As we type this we feel like celebrating. The last 2 1/2 weeks were fabulous — no falls off boats, no torn hamstrings and no unexpected mechanical failures. It was quite a run! (Of course, we cringe as we type this because this sort of thing — acknowledging out loud that things are going smoothly — is precisely what incites the sailing gods to do a little mischief. They have to have some fun too!)
Very soon after we published our last blog entry our daughter and her girlfriend joined us in Antigua for a 5/6 day cruise. Having now had the opportunity to explore Antigua it was easy to put together a great itinerary:
— Day 1: Meet in Jolly Harbour and enjoy dinner at Sheer Rocks.
— Day 2: Proceed to Carlisle Bay for a late lunch at Karnagio with fabulous views overlooking the harbor.
— Day 3: Sail to Green Island and anchor in Nonsuch Bay. Enjoy snorkeling and the tranquility of this quiet place. All meals aboard Che Figata with Jill’s homemade marinara over spaghetti noodles as the feature and Caesar salad as a side. (Dinner went down really well with some Old Fashion Rum Punch!)
— Day 4: Remain in Nonsuch to enjoy the solitude and more snorkeling. Jill’s crowd pleasing Mongolian Tofu and soba noodles was the evening’s dinner entry. (Of course there were more rounds of rum punch, and some wine, and . . .)
— Day 5: After a leisurely morning, proceed to Falmouth Harbour. Enjoy dinner at the lovely waterfront French Bistro, 5 Senses.
— Day 6: Hugs and good-byes!
After the girls left (yes, for record, they are both full self-supporting adults but, as parents, we can’t seem to call them anything else), we switched our attention to our repair punch list. The two main items remaining on the list were replacing the solenoid for the electrical windlass to get our anchor back in full working order and finally fixing our alternator issue so that we could fully charge our batteries while we ran our engine. The parts we ordered to fix (fingers crossed) both issues (a new solenoid for the windlass and a new regulator for the alternator) had arrived in Antigua and we lined up our now good friends at Marionics to install the parts and complete the repairs.
As suspected the new solenoid worked like a charm and the windlass repair was completed with great ease. Unfortunately, the alternator, well, not so much. The new regulator seemed to help a little but the alternator was still shutting down after 30 minutes, not allowing the batteries to fully charge. The folks at Marionics were really stumped and asked us if they could remove our alternator to take a look inside and see if they could find a solvable problem within the unit. They said it would be an easy in and out maneuver so we agreed to proceed with the diagnostic work up. Naturally because it was supposed to be easy it wasn’t. We had an alternator custom built to better support our lithium batteries when we made that conversion so the alternator was difficult to extricate from its mounting plate inside the tight engine compartment. Moreover, because of the way it was constructed the Marionics team needed a tool shop to remove the front plate to get inside for the diagnostic work up. While we probably would have held off on completing these repairs had we fully appreciated the challenges of removing and dissecting the alternator (the alternator is really a back up charging system — albeit a really nice one — so we can actually live without it) by the time the difficulty (and hours and hours and hours of labor) was evident we were really at the point of no return so we decided to go the distance. This meant, however, an extra week on Antigua. We had planned to go to Great Bird Island (a must visit on our Antigua bucket list) but then depart Antigua for Guadeloupe after spending a few days there. Now though we had to return to Falmouth Harbour after our Great Bird Island visit to have the alternator (hopefully in a repaired state) re-installed.
A little disappointed, but acknowledging that if this is our worst problem we are leading charmed lives, we took off for Great Bird Island. Great Bird Island is a 20 acre islet smaller than most city parks — lying in the north-east corner of Antigua. Though it is a private island, for a small entrance fee ($10 US per person), it is open to the public. Like Green Island, is is uninhabited and there is absolutely no development. It got its name from sailors who were impressed with the number of birds nesting there. With its two small but beautiful white sandy beaches punctuating both ends of this little pristine gem and the really tiny uninhabited islands sprinkled throughout the area, it definitely lived up to the hype. (The feature photo for this blog post is a picture we took from the top of Great Bird Island looking out over the surrounding waters.)
Despite the incredible beauty, we did get a little nervous when we first arrived because it was a Sunday and the jet skiers were out in full force whizzing around the island and throughout the anchorage. Not only was it noisy but it made snorkeling near our boat somewhat treacherous. We opted to load our snorkeling gear into our dinghy and anchor it close to shore where we could hug the coastline and stay out of harm’s way. We were worried that with the large number of jet skiers we might not be able to take full advantage of what Great Bird had to offer. The snorkeling near shore was actually quite good — abundant with staghorn and brain coral as well as fan coral — but there were reefs further out (near where the jet skiers were buzzing around) that were supposed to be really special.
Our concerns were short lived. It turned out that the jet skiers were locals enjoying their weekend. The next day, on Monday, the waters were quiet — not a jet skier in sight! With peacefulness restored, we were able to enjoy the sounds of the water rushing over the reefs as well as the return of the native birds that this island is known for. Apparently disturbed by the loud noise of the jet skies the birds kept to their nests during our first day. Now, however, the Antigua Red-billed Tropic Birds, with their eloquent long tapered white tails, filled the the sky. The absence of jet skiers also meant, as we like to say, that “the swimming pool was open.” We were free to snorkel near the reefs without the fear of getting run over. The snorkeling was definitely the best we have seen on Antigua. Though the marine life was not as abundant as we have seen elsewhere, the coral was magnificent — the reefs were home to large coral gardens filled with staghorn, elkhorn and brain coral. We were in our happy place and planned to stay until Thursday when we had to go back to Falmouth for the alternator re-install.
But then we heard from Marionics. The good news was that after taking apart and reassembling our alternator they declared it bullet-proof with absolutely nothing wrong. While that was reassuring, it meant that they needed to do more troubleshooting to figure out why our alternator was shutting down before our batteries were fully charged. Couldn’t we please come back to Falmouth Harbour a day early so they had time to re-install the unit and develop and execute another plan of attack was the upshot of the communication. So with much sadness, we left Great Bird Island on Wednesday (February 3) after 3 glorious days — but a day earlier than we had planned — to head back to Falmouth Harbour. We will spare our vast readership and ourselves all the gory details but the bottom line is that after 2 more full days of labor, the solution to the problem was relatively simple. The cables that connected the batteries to the alternator were undersized for the output of the alternator. This caused the cable to overheat and the alternator to shut down before the batteries were fully charged. Based on what we could do to test the system while still on the dock in Falmouth Harbour, and how the alternator performed during our sail to Jolly Harbour the day after the new larger cable was installed, it does appear that the problem is resolved. We have not seen the bill from Marionics yet but we are quite sure that it will best be viewed after consuming a few of Jill’s Old Fashion Rum Punches.
With our Antigua repair punch list largely complete (and our three month Antigua visa about to expire) we headed to Jolly Harbor to get a rapid COVID test, clear out of customs and take off for Guadeloupe. While in Jolly Harbour we did get an interesting update from the World Cruising Club, the organization that hosts the World ARC rally that we were initially scheduled to a part of in January 2021. As you all know, this rally was cancelled for both January 2021 and January 2022 due to COVID. Too many of the Pacific Island nations, not to mention Australia and New Zealand, had closed their borders making a circumnavigation nearly impossible. (At some point when crossing an ocean you need to refuel and re-provision.) With recent developments, things are looking positive for a January 2023 launch which is great news. Of course, now the list of rally participants is quite large because you have all those boats originally registered to participate in the 2021 and 2022 rallies as well as the boats that started the 2020 rally but had to abort their plans abruptly when COVID struck in March 2020. So what the organizers decided to do to accommodate as many participants as possible was split the World ARC 2023 into 2 groups. Group 1 departing in January and doing the straight 15 month circumnavigation from the Caribbean to the Caribbean and Group 2 departing in February and stopping in or around Fiji for a gap year in the Pacific before proceeding back to the Caribbean. This meant that we had to make a choice. We had always hoped to take a gap year to sail around the Pacific when the rally arrived in Australia — and were strongly leaning in that direction — but when there was just one group we were free to make that decision at anytime before the rally left Australia. With two groups formed with distinct elections (e.g., straight through circumnavigation or gap year) we no longer had the luxury of indecision so, though we were not really quite ready to make this decision, we took the leap and asked the organizers to move us into Group 2. Not only does this better align with our intent but it actually gives us the maximum flexibility. We have a lot of freedom during that gap year to do what we want — even take a long break and come back to the USA if we need or want to. So choosing Group 2 seemed to make the most sense when trying to plan for something that is over 18 months away. Family and friends: start planning now for an extended vacay in the South Pacific sometime between September 2023 and August 2024!
As we close out this blog entry on Monday, February 7 we are just finishing a glorious 40 mile sail on a port tack due south to Guadeloupe with 15-20 knot trade winds giving us a nice close beam reach. We have been flying at about 8 knots. Excited to visit a new country we were reminded that life doesn’t get better than this. Still, leaving Antigua was bitter sweet. During our 3 months on Antigua we really got to know that beautiful island and its warm people. We also made some great new friends. (You know who are are!) It was so hard to say good-bye. But such is the life of a cruiser — you visit wonderful places and meet people that become part of your “friends for life” circle and then you leave not knowing when you will be back or when you will cross paths again. That said, “don’t cry for us Antigua” (okay, we stole that line from Below Deck, season 8 which was based in Antigua) because the flip side is that we are now headed off for new adventures that we know will be every bit as enriching as those that we have enjoyed during our first 18 months as full time cruisers. We will likely publish our next blog entry in 3 – 4 weeks when we have settled into the Guadeloupe cruising life and will be anxious to record and share our experiences.
Post Script: We just got back from a lovely dinner in Deshais, a village in Guadeloupe, after checking in with customs at a local t-shirt shop. Yep, that’s how they do it in France when you arrive by private boat — and Guadeloupe is a department of France. You just go to a computer station in a designated store (in Dehais it’s Le Pelican) and sign yourself in. It’s a true honor system — no checking passports, COVID test results, boat registration papers, etc. We are adding a post script because we need to do penance for taunting the sailing gods with our talk of how mechanical failure and accident free our last few weeks were. The gods were surely reading over our shoulders because when we took down our sails as we approached the Deshais anchorage and started the engine the boat would not engage in gear — we couldn’t move forward or backwards. Not how you want to enter an anchorage because, as you might imagine, being able to maneuver the boat through the anchorage is pretty important. Fortunately, after moving the gear shift into forward and reverse a few times (with increasing force) we were able to get the boat in gear but it was a little scary for a moment. We are hopeful that this is just a repeat of the issue we had last year with our max prop and it simply needs to be greased. Engaging a diver to grease the prop is now on our to do list. But back on a positive note — and we always like to end our blog entries that way — after a really fabulous dinner which included a tall glass of the house special punch (a heavenly combination of fresh fruit juices, ginger, a touch of coconut milk and a good pour of rum) we are feeling relaxed and ever so grateful to be exploring the windward islands. So, in the words of Scarlet O’Hara, that little problem of not being able to reliably get our boat in gear, “we’ll think about that tomorrow.”
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