Antigua, here we come!

Leaving St-Martin meant saying goodbye to old and new friends. We’re leaving behind our fellow 1500 cruisers, Wavelength, Gypsy, Jade and WindDancer. Too bad we didn’t have a chance to get together as they arrived shortly before we took off. There’s also George who sails alone on his 55 ft aluminum sailboat because his wife doesn’t have salty legs. We had interesting conversations with him on the subject of US politics. To date we’ve heard many different opinions, it’s been fun to compare them to our own perspective. We’re also looking forward to getting together again with Don and Donna who are currently building a nice house on the south side of the island, facing St-Barth. Believe or not, it took them 6 ½ years to get a building permit.

So, after spending three weeks in St-Martin, we were ready for new horizons.

Friday the 13^th (oooooh spooky). First stop: Île Fourchue.

Just before arriving to St-Barth, is this small, dry and rocky island. It is a great place to rest after an afternoon of bumpy sailing from St-Martin. We had very big swells (about 15-20 fts) and had to sail very close to the wind. Unfortunately, we had our first casualty of the trip. Our beautiful lizard had an accident and suffered a broken tail. I think it hurts us more than him.

Even though the bay is well protected, we have plenty of wind making for comfortable nights. We’re very pleased to leave behind an unwelcomed group of hungry mosquitoes that jumped on board while we were inside the Simpson Bay Lagoon for rigging work.

We have yet to decide if we’ll visit St-Barth. Some friends say we should, while others say we aren’t going to miss that much. St-Barth is the favored hot spot of the good looking crowd, also referred to as the Riviera of the Caribbean. If you want to see and be seen, go there!

We’re monitoring the winds and will leave a soon as the wind as a bit more of a northern component. The ride to Antigua is 73 nautical miles, which should take us about 12-14 hours depending on how fast we can go.

Sunday, January 15

If Sunday is meant to be a day of rest, we sure did the honors! We enjoyed beautiful snorkeling in the morning. Here the fishes are cute and active. It’s also nice to notice that the coral is starting to grow again. So far we’ve seen many places damaged by pollution and a careless attitude towards marine life. After a nice nap, we went hiking on the island. A perfect day!

Monday, January 16,

Happy birthday to our friend Daniel who turns 60 today and also got married to Chantal on Saturday. We’ll enjoy the champagne when we meet you down in the islands.

We took off at 7:00 this morning, the winds were perfect for a straight course to Antigua. St-Barth will just have to wait until we come back. So far, the winds are good, coming from the East with a bit of a Northern component and even though it’s was sort of a bumpy ride because of the big swells and short waves, it made for a great day of sailing. We should arrive at Jolly Harbour on the West Coast around 8:30 tonight.

Tuesday January 17

Well, we finally arrived last night at 7:00 pm, missing the last ray of lights by about 45 minutes. Not easy to anchor in the dark in an unknown place. But, we were please to this morning to see that we were well anchored. We took care of the immigration formalities and should enjoy the next week sailing around the Island.