Fast Track to St Lucia – Saturday 18th April - Wednesday 22nd April

We left Antigua about 10am Saturday 18th April. Winds forecast 10-15 knots out of the east, seas only 3-5 feet, which was perfect for a nice trip south. The plan was to head south to Guadeloupe (about 40 miles passage between the islands) and then stop the night at Pigeon Island. It was about a 50 miles trip and we should make it there before dark. Then some snorkeling the following morning on the Jacque Cousteau reserve before heading off again. The plan was to be in St Lucia in about a week.

We left Jolly Harbour, heading south down the west coast of Antigua, only to find that the winds were coming from the south (weather forecasts are not an exact science…), on the nose, which would not be such a pleasant trip. However, once we got to the bottom of Antigua, the wind moved to the east, as predicted. It often happens that the land can impact the wind direction. Soon both engines were off, fishing line out, and we were enjoying a perfect sail (made up for the last not so great ones from St Thomas, to St Martin and then to Antigua). By the time we reached Guadeloupe, the wind was from the NE giving us a great wind angle for sailing. The wind angle and seas make such a difference for a nice trip. The conditions were so good we decided to take advantage of this and carry on, through the night. The only downside was that this would mean bypassing one of our favourite stops, Les Saintes.

The wind dropped a lot along the west coast of Guadeloupe, due to the very high mountains, so we motor-sailed most of the way down the coast in calm seas. We rolled in the jib as the wind moved to the south, (influenced by the mountains). It started to get dark, as we were nearing the bottom of Guadeloupe. I took the fishing line in – yet again we had caught nothing! Jimmy prepared everything for the night sail (grab bag, harness etc) and then took over the watch at about 6.30pm, while I went and watched High School Musical with Charlotte, and then got her to sleep.

Once we were past the bottom of the coast of Guadeloupe, the winds picked up again. We rolled the jib out, motors off and a great sail again for the passage of about 20 miles between Guadeloupe and Dominica. At 9.30pm, I took over watch from Jimmy. We were just passing one of Les Saintes Islands, a favourite stop of ours – a group of quiet little French islands just south and part of Guadeloupe. Jimmy went and got some rest while I took over the watch, sailing on to the top of Dominica and then down the coast of Dominica. Again, the winds dropped going down the coast as we were in the lea of some of the highest mountains in the Caribbean, so engines back on and jib rolled in.

The radar was well used as there seemed to be quite a bit of boat traffic down the coast of Dominica and it’s often difficult to gauge distances in the dark. There were about 4 cruise ships (which you can see even before you spot them on the radar!) Interestingly I saw 2 lights from boats that looked similar. However, one was a cruise ship about 15 miles away and the other a sailing boat about 4 miles away! I avoided another “blip” on the radar, presumable a boat but even passing at about half a mile, I could not see anything. It’s amazing how many boats travel at night with no lights (usually to save battery power....(very dumb))

With a mixture of drinking tea and listening to the iPod (and watching the lights and the radar!) I managed to last a 5 hour watch, which let Jimmy get some sleep. By 2.30am we were just at the south end of Dominica. I woke Jimmy as the winds began to increase again, and move back to the east, so that we could roll the jib back out (we had the main sail up the whole time). Then I left him to do the 25 miles passage from Dominica to Martinique. I came back on watch again at 7.30am, after Jimmy’s 5 hour stint. We were now just starting our way down the Martinique coast and Jimmy had taken the jib in and put the engines on. I hopefully put the fishing line out again...

Unfortunately there had been a problem with the port engine – the oil pressure gauge had dropped right down and when Jimmy went to check, the whole engine was covered in oil! So we were now down to one engine (one advantage of a catamaran versus a mono-hull is that you still have an engine if one goes wrong). I took over watch while Jimmy tried to sort out what the problem was. We made the decision to stop at the south of Martinique in Le Marin / St Anne’s, where there are lots of boat parts and mechanics. Charlotte woke up but was happy to watch another High School Musical for a while. Jimmy fixed the problem, cleaned up the mess in the engine room and we were back to 2 engines for our final hour of motoring into the wind, past Diamond Rock, to the anchorage.

By midday, Sunday, we were anchoring up in St Anne’s bay (and had yet again reeled in an empty fishing line!) . We had sailed 180 miles in 26 hours – all in all it was a perfect trip south. We had averaged about 7 knots. As a friend of ours always tells any visitors, “sailing is the slowest mode of transport invented (except walking, just)” – although often, with the wind in your face it can fell like a lot faster, with the apparent winds being over 20 knots.

Jimmy managed to sort out all the engine problems, without the need of any assistance or any additional parts. Both tired, we decided to head to the beach, in the hope that we could get some sleep under a tree while Charlotte played happily in the sand with all her beach toys. It didn’t quite work out this way but we had a relaxing afternoon. We seemed to be the only English speaking people on the beach – everyone else French. We came back to the boat, had an early dinner and then Charlotte and Jimmy took a quick dingy ride into St Anne’s to get an ice cream – however, none of the shops would take US dollars and Jimmy had no Euro on him. This is a definite change from a few years ago – the Euro shop keepers no longer want the US peso. By the time they got back to the boat I was already in bed and we were all in bed by 7pm!

We stayed in St Anne’s / Marin a couple of days, and on Wednesday, left to do the last 20 miles to St Lucia (a short hop!). Because St Anne’s is in the SE corner of Martinique, the reward of the 1 hour motor east into the wind just before arriving at St Anne’s, was a better wind angle down to St Lucia (especially as the winds were now out of the NE). The winds and seas had increased quite a bit, but with the winds now coming off our port quarter, we had a great, fast sail, reefed main and full jib, and made it to St Lucia in about 3 hours. We put the fishing lines out again for the trip but needless to say, caught nothing.

The plan is to stay in St Lucia for about 2 weeks.

Antigua April 2009

We arrived back to Antigua at about 5pm on Good Friday 10th April 2009, just in time for the Fore Deck Friday Happy Hour and the Easter Celebrations. Easter is a big weekend for all the locals to go out on their boats and/or go camping – it was just like the Cup Match holiday in Bermuda.

We spent the Easter weekend rafted up with Lewis and Eddy. Lewis had recently bought a big, powerful, loud, fast cigarette boat (Slingshot). About 1000HP and can go up to 80 mph!! He had recently driven it back from St Martin in 3 hours (beats our 14 hours!) He took us out for a ride on it – Jolly Harbour to Falmouth harbour in less than half an hour with roughish seas!! (versus our 3 hours!) – spot the ripples in Lewis’s cheeks from the wind/speed.

Easter morning Charlotte and Eddy did an Easter Egg hunt on the beach – Jimmy headed to the shop to get the real Easter bunny chocolate (no traditional chocolate smarty Easter eggs here – the closest is an Easter bunny or Cadburys cream egg.) We then headed up to Bird Island, on the NE coast, for a couple of days – Heat Wave 2.5 hours, Slingshot less than half hour…. Some of Eddy’s friends were spending the weekend there on boats. Many of the locals were also camping on Bird Island – complete with generators and the rumor is 42 inch TV!! All the tents reminded us of the Bermuda holidays.


We spent a couple of nights there – Charlotte and Eddy enjoyed all the swimming, fishing and ski-bobbing. Also went diving for conchs – amazing – we found about 5 around the boat in 5 minutes. One of the other boats collected about 25 conchs, and cooked them up into a very tasty conch curry – delicious but a lot of work getting them out of the shells, cleaning, pounding and preparing. Conch are very rubbery and tough and require a lot of pounding to tenderize them. Ours were thrown back in the water –Jimmy said he’d prefer to buy it than do all that work!!

Come Tuesday morning, the previously packed bay was now empty as everyone headed back to work. We headed back to Jolly Harbour after our 3 day vacation!!

Last Easter Charlotte had met and played a lot with Barnaby, also 5, who was on holiday from England. They had been emailing the last few months as he was coming out again over Easter. Unfortunately, it turned out they were leaving on Wednesday but we managed to catch up with Barnaby and his parents, Lucy and Jason, Tuesday night for dinner and then on Wednesday they came over to the boat – Charlotte took Barnaby out on her ski Bob – his words after were “That was Total Wicked!”

We then had a couple of days catching up on jobs (including schooling!). We went to check up on the geocache that we had hidden back in February, under the decking at the Fore Deck Bar, only to find that it was not there anymore! Scrambling on hands and knees under the bushes and decking, it was definitely gone. One person had logged a find of the cache in mid March, but that was it. On our last day we replace the geocache - hopefully this one will last a bit longer.

On our last night in Antigua, the Fore Deck Bar, at Jolly Harbour Marina, had a good band playing, with a packed crowd, but, as we were sailing the next day, we were sensible and were back on the boat and in bed before 10pm. By 10am the next morning we had left the anchorage and were heading south to Guadeloupe.

St Martin - 2nd-9th April 2009

We arrived in Simpson Bay in the early hours of Thursday 2nd April. One of the places we feel comfortable going into at night time - it's a big open bay that is relatively shallow til quite far out, so you can anchor quite far out before having to deal with all the boats anchored closer to shore. We also have our bearings for coming in at night time: the 4 white lights, next to the green lights off Kevin's dads house.....

Next morning we woke to find ourselves 2 boats away from Joe and Shawn on Libertas! - hadn't see them since leaving Barbuda.

Thursday was taken up with checking in at customs and immigration, jobs etc. Harmony came over to play with Charlotte later that afternoon.

Friday a nice leisurely lunch with Joe and Shawn before heading out for the weekend - over to Orient Bay - about a 2 hour motor-sail. Orient is probably one of the nicest beaches on the island, over on the French side, but hence has become very busy and a hot spot for the cruise ship passengers. We anchored off the beach and felt like we were on vacation!! On Sunday we even went to the beach for the day and rented chairs!! Despite what you may think, we hardly spend any time just sitting on a beach. Charlotte and I got our hair braided, we had lunch at one of our favourite restaurants Kon Tiki (that has been there for years) and then enjoyed a couple of rum punches relaxing on the beach.

Back to Simpson Bay Monday afternoon, after our weekend away!! Joe and Shawn were having a party on their boat that night and Charlotte had a sleepover at Harmony's.

We left St Martin at about 3.30am on Good Friday and arrived Antigua 13 hours later. We managed to get the jib out towards the end but most of the trip was a motor job as the wind was almost on the nose.

US Virgin Islands - March 26th - April 1st 2009

We had a lovely 4 hour sail from Virgin Gorda, down the Francis Drake channel, between Tortola and the small islands to the south, past St John's and into Charlotte Amelia, the main town of St Thomas. As we drove into the anchorage, we had a pleasant surprise to see Serephim - we had thought they were still in BVI's but it turned out they decided to take advantage of a nice weather window and get moving (they are heading up to USA). Charlotte was happy especially as we fixed up a play date for her the next day with Jack and James on their boat.


One of the main reasons for visiting St Thomas was because Jimmy's friend Wade was coming into Charlotte Amalia for the day on a cruise ship. He came over to the boat with his brother and sister-in-law for lunch - we got out the smoked salmon but don't think we were any competition for the food on the ship!! Thanks Wade for the slide show and video below:


St Thomas is much more built up and commercialised than the BVIs. Its owed by USA and with that came all the benefits, that we enjoyed - big stores, cheaper prices, more availability and choice, fast food, cheap fuel, .... You would never guess how excited we were to go and stock up at K Mart!! also 3 trips to Wendys and dinner one night "All you can eat Shrimp" at Hooters!!

St Thomas was the "Turn around" point, we had come as far north as were were going this year. On Wednesday April 1st we left St Thomas about 8am to sail back to St Martin, starting our journey back south. We had to motor all the way as the wind was on the nose, and arrived St Martin 16 hours later at midnight.

BVIs: Thursday 19th - 26th March 2009

We stayed in the British Virgin Islands for a week, after our sail up from St Martin. We had a nice couple of days up in Virgin Gorda Sound, where Charlotte got to enjoy playing with her friends on Serephim and Sea Walk and taking them on her ski-bob.

The largest sailing yacht in the world, the Maltese Falcon, treated us to a great sunset departure, under full sail through the Sound. It seemed like everyone in the anchorage had their cameras out!




Charlotte then said good bye to her friends on Serephim and Sea Walk, as they decided to take advantage of the south winds and sail up to Anagada. We then "bumped into" Bob and Betsy Bailey from Bermuda again in Virgin Gorda.


On Monday we headed to Road Town on Tortola to meet up with Shelagh who was visiting for a couple of days from Bermuda before delivering a boat back to Bermuda. We did a quick whirl wind tour showing her the sights - snorkeling at the Indians, over-nighting at the Bight on Norman Island - this is where the infamous "Body Shots" take place at the Willie Ts Pirate Boat. Having taken up the closest mooring to the Pirate Barge, Shelagh and I were all set for a night out, with Jimmy babysitting, but by the time we finished dinner, we both sheepishly admitted that we were tired and happier just enjoying a glass of wine on the boat, a chat and an early night!! Up nice and early the next morning - 2 hour motor up to the Baths and we arrived just in time to get one of the last moorings at 9am!! (we even had to race someone to it!)

By lunchtime we were in Spanish Town and Shelagh was dropping her bags off at Big Bear - the boat she was sailing back to Bermuda.

That night Shelagh had kindly offered to cook us dinner on Big Bear. We were in the anchorage just outside the marina - unfortunately, the weather blew up and strong winds started coming from the west (almost unheard off). As we were anchored not far off the coast, we ended up with engines on for a few hours to stop us turning round and onto the rocks. Finally, in order to get some sleep Jimmy hunted out the stern anchor (last used about 3 years ago!) and we set this to keep up from going up on the rocks. Unfortunately we were not able to leave the boat so had to cancel dinner. Throughout the night boats around us were pulling up and resetting anchors.

The next day we checked out of the BVIs and sailed to the US Virgin Island, namely St Thomas.