Decision Fatigue – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, February 23, 2024

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Sally

Decision Fatigue – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, February 23, 2024

We have been moving pretty quickly lately and you may be wondering why we are suddenly heading south again after all the talk of going to Brunswick, Georgia for the off season. Since our guest left, we have been spending a lot of time discussing our off season plan and what we are going to do for that 6 month period. After kicking around ideas we think we have made one of the necessary choices. We considered:

#1 – spending a month in each place we wanted to visit including Georgia, Ohio, and a couple of other states

#2 – Getting an apartment again in Ohio

#3 – Spending the off season in Georgia at a marina on the boat

#4 – Turning around, hauling out again on Grenada, and buying an RV to travel in for the next few years.

You can guess where we ended up since we have turned around. It turns out that when we consider insurance, haul out prices, storage prices for the boat, flights, and the time we have left, Grenada won out. It was cheaper there, we had flights with points, buying an RV was cheaper than rent, we could still travel (which we both wanted to do), we could easily see family more often, we only have 2 more months of sailing season, and lastly it was a La Nina year. This means hurricane season was supposed to be terrible and we didn’t want to chance leaving the boat in the water. We were only one-third of the way to Brunswick and realistically needed more time to choose the right weather to make it back to the states.

Whew! It was a lot of analyzing but we now officially have a plan and after taking the last available window to go east back to Antigua (for at least the next month), we are in a place to pull this off and set ourselves up to have some fun in the process. Neither of us loved the southern islands but we have decided to give them another try. We didn’t dislike everywhere but would be a bit more choosey about where we decided to stay and frankly slow down a bit in those better places.

We left St. John where the winds had clocked around to the south and it was so bad neither of us got any sleep but got up and left for Antigua anyway. It was the only day the weather would let us leave and we couldn’t miss it. Our weather service (Chris Parker) assured us there would not be another chance for potentially another month or more and there was no time to waste.

So, we start again in Jolly Harbor, where the best Mexican food is the southern Caribbean is! Not a bad place to be. After a few days of rest recovering from our last overnight sail this season we filled up on our required Mexican and made the small hop down to Guadeloupe and then Iles Des Saintes. We were very lucky on our sail down we saw a baby whale and he was about 5 feet from the boat! He was incredible!

Our first stop was Deshaies, Guadeloupe where they have the most beautiful botanical garden. It was home to the flamingos! We felt very lucky and have gotten to see some amazing things this week!

Land of the Mega Yachts – Barbuda Island, Antigua, January 5, 2024

Posted on January 9, 2024 by Sally

Land of the Mega Yachts – Barbuda Island, Antigua, January 5, 2024

We have a great time in the states and the reset was definitely needed. We were happy to be back and spent the first couple of days back watching fireworks and doing more work on the boat while we were still in Jolly Harbor Marina. We were able to get our friend Disco back to help with out wind sensor and he went up the mast again. Now we had our depth replaced, wind sensor fixed, and reprovisioned a nice hunk of Red Stripe to last us another little while. It was time to move on again.

Since we were in no hurry to head north and had a nice spell of very, very unusually calm weather, we decided to head over to Barbuda. It was roughly 30 miles directly east and due to this fact, very few people ever see this island. It will be a first time for us. I understand now why it is so desirable. It was stunningly beautiful! The beaches were miles long, the water was blue and clear, and it was to closest we have had to the beauty of the Bahamas since the Exumas.

We spent a couple of days snorkeling which was nice but not the best. We couldn’t help but notice how many mega yachts there are here. Somewhere in the range of 5 at all times. I have to assume it is mostly based on the proximity to St. Barts (the richest island in the Caribbean). But hey, we have never had any issues hanging out with the rich before and it was very safe.

Same view but much cheaper from Mariposa

After a nice lazy couple of days, we had made a new plan to check out hear and head to St. Barts. This required us to head to shore and visit the customs office which was located in Codrington (the only settlement on the island). We moved north about an hour and started to take the dinghy in.

Now Ron and I have done some stupid things on our sails but this one tops the charts. We knew how hard hit Barbuda was from Hurricane Irma in 2017 and that there had been a cut created in the lagoon where we could get the dingy to shore and dock. What we didn’t know is there are breaking waves across this little break and how treacherous it was to cross here to get into this lagoon which was only 3 feet deep and the largest bird sanctuary in the world. We chickened out the first time and this was only after $200EC literally blew out of Ron’s pocket. Well great hope customs doesn’t charge us to get out! When we saw another boat go and give it a try, we hoped in our dinghy to try and follow them. They ended us chickening out but we decided to give it a go and made it! Sure hope we can make it back out!

Marching to our death. No closer photos we were to scared to not hold on.

We walked around Codrington a little but honestly, there wasn’t must there and it was obvious what a total loss had happened in 2017. We successfully found the customs office and checked out. Now it was time to try and get back through the cut…uh oh.

The poverty on the islands all look the same.

The good news the trip home was uneventful and not nearly as bad as our ride to get into the dock. We were right on schedule to leave in the morning for St. Bart’s. We had a 3:00am departure and due to the unusually calm weather we had, were avoided all the shallow coral of Barbuda and were able to have a very nice downwind sail which were not used to having after beating into the wind all of last year to get to Grenada. It was going so well that we had changed our plans pretty early in the sail to keep going all the way to St. Martin. We strolled in just before sunset and just before it started to rain, picked up our mooring in Marigot Bay. It seems as if we were back in civilization here and we were a bit excited with all the good restaurants. The weather is going to keep us here for about the next week so we will settle in and enjoy!

Time for a Reset – Jolly Harbor, Antigua, December 15, 2023

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Sally

Time for a Reset – Jolly Harbor, Antigua, December 15, 2023

So lately all Ron has done is work on the boat since it seems as if everything is broken. Here’s one example, we paid someone to climb the mast for us only to find out that the spare wind sensor we had…was also broken. Well, now we get to buy a new one of those, in addition to a depth gage since ours is already 14+ years old and replace both of those…again. Not to mention the laundry list of other projects Ron has been constantly working on. At least we got the streaming light successfully replaced.

We had both been missing being home for Christmas and originally didn’t commit to being home. Well, we were going to attempt to make it to St. Marten to fly out but based on the huge north swell we have going on with 12ft seas, we decided to change our tickets and fly out directly from Jolly Harbor. This means we had two very tight layovers and went through security & Immigration 3 times but made all three flights to get home in one day. On the last leg, everyone was loaded on the plane when the captain came on and announced there was a mystery error code that they needed to fix and sadly they were not able to, so we all offloaded the plane and loaded everyone on a new one (at least they had one!). We made it to my sister’s where we were crashing for the next couple of weeks about 2:00am.

She was heading down to see my parents and we were cat sitting for the first week! The kitties were good and easy, so it was a non-event for us to manage them. They were gone the first week and then all the kids were spending Christmas together. We made a big turkey again, made a big hunt for their Christmas gifts, and a good time was had by all. We also had a chance to see all of them individually throughout the two weeks, so we got a good fill of family life again. The only downside is Ron and I both got a nice chest cold I can only assume from the airplane but at least that wasn’t COVID. We have one more week, post-Christmas, to enjoy the cold and cloudy Ohio before heading back and deciding what our continued sailing journey looks like. One suitcase full of spare parts is also going to accompany us down to the islands to help with our updates.