... 4 foot seas.... a near full moon and one of the best sails we have had. I was reluctant to give up my watch, making coffee and giving Rae Ann an extra couple of hours of sleep. The squalls even stayed away moving around us but never over us.

Our insurance company says hurricane season is over on November 1. Some say December 1. Though what seems to be the most important is that we were blessed with a very light season this year. So we cross our fingers as we move north that we do not get any late season blows.

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