Antigua Days

Back in Antigua, we settled into the usual round of maintenance, cleaning, lolling, reading and tots.

It was Agents Week in English and Falmouth harbours. This is when the fancy charter boats come and strut their stuff to agents who, they hope, will book them to clients at $100,000 US a week. The boats are very big and very shiny. They take up a great deal of space and block our Internet signal. Still, it's nice to walk around and pretend you'll take, hmmm, that one. Or maybe this one.

Internet blockade duty: big boats between us and our signal
during Agents Week in Nelson's Dockyard.

A vast boat leaving English Harbour.
Yours for a week for a mere hundred grand.

Our mainsail, dead in its furler, was removed and delivered to the Nelson's Dockyard sailmakers to be measured and then disposed of humanely. Prices for a new sail finally arrived and one was ordered. The head honcho at the sail loft came to measure the mast as WW has always felt our mainsail was a bit on the short side. The new sail should arrive on January 26.

The other task was to replace all the little slides through which the lacing supporting our trampoline are threaded. They are plastic and the current set had come to the end of its lifespan. Years of sun and salt had weakened them and they were starting to break. WW was the first to get that sinking feeling as one snapped and the trampoline sagged. Then Enn, helping with raising the anchor, popped another. We banished the men from the trampoline.

I counted the slides. We'd need 130.The sailmaker had some but would not part with them for love nor money. One chandlery had a few, not nearly enough and their price was exorbitant. Finally, WW ordered them online. We'd get them at home, in Montreal, over our Christmas visit.

On Sunday, December 12, we attended Keep Fit as good little totties to. We were to work in the H.M. LIVth Regiment's graveyard up at Shirley Heights. A descendent of one of the men buried there had complained the the Antigua parks services that it was in dreadful nick. We werer asked to deal with the problem. Much weed whacking, brush cutting, raking and chain sawing ensued. It looked rather better when we were done. At least you could see the graves.

View from the Shirley Heights graveyard.

Commemorative marker at the Shirley Heights graveyard.

Connie at work on the overgrowth around
the Shirley Heights graveyard's gates.

It's hard to read. It is to the memory of Harriet,
wife of a sergeant major in H.M. LIVth Regiment
"who fell a victim to the withering effects of
the climate & dysentery on the 23 January, 1851, aged 33.
The last tribute of her sorrowing husband".

A few days later, we decided to do the hike to Shirley Heights from Fort Charlotte, down at the mouth of the harbour. We also wanted to go and check out a wreck we'd seen on our return from Guadeloupe. We found out it was an old acquaintance, Sea Terror. She'd dragged her anchor while her owner was away and had done herself in on the reef a the harbour's entrance. Very sad. We visited her grave after an excessively hot and sweaty climb up the shore path and much cooler walk down the road back to the harbour.

WW climbing to Shirley Heights at noon-ish
on a very hot, airless day. Mad dogs...

R.I.P. Sea Terror.

Then it was time to prepare for our departure. On Saturday, December 18, we flew home (without having to spend any time blizzard-bound in Newark, for a happy change). Django was left to the tender care of Peter Mac, who would visit her daily during our three-week absence.