Return to Base

After our lovely visit to Barbuda, we set off back to Antigua on the morning of Tuesday, March 9. We had a pleasant enough crossing and managed to catch a fish on the way. WW and Jordy were unable to pin a positive ID to it, but allowed it was "some sort of jack". I turned it into a yummy seviche almost as soon as it had been filetted.

Our delicious, very fresh seviche.

We arrived in St. John's in the afternoon and made our way into the harbour there. We dropped anchor and took the dinghy ashore to let Jordy see a bit of the town.

A St. John's street scene taken from a balcony bar.

The following morning, intending to head off to Jolly Harbour, we raised anchor. This was one of the most disgusting anchor raising to which I have ever been party. The oily, yellowish, noisesome slime from the harbour bottom coated the chain and splattered across the trampoline and deck as the windlass laboured. WW and I spent several minutes scrubbing the slime off the deck with buckets of sea water and our handy deck brush. We let the anchor stay just below the water's surface for a time as we left the area, hoping the sea water sluicing over it would clean it. No such luck. The adherent and revolting primordial ooze had to be scrubbed off. Yeccch.

I took the con for the short cruise down the coast to Jolly Harbour, with WW keeping a watchful eye on my efforts. We anchored under Mosquito Hill where we had anchored on our previous visit. WW and Jordy went off for a long kayak ride to a beach around the headland where they used the kayaks to "surf" and had a great time.

Jordy on Django in Mosquito Bay.

The next day, Jordy went for a last kayak...WW was too sore from his exertions of the day before to join him. Then we went ashore for lunch a bid a sad farewell to Jordy who was headed back to Canada. There was weather brewing over the island and WW wanted to get Django moving as we were anchored on a lee shore. Any Jack Aubrey fan will know that's a Bad Thing. So we hastened back out to our anchorage and got Boffo stored on her davits.

Weather moving over Antigua.

Aboard the echoingly empty Django, we motored out and back to English Harbour. Again, I took the con. I took her through the Pelican Channel which runs along the western bit of the south coast between rather nasty reefs. It's quite wide, so not a tricky business. We were back at our home base in plenty of time for the tot.

With no other visitors booked for the season, we had just over a month till our return to Canada. We planned to spend it cruising. We spent a couple of days in English Harbour, provisioning, getting the laundry done, hanging out. We joined the Tot Club Keep Fit on Sunday, March 14, and helped build stairs for those arriving by dinghy at Life--one of the bars at which the tot is regularly held. All sorts of people promised to send me their photos of that event, but haven't yet. I'll post 'em when I get 'em.