Antigua

We are now for some days in English Harbor, when we arrived we found a spot at the end of the bay and it looked like a wonderful place to anchor. Very private and peaceful. But it was too good to be true, at 7 in the evening 2 restaurants started to compete which each other who would have the loudest music, they were about next to the boat and lasted till 4 in the morning!! Way too much, so the next morning we choose another spot, not so private but a lot more quiet.

It is a beautiful place, they have renovated a whole fort area, most of the buildings are still the same as in the time of Nelson, one has become a restaurant, another showers and laundry and one the immigration office. It is the busiest place where we have anchored this trip, but it is worth it.

Jacques opinion of the English has been turned around, because everybody is very nice and helpful, the ultimate test will be this afternoon when we will be checking out, but I see no problems.

Yesterday we took the bus to St. John, the capital of the island. The town was deserted on this Sunday and only a few shops near the cruise liner dock were open. So we headed back to the bus station after a short while. The trip back was a scary thing. The driver drove twice the speed limit and Jacques asked, when getting out, if he was Michael Schumacher. I think that there is some competition going on, who can set a new time record. 

Tomorrow morning we leave for Guadeloupe, we intent to go through the river that split the island in two parts, the bridges are just a little wider than the boat and open at 4:30 and 5:00 am so it will be a bit hairy but probably worth the change.

Talk to you all soon, Ria

Somewhat dramatized

We are officially allowed to roam the Antiguan waters, but it didn't go all that easy. I must say our minds were already in a some what negative anticipation. The books and other cruisers had told us that the English were complicated with checking in and out of their country and Jacques had stirred up all kind of memories when he had to deal (work related) with English bureaucracy.

After we dropped the anchor outside of Jolly Harbor (the name of the place), we thought we did the right thing, only the captain can leave the boat to go on land and the rest (me) had to stay on board. After 15 minutes I saw the dinghy already returning and thought well that was easy. No such a thing. We had to show up with the real boat, not only a dinghy. Some not so nice thoughts were sent to our neighbors across the Channel. 

Anchor up and I started already going over my moves tying up to a dock which makes me always a little nervous.It is known that I have thrown the line several in the water in stead of the hands of a helper The wind was blowing 20+ knots but as we neared the customs dock it went down to only ten. It was in front of a restaurant with four people having a drink, that meant two things: I have to look cool and there will be somebody to catch the line. I think I managed the cool looking but none of the four made any attempt to come to the dock. That meant for me jumping!! 

But we managed to land nicely at the dock only to realize that we had chosen the wrong dock. So we untied and did the whole thing again (me still looking cool!!!!!) and tied to the customs dock. First thing was to see customs, then Immigration and at last Port Authority. Lots of papers to fill out, some of them in four copies. The lady at immigration didn't accept our boat name as one word because the Dutch registration paper shows it as two words. She went on to explain that there might be another boat with the same name written as one word. It looked extremely remote to Jacques because the other information, like length, beam, color, number of masts, type of vessel, year built, etc. etc. would certainly not match the imaginary other LADYHAWK. Anyway Jacques patiently changed the name into LADY HAWK which satisfied the immigration officer.
WE ARE OFFICIALLY HERE NOW!

Today we went on shore to explore, but most of the area is a gated community, so we did not really get a feel of the island, did only some shopping and went back for a lazy afternoon.

I hope when we get to English Harbor we will find some internet, until then goodbye from the very cool looking first mate, Ria

St. Barth to Antigua

We left St. Barth on Sunday afternoon for an overnight sail to Antigua, it was about 80 miles and we go no faster with the swells and waves then about 5 knots, so it would take us between 16 or 18 hours. You don't want to arrive in an unknown  area in the dark, therefore you have to do an overnight-er. The wind was good and we went more than half the way without the motors. Good sailing! 

We should have gone immediately to check in, but we dropped the anchor in a wonderful quiet bay and went first to sleep. We noticed a resort on land and tried (you never know) the internet and yes!!! access without a password. So we tried to skype and looked up everything we were interested in, so nice, so wonderful.

We also were very lucky that there came a half hour long down pour, because the Lady Hawk was one piece of salt from all the spray water and this cleaned the boat for free without having to do anything.

We cannot say much about Antigua, but it looks very lush and green and with a bay with only one boat, it looks really promising. We will now go to Jolly Harbor where we or, officially only the captain ,will have to go to do all the paperwork.
I hope we will find more of these places and have contact trough the computer.

Hope to tell you all soon more about this place, until then have good and positive thoughts, Ria

St. Barth

Although the sea was somewhat wild we could sail the whole way to St. Barth's, the motors had an easy day. We arrived yesterday around twelve, took a short nap and went on shore to find the immigration office.

It is very nice here, very French in a positive way. The inner harbor was filled with big and bigger motor yachts, unbelievable. People are very nice here and it was a pleasure to walk around. Today Jacques had stomach pain, so we had a reading day, nothing wrong with that for me.

Tomorrow we will go and check the weather again, because we are thinking to go from here to Antigua, but that means an overnighter, so we want to be very sure about the wind and waves.

Today we are celebrating our 45^th anniversary with a breakfast of croissants, very good!!

I hope to talk again from Antigua, love Ria

St. Maarten

On our last evening in Great Bay we discovered a fantastic small restaurant where they grilled the fish in his totality, meaning it came to your plate with head and fins. Lynn had not seen that before and when the “mama” of the place explained that the head was the finest part of the fish (especially the eyes), we were somewhat in doubt if she was joking or not. 

I must say I admired Lynn because she really tried to eat some pieces of the head (not the eyes though). But the meal tasted fantastic and “mama” came frequently by to see how we were doing. It was a very good ending of our visit to Philipsburg.

For the last few days we anchored in the Simpson Bay and Joel and Lynn could easily go with the dinghy to the sports bar to watch the Packers game on Saturday night.

Having had my whole life problems with saying good bye I stayed on the boat when Jacques brought our guests to land. We had a very good time and thanks again for the visit!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now we are preparing to leave for St. Barths tomorrow morning, shopping and going to the internet café to post all our news. The telephones don’t seem to work here, so we have not had any contact with anybody, but I will try this afternoon to get also to Facebook.

Everybody, have good times, talk to you from the next island, Ria

Lynn and Joel 's visit

Today is Jan. 16 and Joel and Lynn have left St. Maarten for home, we had a wonderful 10 days, a lot of laughs and very good scrabble games; I am pretty sure in the end the girls beat the boys!!!!

But let me first tell about our trip from St. Thomas to Virgin Gorda, BVI. We had a wonderful sail trip, one of the nicest of our whole journey and anchored off the Bitter End Yacht Club where we had a fantastic dinner. The day after, we left at 14:00 h for St. Martin. We had the wind on the nose so we had to motor sail and tack all the 80 miles. 

After about 8 hours the reef line got caught in the wind generator propeller and when we made a tack it ripped the post off the arch. After tying it to the arch we could continue our nightly sail but a few hours later we had an alarm on the port engine. We switched the motor off and sailed with only the stb engine until the motor had cooled off. After starting the port engine the alarm went off immediately again so we continued with only one engine running. When it became light we could see that a line was caught in the propeller.

To make sure everything comes in 3’s a block of the head sail broke; it was so wild that Jacques had to attach himself with a life line to go to the front of the boat and change the broken part. After 24 hours we dropped the anchor in Marigot Bay and were very, very happy we arrived safely. (Always nice to be able to say this).

Joel tried and tried to get the line free from the propeller, but he could not stay long enough under water without the use of air. A day later we hired a diver to free the line, Jacques found a welder to repair the wind generator post and the following day, when Lynn and Joel went for a dive trip, Jacques (and Ria!!) installed the generator again. We were back in business.

The next day we sailed around the island and anchored in Great Bay on the Dutch side to visit Philipsburg, the capital of the Dutch part of the island. This a typical cruise ship harbor, LOTS of jewelry, watches etc. stores and after the cruise ships left it was awfully quiet. We were anchored in the middle of the harbor and became the goal and turning point for all the water scooters, nice for them, less interesting for us.

I will soon talk about our last days in St. Maarten. A lot of hello’s and good feelings, Ria

Visitors

Lynn and Joel arrived on Thursday afternoon, we had sailed to a bay next to the airport, so Jacques could pick them up with the dinghy. After at least 10 days of blowing winds, the forecast spoke about calming winds and waves, so we decided to leave the next day immediately for Virgin Gorda. It turned out to be on of the best sailing days we have had, motors off and just flying in the wind, wonderful!!!

This morning they went of for a dive and we are preparing for the overnight trip to St. Maarten, it will not be so peaceful as yesterday (wind on the nose), but we will get there. The internet is not so good, so I hope to talk  to you all from St. Maarten. 

Greetings from the four of us, Ria