Around Antigua

I awoke on Thursday with the keen realization that we needed to do proper provisioning. We were missing important things like cereal for Enn, milk, food for dinner, cheese and jam. It’s a long dinghy ride from the bay in to Jolly Harbour, so I suggested we go in and pick up one of the moorings inside the harbour. The bridle is not required at a mooring, so the splice could be repaired, and we’d be much closer to go in for groceries. This plan was agreed upon.

Half the Eager Crew (Enn) came to assist with raising the anchor. This happens when a button is pushed, the windlass goes “whirr” and the anchor chain is gathered to the chain locker. Alas, I pushed the button and there was a failure to whirr. Enn and I had to haul the chain and the anchor out by hand. Something else to fix…

We got into the harbour, picked up a mooring, did a shop, then WW respliced the bridle and poked about in the guts of the windlass’s little electrical box. The windlass worked!

We had thought, given our single-engine state, to potter up and down the coast for a few days, but discovered there aren’t many places to potter and even fewer to anchor. We did a little shakedown sail into Five Islands Bay, supposed to have one of the better anchorages, and we weren’t impressed. Thus it was we found ourselves heading down the west coast, hanging an east at the bottom and pulling into English Harbour that afternoon.

We dropped anchor but WW decided the position wasn’t ideal, so we had to raise the anchor again. Oh woe was us, the windlass didn’t work. In the bay outside Jolly we had been in 6 feet of water, here we were in 20, with lots of chain out. Well, I used the age-old technique of refusing to believe I had to lift the chain and anchor by hand, and just mashed the control button maniacally. And lo, there was a great whirring and the windlass worked. It lived long enough to get the anchor up (if it hadn’t, I would have killed it myself). We re-anchored with some trepidation (Would we have to haul the anchor again, by hand??) but WW was pleased with where we lay and how we held. He then fixed another rotting connection in the windlass’s control box and it has lived happily ever after (so far) in a functional way.

We spent the next three days in English Harbour. On Friday evening, we had a lovely dinner at Trappas to celebrate WW’s 65^th birthday, then went on to Lime to hear Idus, Bob Marley’s band. Much dancing and fun was had by all.

Unfortunately, the Eager Crew had arrived with nasty colds which, despite their best efforts, they failed to inflict on us. I thought I had it on Sunday, but snoozed the day away and bored it out of my system. Nonetheless, they felt pretty crummy, particularly Dana, so aside from a few short hikes, not a great deal more than lolling and mending went on over the weekend.

The engine business meant we couldn’t do what we really wanted to do which was take Dana to Montserrat. Dana, being Irish, has long been fascinated by Montserrat which was settled (after the Carib Indians left) by Irish immigrants and indentured labourers from St. Kitts. It still has place names like Galway’s, Kinsale and Cork Hill. Well, on Sunday, WW looked at the weather forecast and saw that it was good. In fact, he saw that it was great. Almost nothing in the way of seas, winds just in Django’s sweet spot at about 15 knots, and these conditions holding through Wednesday. He decided, single-engined though we might be, to Montserrat we would go. We would leave on Monday, tour on Tuesday, return on Wednesday and bid a fond farewell to the EC on Thursday. And thus it came to pass.