It sure is QUIET!

It’s been about 10 days since our last guests left. Our youngest daughter Ellie and grand daughters AJ and Liv wore us out, so after a few days to rest up, we made plans to rest up some more. Our style of resting means getting the sails up and moving to someplace new. We headed south from Jolly Harbor, Antigua, toward Falmouth Harbor and anchored in a lovely close-in spot which afforded us the luxury of short dinghy rides to the marina ashore as well as settled waters for good sleeping conditions. We spend about 3 days there and enjoyed the quiet of the boat setting as well as the shore visits to resupply our pantry and beginning to plan for our storing the boat in about a month for the summer season on the hard. While lounging at Falmouth Harbor we decided to make the final arrangements for our summer hurricane storage location before heading off for some well deserved rest from our visitors.

Our insurance company through us a slight curveball when we advised them of our plan to return our boat to Puerto Rico for hurricane season. Because of the devastating hurricanes, Irma, Jose, and Maria last season, many of the insurers have rewritten their rules for where one can put a boat and still maintain their insurance coverage. We had survived all three hurricanes in PR without damage or claims and yet they insisted on our being hauled out and strapped down to the earth for this coming season. It seemed that the location of the storage yard was not the issue as much as our need to be out of the water. Since we didn’t wish to go the hurricane season without insurance, we found ourselves changing our plans at the proverbial eleventh hour. Searching for an alternate location for summer storage proved somewhat difficult as we discovered that many of the other cruising yacht were also finding their insurers rules similar and they had already made reservations at some of the more popular yards to place their boats. Since we were near the middle of the Caribbean chain of islands we began by soliciting estimates and availabilities for yards nearest our current location as well as competitive quotes from as far away as east coast PR, Trinidad, Grenada, and Aruba. Close by, we checked into St. Maarten, Antigua, and St. Kitts. Prices varied greatly from location to location and we found that Grenada, where we had kept our boat two time prior, was near the highest price on the list. They also we nearly booked up already by the time we checked in with them in February. After talking with St. Kitts Boatyard, we decided that it would be the chosen place to keep A2C for the coming months. There price was good, their location was nearby and the insurance company agreed that they would be acceptable as an insured location. So now that we have secured our location and have made plans to head to St. Kitts in time to prepare the boat for hauling out of the water, we decided to spend some time gunkholing Antigua’s beautiful bay-ridden coastline. From Falmouth harbor, we sailed east toward the Atlantic and stopped off at beautiful Mamora Bay, just east of English harbor. This bay is quiet and not often visited by cruising yachts so we felt we really had the harbor to ourselves. The bay is also home to the exclusive St. James Club Resort. This posh resort is one of the nicest we’ve seen in our Caribbean travels and, as imagined, we’ve been fortunate to have seen some really luxurious resort spots. Upon arrival, we decided to go ashore, since our (4- year old) cruising guide mentioned a small grocery where one could get nice produce and meats. We dinghied ashore only searching for a dinghy dock but found none. There was a larger dock for the resort’s cruise sightseeing boats, so we tied up to that and wandered ashore looking for the market. We soon realized that no one seemed to care that we were there, thinking we must be guest of the resort as sell as the other several hundred folks enjoying the lounge chairs and beautiful white sand beaches.

We located a nice spot on the beach and plopped down in a couple of chaise lounge chairs and relaxed for an hour or so, slightly napping, but mostly just enjoying the views and comfortable setting. Near noon, we decided that we would return to our boat for lunch, then return with our books and swimwear in case we decided to get into the water. That afternoon, we spent a most delightful several hours reading and relaxing on the beach. Suz looked up the resorts rates and found that the cheapest rooms started at just over $700 a night. We felt pretty satisfied that we had not spent a dime there, yet enjoyed ourselves as if we had been the high rollers who had booked their holiday there. Another benefit of the cruising life.

When we sailed into the bay earlier, we had noticed that we were coming in directly below the Antiguan estate owned by Eric Clapton, the famous rock/blues musician. Here we were, floating on the bay right below his house expecting him to come out of his giant house and wave to us but no luck.

We enjoyed that anchorage for another night before pulling anchor and sailing further around to the east to the gorgeous area known as Nonsuch Bay. We had visited here in 2008 with our sailing friends and were excited to return and see if it was still as lovely. After finding a suitable anchorage, we found the bay to be just a beautiful so we dropped the dinghy and took a quick drive around to have a look-see at the environs. The water inside the protective reef where we were anchored was kind of choppy by now so we had a pretty bumpy and wet tour. We found that it seemed a bit more windy than we liked so we decided that one day/night was enough for this spot. The next noon, we weighed anchor and set out to return back around the southern end of the island for our favorite anchoring spot in Falmouth Harbor. For the past 10 days or so, we’ve mostly been Admiral and Captain Slug but have felt refreshed and ready to take on the task of getting the boat over to St. Kitts and prepared for her time ashore for the next 7 months. We will likely stop on Nevis, St. Kitts sister island, on the way over to do some exploring but once we get to St. Kitts it will be all work securing everything in preparation for a hopefully quiet hurricane season. Lots to do before we head off to Panama for our 2 month sit there but we are getting anxious for that adventure as well.