Week 39: Antigua (45nm)

This week we cruise around the home of English Caribbean sailing and get to explore Nelson’s Dockyard, deal with an unwanted intruder, and introduce Laura to the wonderful world of test cricket. We are also trialling a new post format that will hopefully help us catch up with the lag that has developed since the Atlantic.

Captain’s log

26 Jan: Took some time to explore Nelson’s Dockyard, originally built in the 18th century as one of the key British Naval bases for the Caribbean, the layout of which hasn’t changed since although buildings now serve different purposes (e.g. the officer’s quarters are now the location of customs and immigration). Woken up in the night by the arrival of a rowing team on the Talisker Atlantic Challenge, which made our sailing efforts seem a bit paltry (which is maybe why our welcome party involved a lot less flares and horns).

27 Jan: Verified that Herman would not be the only gecko on Antigua, and then found a suitable spot to release him in a leafy part of Nelson’s Dockyard (away from the bigger lizards!). Attempted to repair our perennially leaking navigation light, but managed to drop the base in the sea and wasn’t able to recover it from 7m after diving on it for 30 mins.
Hosted Sam & Marianthe from Seahawk in the evening who had by now managed to procure their new batteries.

28 Jan: Motorsailed round to Nonsuch Bay (great name) and were delighted to find a free mooring buoy that gave us a great view of all the on the water activities. Nearby reef was disappointing for lack of life, but had an enjoyable afternoon watching the kitesurfers and what appeared to be an extensive dinghy match racing competition from one of the superyachts in the bay, especially for the few races in which Serenity herself became one of the marks.

29 Jan: Laura’s patience with the malfunctioning anchor swivel ran out and so she removed it to discover it had never been needed in the first place (what’s the saying about keeping it simple?). Learnt first hand the need for clear skies when sailing through reefs as charts can be unreliable. Stopped at Crabbe Point on secondhand recommendation from Seahawk to discover an unattractive spot between a power station and a boat yard, which was confusing. Still, it provided easy access for parts when our nighttime visitor attacked the dinghy (see below).

30 Jan: Made short jump to Great Bird Island, which more than made up for deficiencies of the previous night’s anchorage. Got a major workout in swimming over to the reef in significant wind and current (dinghy was out of action), but were rewarded by the most vibrant reef and fish life we have seen to date. Only downside was we lost the photos of the islands we explored when my waterproof phone expired whilst in a dry bag.

31 Jan – Lovely downwind sail round to St John (the capital of Antigua), although the narrow harbour contained some fragrant culverts (i.e. sewage outlets) that made the choice of anchor location critical! Disappointed to find the town was primarily a cruise ship shopping ground, but managed to find guitar strings and a sports bar that would be showing the Six Nation’s rugby. Invited for drinks with Alison and Richard on ‘Cerulean of Penryn’, and discovered they lived in Kingston (very close to where Alec grew up).

1 Feb: Headed in early to the bus station to ensure we got to the cricket stadium in good time for Day 2 (of 5) of the second test (of three) between England and the West Indies. England had not been in good form thus far, and they continued the trend despite the vocal support from the Barmy Army. We still had a lot of fun sampling the great local food trucks and Laura’s British cultural education advanced the most since her Burn’s Night experience of 2015.

Story of the week

I alluded above to some dinghy repairs due to a night assault on TJ, our ever faithful dinghy. This is one of those stories where I am so pleased we remembered to take a photo of it, as no-one we have told it to thus far has believed our tale without it…

I’m a fairly light sleeper, which has its uses on a boat as it means that we catch potential issues early as they tend to be accompanied by odd noises / boat motions. So when I was awoken by an odd flapping noise at 3am, I duly sighed and crawled out of the forepeak (managing to avoid waking Laura) to see what was going on. Unfortunately the noise had stopped by the time I got on deck, which is a frustrating yet regular part of the night time noises routine, and so I went down below to use the heads. As soon as I was committed to my ablutions the noise of course returned, and once again abated by the time I got on deck. So I decided to wait it out in the cockpit.

A minute or so later, I was rewarded by a ‘flip, flap, flop’ wet slapping noise coming from the back of the boat – most unusual. All that was back there was the dinghy, and whilst there wasn’t enough moon or starlight to reveal the source of the noise, I suddenly realised we may have caught a fish :). Excited to discover the size of my nocturnal catch, I grabbed a head torch and lit TJ up with full beam to discover a most unusual catch – a massive eagle ray!

Struggling to comprehend how the creature had managed to strand itself in our tender, I awoke Laura with the news and she hurried up to the cockpit. The flapping was certainly getting weaker and I was worried the ray might die before we could decide on a course of action. I sluiced him with some water whilst Laura quickly googled eagle rays and informed me that they probably weren’t that good to eat, which was good news as neither of us were that keen on learning how to gut a ray for the first time at this moment.

What Laura missed on this google was that the ray’s tail is barbed with venomous spines, which would certainly have slowed my subsequent entry into the dinghy to rescue the ray. Thankfully he was so tuckered out by this point that I don’t think I was in too much danger, and after a minute or so of ray wrangling / wrestling I was able to return our visitor to his natural habitat – he must have weighed around 20kg.

As he glided down into the gloom, I suddenly realised he had left us a couple of gifts to remember him by. The first was a set of his teeth, which must have worked their way loose during his thrashing. I haven’t been able to discover if these will grow back, and we are a bit worried that we set him free only to starve; however, our worries were tempered by his second gift, as I realised the tender was far less inflated that when we had gone to bed. An inspection the following morning revealed 9 different gashes made in the tender by Mr. Ray’s tail, and thankfully I was able to nurse the dinghy into the nearby boatyard the following morning to get some more repair glue. Only after three repair attempts do we think we may have finally got them fixed – I’m glad I didn’t try and rescue him when he first got stuck as he must have been pretty angry.

Parting thoughts

As I mentioned above, it was pretty amazing being able to witness some of the boats finish in the transatlantic rowing competition, which is a stunning evolution from the original ocean rowing exploits of John Ridgeway & Chay Blythe, and John Fairfax (links really worth reading!), both of whom Laura and I learnt about from a book lent to us during the Atlantic crossing. For some insight on what previous years contestants faced / inspiration on whatever challenges you are facing right now, I really enjoyed this 2017 race promo video.