Sail Away for a Year and a Day

As of 1730 hrs today we have begun our last long Caribbean passage, from Antigua to the British Virgin Islands. It's a journey of about 180Nm so this means at least one overnight but probably two.  The wind forecast is for relatively light wind and wave and a mostly downwind passage.  We have stowed the dingy on deck (deflated) as towing it all this way is just asking to lose it at sea.  In theory, to check in at BVI we need covid tests but they have to be 48hours old (or less) and our passage time makes this a bit tricky. Instead we are planning to get tested at Road Town ferry terminal when we arrive before doing a customs clearance. Fingers crossed. This is one of the many cruise liners that passed us in the night. It's the Seven Seas Navigato.  When. One goes by they are so we'll lot up it's like a city arriving.  We made 6.5 knots all night which is great but the liners all do about twice that so they almost always come up from behind on shoppin...

Way back in 2020, possibly the worst year of most people's lives and certainly mine, we tried twice to holiday in Antigua. Both times we booked flights, picked a nice house to rent and paid deposits only for flights the be cancelled at the last minute. It's probably that frustration that lead to us formulating our crazy adventure plan. If the airlines couldn't get us there we would just darn well get ourselves there instead. The beauty of a sailing yacht is that it's not range limited by fuel. We crossed the Atlantic using only 10L of diesel between Cape Verde and St Lucia. The main cost is time of course. Here we are, finally heading for Antigua. We are passaging from Deshaies in Guadeloupe, home of the Death in Paradise series, to Jolly harbour in Antigua. This was supposed to be a day sail...    ... Alas we could not complete our customs checkout yesterday (12-3-2022) because the customs office was closed so we had to do everything this morning at 9am. It...

Yesterday started early with a swim before we pulled up anchor and started sailing for the top end of Guadeloupe. Normally we would make our way north up the side of the island but some friends (SV Clifford) were putting into Deshaies before setting off across the Caribbean to Panama on their way home to New Zealand. The kids had a goodbye sleepover and we said farewell to them.  Having said goodbye to SV Clifford we explored the town. Deshaies itself is pretty nice, quite apart from being the film set for Death in Paradise. We visited it's amazing botanical garden.  We also enjoyed diving on the reef to the north. Kerrie and Rose had a dive and Alfie came in with me on my Octopus. Bit of a red letter day. We very much enjoyed being able to pop in for Croissants and coffee and it was made even more fun by four other boats we knew from the ARC showing up as well. WaterDogs, Chula Magic Dragon and Dragonfly. We had a big basketball match at sunset, just n...

Having headed up to Port du Bas for the Martinique Carnival and to do some boat work. Most importantly we needed to replace one of our sail sliders which are basically very big curtain hooks that hold the mainsail onto the mast.  Should have planned this better as nearly everything was closed for Carnival and the start of Lent etc. Having originally booked two nights in the marina there we ended up extending our stay for a total of 4 nights although the marina officials really didn't want us to stay. They are very strange prioritising boats coming in over baits already docked !  Anyway we did manage to find a chandler's open and get our spares so all is now well. Our mainsail slides again. Carnival was good too although the tropical rain rather dampened the costumes. This morning we headed out from the Marina after no dentists were open (I have a broken tooth that needs attention). Our destination today was the main city on the south side of the west part of Guadeloupe, Basse ...

I think everyone who comes this way must make the same nav decisions. We decided to sail to the southernmost part of Guadeloupe which si the islands of Les Saintes. On the chart they look a tiny bit like the Scilly isles. We had no choice to stay in Dominica as we didn't have PCR tests before we left Martinique. That's ok as it's perfectly fine to anchor for a night off a coastline as a "yacht in transit". Come dawn however it's generally a good idea to be ready to leave in case the customs and excise show up and things get bureaucratic... We managed to weigh anchor by 0830 hrs and set off up the coast. Let's face it , Dominica is basically a bunch of mountains and there was not a lot of wind getting past them.  We motored with as much sail as we could get up (our main has a broken slider so we can't go beyond the first reef). Annoyingly the tiller pilot still wasn't fixed so we had rigged up Vincent - the hydrovane. We have had mixed s...

Up early today and set off from St Pierre at 9 am planning to sail North towards Guadeloupe. There is an island between Martinique and Guadeloupe which is Dominica. Sad to say the covid entry protocols for Dominica are a bit over the top with multiple tests being required to allow entry.  Singer it's about 80 miles to go all the way in one hour we decided to stop as a yacht in transit in Dominica which means we anchor but never set foot on land. The wind was pretty good and we made 7 knots most of the way across the Martinique Dominica channel.  Magic Dragon followed us along the way which was nice. Given they are a 50foot Oyster and we are a 38 foot Jeanneau managing to keep pace with them for much of the way was quite good going. Week done Cloud Jumper. Annoyingly the connectors for our tiller pilot were corroded, we discovered.  Despite replacing one of the terminal blocks we were unable to get enough current to power up the pilot so hand steered instead. I...