Antigua the...Cute?

The tot is a movable feast, taking place a different pubs and bars depending on their open days. It used to be held at Life, just outside Nelson's Dockyard, but Life has closed its doors and is up for sale. So now it moves between private homes, the Waterfront Bar and Reef Gardens. One of the features of these places is the almost inevitable presence of domestic animals.

Reef Gardens features a quebecois cat of ancient vintage. Alas, I have never yet got a photo of him.

At Waterfront, owners Jules and Dennis (both originally from Vancouver) share the pub work with two lovely, boisterous, completely fearless young men who do, however, get tired from time to time...

A bit of a snooze in the smoking room...

...until it's time to get on with working the crowd.

When they wake up, they are all business--checking out the social scene, intimidating dogs... Absolutely nothing fazes them. Tot Club members Mark and Lindsay often bring their lovely two-year old Delean for a bit of mingling. She and the boys get on remarkably well.

Lindsay and Mark with fearless kitten and
an intrigued Delean (breed: purebred Island Dog).

Mark, kitten and Delean.

Last night, there was a special guest star. A real youngster, this week-old lad (brought by local character Jacko, who rides the youngster's mother through the streets of Antigua) was entirely mannerly and even managed to join the tot for a few minutes.

Young pub crawler.

Joining the tot circle.

With Tot Club President Terry.

So, there...isn't Antigua cute?

Catching Up

I'd like to say I've been so frantically busy, I haven't had time to post. Truth is, however, I have been lazy. WW, on the other hand, has been frantically busy and the boat is now ready to sally forth on her next series of adventures.

Trampoline back in place.

The trampoline is back in place, the rewound electromagnetic clutch has been installed in our big autopilot, and a fancy fishing pole has appeared in a holder on our port side aft. (One evening we actually went fishing, just outside the cut. WW motored about in Boffo while I trolled. He swears we had a strike. Yeah, sure. Whatever.) The rigging is all in place with jib and main neatly in their furlers and lines stowed neatly. All shipshape and Bristol fashion we are.

WW spotted a large Danforth anchor in the garbage dump and, with some local help, got it moved to the beach beside the dinghy dock. There he hammered away at it with a cold chisel since it was completely seized up. Once he got it moving again, he brought it out to where we lie, in Tot Club Corner just under a hill that provides blessed shade at about 3:30 every day. We now have a mooring. For those who don't know what that is, it is a fixed place to come to in the harbour. We have a friend who will use it in our absence so it will not be taken up by some unknown member of the Great Unwashed. There are no recognised moorings in English Harbour, so you have to defend yours valiantly.

WW would like to beef up our mooring's weight.
Here he's trying to get some really big chain.
The guy on the table is our friend the water taxi driver.

We also pulled out all the sails we have never looked at before. There were three: a sort of storm jib, a huge light spinnaker, and a common or garden jib. This last we lashed up over the foredeck. It was a bit of a hodgepodge mess, but it gave us a taste for the cool and air of a shaded deck. WW headed over to the sailmaker and was given a rubbish spinnaker which we are in the process of converting to an awning. Much painful forcing of needles with waxed thread through layers of ripstop nylon. Thank heaven for the sailmaker's palm and pliers.

We had our friends Peter and Sam (Joy) and Bob and Carol (Rubens) on board for dinner. Bob and Carol returned the favour and we had a delicious spaghetti dinner on Rubens...and perhaps just a leetle too much rum.

The next day we went up to the hills to have dinner with the Tot Chair Mike and his wife Anne in their brand new, absolutely gorgeous house. Of course I forgot the camera. It was roast leg of lamb, cooking to a glowing turn of pinkly goodness, with all the trimmings. Including, brussel sprouts. On Antigua. Who knew?

Tot Club members at the Waterfront Bar for the tot:
Moya, Carol, Bob, Mike, Sam (and WW in the back there).

Today we are going to take Django over to the Slipway to fill her tanks and refuel her. Then a garbage dumping, food gathering run over to Dockside market. We head off on Friday for Guadeloupe where we will meet up with our seasoned sailing companions Dana and Enn. A couple of weeks exploring yet more of Caribbean Europe will be fun. We need to lay in puncheons of rum since all we'll be able to get there is rhum -- best used for engine degreasing.

I promise to take more pictures and write more often.

Heat is very...hot

OK. Of course you head to the Caribbean for the warmth, but the past week has been sweltering. No wind at all. Even the goats seem overwhelmed. The only living things doing a thriving business are the mosquitoes and the no-see-ems. We lie panting in the shade, fans at full throttle, covered with horribly itchy welts from the nasty biting insects. Pass the Off.

We went to "keep fit" this morning with the Tot Club. For those uninitiated, every Sunday, Tot Club volunteers go to a designated historical site and wield clippers, machetes, rakes, and sundry other grounds-maintenance equipment. From 10 a.m. until noon, they work on one of the ruins in the area. We have variously employed our talents on Fort Charlotte, Clarence House and assorted trails and graveyards.

Today it was Clarence House, which overlooks English Harbour. A beautiful wreck. I laboured with our friend Connie, tidying up around the house while the gentlemen hacked their way through the mangroves below, to create a trail from the harbour up to the house.

And, boy, was it hot.

The Tot Club buys us water to consume during our labours and two beers later in the Nelson's Dockyard Galley Bar. Very welcome.

All this to say that my failure to post has been due to extreme heat and humidity. No break is predicted before Wednesday. Aaaargh.

Oh, and no photos due to extreme absence of batteries.

So Much Work

In the past few days, we have twice rented a car so we could go about the island getting Important Stuff. On Friday, we drove into St. John's to find (extremely expensive) sandals to replace those chewed by rats, drenched by hurricanes and/or forgotten at home. Then on to Jolly Harbour and Budget Marine for an array of nautical whatnots.

The trampoline was ripping along a front seam, so it had to be removed and taken to the sailmaker for repairs. A major production.

Trampoline gone.

WW worked on the electrical systems, of which we have three. He decided there is a problem with the 220v system, so we are trying not to use it in case it kills us...or something. (I was never very good at physics and wiring and such.)

Then our trusty charge meter thing started showing the power dropping unusually low overnight. At first WW thought it might be the hazy weather was cramping our solar panels' style. But he finally decided the original four batteries (not the two we got in Grenada) had probably reached their best-before date. Subsequent research revealed that driving to Jolly Harbour would reduce the price by half, even factoring in the car rental, compared to what the English Harbour Slipway was asking. So off we went yesterday. (Peter was most disappointed since three cruise ships were expected...he did just fine on his own.)

Batteries are very heavy. I was seriously concerned that my husband would soon be enjoying his first hernia. However, the four old batteries were successfully removed from their hiding place under the saloon's long bench, and all the new were snugged in. Then WW looked at his wiring drawing and realized he couldn't understand it.

This is what it should have looked like:

...and that's just two of the four batteries.


He carried on by touching electrical connections between the batteries and, if they didn't spark, saying, "Well, no complaints there." My job was to hold as-yet unconnected wires out of the way. I kept a careful eye on the radio, plotting the exact path of my leap to it for when I needed to pan-pan for an electrocution on board. Nor leap nor pan-pan were, in the end, required.

Today, the voltage is at 12.60 and WW response is, "Wonderful!"

I Blame Peter

We are anchored in the Tot Club Corner of English Harbour. To port are Rush (from S. Africa), Cormorant (Arnold and Gay) and Antilia (Graeme), to starboard are Sanctuary (Roger) and Kuma (Peter). So, we are nestled among friends. But that last boat? That Peter? It's all Peter's fault.

Peter lives a hand-to-mouth existence, scrabbling for pennies wherever he can find them. He does deliveries (sails ships from, say, here to Spain), works charters, polishes boats (he did ours), will do any odd job that presents. Very handy, very entrepreneurial in a "don't wake me before 10" sort of way

We met Peter shortly before we headed back north for the summer. He loves to play guitar, sing and hang with friends. When we came back and moved out of the mangroves, there he was off our starboard bow in his lovely little yawl. We hailed back and forth and, eventually, Peter appeared with his latest Great Idea. He'd talked to the manager of Nelson's Dockyard and she was delighted with the plan: Get all dressed up in period costumes (she would provide) and entertain the hundreds of cruise ship visitors who get trucked, bused, taxied and carried here.

Sounds like a lark, right?

Dress and hat for me, piratical shirt and trousers for himself. Grand.

Day One: 9 a.m. start. Not good. Peter doesn't really do 9 a.m. Oh, and we're going to sing. I don't know any of the songs he knows, he knows none of mine. Rehearse?? That's for wusses. Still and all, the punters threw the odd dollar in our battered hat and begged to take pictures of us. They get a free rum punch out of the trip to the Dockyard. "So do we," said Peter. "Is 11:15 too early?"

Apparently not...

Busking is bloody hard work. We tip our hats to all you buskers out there. By early afternoon, I'd worked out a smooth line in patter. Stuff about capstans and sea shanties and jigs. Honestly, if you just stand there and sing, they walk away, but stand there and tell them something they didn't know, you'll earn a dollar here or there.



Day Two: Rain. Does this mean we can give it a pass?

No, it doesn't.

We found places to shelter. We did the strolling minstrels thing. I finally got my curtsy right. "Good day, missus," smile curtsy. Peter all "Aaaar, matey" and "The best ones is the dead ones" (he's from Poole and can pull it off).

Meanwhile, back on the boat, WW has discovered the head overflowing, the bilge pump is dead. Works on that all day only to find our 220v system seems not to be grounded. No one sure of the implications. Finally digs through his workshop to ensure there are no rats in there. Well, only one mummified one. Manages to get the fridge working. Clears out a bunch of rubbish. Works like a slave while his bride is...singing.

Thank the sweet Lord there are no ships till Monday.

Things That Don't Work

It is always exciting to return to our little home upon the water and to discover just what's got buggered up while we were away. Head would not fill, starboard engine would not draw water (which is its coolant), outboard engine moribund (more paddling of Boffo), fridge petulant, a certain "air" in the interior. Oh yeah, and rats.

Well, I rather overstate the case. Terry, the man who cares for the boat in our absence, found a nest of rats in the after starboard cockpit locker. He disposed of it and then put bait on the boat for two weeks...until it stopped being eaten. So we are hopeful there are no rats still aboard. I have told WW that if there are, he'll be coughing up for a hotel or a flight home. I signed up for no hot water, limited cooking accoutrements, even paddling the damn dinghy. I did not sign up for vermin. So far, the only rat we have found was what can only be described as dissolved. It was in the locker just forward of the one that had held the nest. WW dealt with the remains, I dealt with the locker. Ew.

As Antigua has been hit (not directly) by a couple of hurricanes this year, there was a lot of rain over the summer. Django responded by leaking here and there. Leaking means mildew. Another joy of boating revisited.

Yesterday, WW got the engine drawing water, he got the head flushing. Then came the big job: moving out of the mangroves. This involved lifting three anchors from the primordial slime, much of which ended smeared all over the trampoline and foredeck, Boffo, WW and me. Once under way, we headed straight to the Dockyard quay where we hooked up our hose, hosed ourselves and the foredeck down, filled our water tanks and were about to start rinsing Boffo, when:

"Hello."

Uh oh. Our friend Graeme had told us there'd be no one about.

"I see you are using our water. Did you ask permission?"

"Um, not yet."

Smile. "Not yet? Well, just come by the office when you are done and pay for it, please. It will be 20 cents a gallon."

"Of course."

In the event, it cost all of USD 25 for filled water tanks, a much cleaner boat, a spotless dinghy (Boffo positively gleamed) and well-rinsed anchors and anchor rodes. Worth every penny, I say, and especially good since the Slipway is charging 75 cents a gallon.

We are now settled in Tot Club Corner, with several of our old friends near by. Today I donned my cape and mask and became Super Cleaner. The boat now smells of biodegradable cleaning liquids. A significant improvement over rat funk and mildew, trust me.

WW has got much of the rigging done as well as repairing the outboard (yay). He's now working on the fridge. When he's done, we'll head off for provisions, shops having been closed yesterday for Independence Day. He has been nobly suffering without breakfast for the past two days. We have the peanut butter, we have the marmite, it's the support we lack. Oh, and he's been having to drink tea since we left no coffee aboard. Poor man. Ah well, all will be well once we get to the shops.

I promise to take pictures soon. Of pretty things. Rats need not apply.