On 11/6, the winds had lightened up and it started to get warm. We enjoyed VHF conversations with our new Salty Dawg friends on the seas (Gemeux and others) and got the asymmetrical spinnaker up going 7.5-8 knots in 13-14 knots of breeze. Andrew calls this champagne sailing (although there was no champagne). We were boarded by a small bird that Doug (the consummate chef), tried to feed. That evening, we faced the first squalls on our trip, which Jon adroitly dodged using the radar.
By 11/7, we lost our AIS, the Furuno couldn’t locate our GPS coordinates and we discovered that more than one person couldn’t e-mail at the same time. Electronics are so fun! The sailing was good though averaging 6.5 - 7 knots. At one point, we had a pretty heavy rain storm and Jon jumped on deck for his first shower. The next day, we had full sails up on starboard tack at 6am. I discovered that it is much harder to cook, and do just about anything, on that tack since you are leaning into the stove and out of the head. We kept careful track of our fuel usage since we were still 800 miles away from Antigua and the variable wind strength required us to motor from time to time.
On 11/9, three pelicans tried to board the boat. They flew behind us trying to keep up. When they decided that approach wouldn’t work, they flew on our port for a bit, angling closer and closer to see if they could make a landing. Next they tried flying ahead and finally flying off to starboard before they gave up and decided to wait for a bigger ship.
Nov. 11 brought light air and motor sailing until we hit the trade winds at 22:40. At that point, we were 425 miles off from Antigua and we felt like horses heading to the barn. The next day was kind of quiet, which is sometimes a welcome state of affairs offshore. The highlight was having dinner alfresco in the cockpit with my Captain.
On 11/13, we had a midnight sail change that got me soaked in a driving rain. It felt great! We were 170 miles out and averaging 160 miles a day, clearly getting excited about seeing landfall soon. The next morning, we all learned that Doug’s menu planning all week had been about preparing a leftovers frittata, which was the best I’d ever had. He had squirreled away leftover peas, pasta, ham, cheese, tomatoes, peppers, etc. and put it all in one pan. Yummy! Sorry, no food porn pics. I ate it too fast.
On 11/14, we saw Barbuda in the distance at about 08:00. After some nice reaching sailing, we finally arrived in English Harbor around 11:00. We had to lift our 80 lb anchor out of the forward hatch to prepare for med mooring (setting an anchor and backing into a dock) at Nelson’s Dockyard. Before pulling in, we stopped for fuel, only to find the attendant was going out for lunch. Welcome to island time! He permitted us to tie up on the dock and wait, which gave us the chance to watch a couple failed attempts at med mooring before we had to do it ourselves. After filling up on densely, Andrew masterfully swung the Billy around, set the hook and backed her in like he had done it 100 times before. We arrived and it felt great. We celebrated with chicken roti and beer for lunch!
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