Getting Ready for Summer Storage

After spending over 6 weeks on the beautiful island of Antigua, we left yesterday for the 8 hour sail across to St. Kitts where we will be busy getting A2C ready for her summer landfall and hopefully safe destination for the upcoming hurricane season. Antigua has been and continues to be one of our favorite places in the entire Windward Antilles chain. It is English-speaking, with very pleasant welcoming locals, and various boater-related facilities where one can repair or get things repaired or replaced without much hassle. The prices are generally a bit higher than other islands but not so much that we feel “gouged”. As the saying goes: “you get what you pay for” and in Antigua, you get high-grade service and products not second level replacement alternatives. After arriving here with our friend Jeannie Berger in early March in a very blustery weather pattern, we endured more than our share of in climate weather (for the Caribbean, at least!). Bad weather here mostly means higher than expected winds and the occasional squally rainstorm. This pattern continued through most of our visit with our daughter Ellie and grandkids AJ and Liv, who arrived on the heals of Jeannie’s departure. We were able to find plenty to keep everyone happy (mostly, I think) even during the off weather days but we have regretted that for both visits we weren’t able to show off the usual glorious days and nights so common to this part of the world. I don’t think either of them really felt slighted, however, as both sets of guests we coming from the much cold climates of Colorado. The weather past weeks have been perfect. Daily clear skies with easy sailing winds and soft sleeping breezes each night. We took good advantage of this weather and spent much of the past few weeks exploring the further reaches of this terrific island paradise. Our intentions were to sail completely around the island doing what boaters refer to as “gunkholing”. That means, you take you boat into the islands many hidden coves and bays and see what lay within. We began by heading counterclockwise from Jolly Harbor (on the Western side). After settling in Falmouth Harbor for a few days and rekindling our love affair with that spot, we continued on around, revisiting English Harbor. It is always a pleasure to stay in such an historic place as English Harbor, although the anchor holding can be sometimes challenging. From English we continued to a new spot for us, Mamora Bay. It was a very quiet bay, which is home to the prestigious St. James Club Resort. Anchoring just off the resort’s shore felt like high rollers without having to pay the high price. We did spend a day wandering about their grounds and enjoying their beaches, however. From Mamora Bay, we continued around to Green Island in Nonsuch Bay. We had visited here years ago on our first trip to the islands and recalled how beautiful it was then and still remains. After checking the charts we discovered that leaving Nonsuch bay and continuing around the island in the counterclockwise way, we would need someone with “local knowledge” to lead us out through the heavily reefed inner harbor to open waters to continue our circumnavigation. Therefore, we decided to backtrack around the opposite direction and come back around the southern and western sides of the island to get to the northern shore.

Along the way back around, we stopped again at Falmouth for a few days, enjoying their beautiful sandy beaches and welcoming “village”. After a few days here we set out for a quick stop at Jolly Harbor, to pick up some supplies at the Budget Marine store for our upcoming summer layup. We needed to buy supplies for a new bottom paint job and they had the correct paint we sought. For anyone cringing at the price of paint for redecorating your home, STOP whining! The paint we needed for the bottom coatings for our boat came to $350USD/gallon (we need 4 gallons to do 2 coats) plus two gallons of primer which came to $125USD/gallon. The reason it is so expensive is that it special biocide paint formulated to help keep marine growth from attaching itself to the bottom (and the fact that it is for a BOAT!). YIKES! After leaving Jolly Harbor, we headed further up the west side to a new place for us called Deep Bay. It was very pretty and secluded and well protected from swells. This bay is just before the big harbor of St. John’s which is the country’s capital city. The next day, we passed St. John’s Harbor to starboard and kept on to the north end of the island to Jumby Bay on a small island called Long Island. It is a beautiful spot with VERY exclusive properties including the vacation home of Orphan Winfrey. We weren’t sure which home was hers but any of them appeared worthy of the billionairess. We stayed there only a night and, because of difficult reefs to pass through if we continued around, decided to return back counterclockwise from which we came. The trip “around” the island was well worth our time and backtracking, we felt. We discovered some new, fun, beautiful spots on Antigua where we know we will return for another visit. We actually almost got all the way around with the exception of the extreme northeastern corner. But we didn’t feel like we had missed something we needed to see up there. Once back in Falmouth, for our final days on Antigua, we spent our afternoons at our favorite beach, reading and swimming when the heat got to be too much. Then we decided it was time to get prepared to haul for the season and get our boat headed across to St. Kitts to make those final preparations. Once we made the arrangements to keep the boat on St. Kitts, we discovered that several days surrounding our arrival and departure dates are considered island holidays. We discovered years ago, that the islanders LOVE their holidays and take every opportunity to claim one as a day off from work. For example, Easter is on Sunday but most places will be taking Good Friday off as well. Additionally, many will close at one on (not as good-) Thursday. Then, of course, since you’ve enjoyed a good long four-day weekend for Easter, why not just add Monday on for good measure! This is considered “island time”.

We will haul the boat on Tuesday, April 3 but will arrive at the marina on Sunday to do the final boat prep of removing cushions and all other wind age (things that could go flying away in a storm) and generally getting the boat super clean inside. When the boatyard reopens on Tuesday, they will take some measurements of our hull and dig an appropriately sized hole into which they will lover the boat, keels first. It will then come to rest on used car tires and be strapped down to concrete blocks for additional protection. From there, we leave her, cross our fingers and head off for the summer. We will hopefully have our prep chores completed and get the final day (Wednesday) on St. Kitts where we hope to be able to enjoy Rick’s 71st birthday doing something fun ashore. We have rented a small AirBnB on the island from Sunday night until we fly out on Thursday and are looking forward to that experience. This will allow us to travel, via our rental car, back to the marina during the day and back at night. I will post an additional blog entry after the boat has been tied up and then continue with entries during our upcoming house sit trip to Panama as many have asked us to comment on what we find there. That means you’re not done hearing us blab on about our gypsy lifestyles. Hopefully some if it will inspire some of you to “throw off those dock lines and sail into the unknown” s we have enjoyed doing. Stay tuned…