Trapped in Antigua..?

After our last post we assumed that we’d be on our way by now (8^th Feb as I write). Sadly no! The wind has still been howling, the seas have been up and the rain has been hammering down. Added to this the Atlantic rowers arriving in Antigua have reported the toughest year in the history of the event, with extremely difficult conditions as they approached the West Indies. So, we are – as regular readers may expect by now – still in exactly as the same place as when we arrived.

Nevertheless there are worse places to be ‘trapped’ than Antigua.

Back to this blog: we always intended this one to be a bit more of a reality check…  So what’s been happening? It appears that the United States has had a very ‘weird’ winter. The result of this is that low pressure systems and associated fronts have been forming quite a long way south and have impacted the Bahamas and the Lesser Antilles; meaning we can’t get north very easily to St Martin. I’m pleased about our decisions regarding passage making though. After our friend Steve had so many issues the other week, we heard, yesterday, of a boat coming from the British Virgin Islands south to St Martin. They got hit by lightning which knocked out all their electronics and then they were knocked about in associated squalls. Personally, I like to take it as safely as possible and I’m prepared to wait – even if the mate gets itchy feet.

Up until the latest difficult weather, Falmouth harbour had plenty of room for boats to anchor, but since the last forecast was for rain and wind from the west with swells and squalls, everyone and their grandmother has arrived. Stargazer is anchored, well dug in, in six metres of water with 35 metres of chain out, nicely snubbed and we had plenty of swinging room. Not now, sadly, all and sundry have arrived and, in particular, we are surrounded by Norwegian boats seemingly all travelling together and all with kids – nice..! Not only that, Stargazer’s swinging room has been drastically reduced by their proximity, especially given the wind has been coming from all directions. I do wish people would do at least a basic sailing course before they were let loose…

Sitting in Antigua it’s all very easy to describe our voyage in happy terms and there are many great times, but it’s also important to add in some of the more mundane realities. The mate and I have been chatting about our future plans and although we both agree that living in a small space with mostly only the two of us for company on relatively expensive islands whilst living on a budget (especially with rubbish weather) is an occasional test of any relationship, overall boat life seems OK for us. In terms of where we are in the world; after being in the Eastern Caribbean for nearly a year now, we both agree that picture postcard weather and holidays are not real it at all. It is a far tougher life than we thought it would be – the islands, sailing wise, are pretty busy and there are a lot of charter boats around. The weather has not been ‘as advertised’ for sailing most of the time and although it is generally hot and pretty sunny, when it rains, it RAINS! Squalls tend to come at nights, which upset sleep and as I’ve mentioned before, the mate does like her sleep… The weather this year, agreed by longer term Caribbean cruisers, has been very odd. It may be something to do with the change to El Niño from La Niña but whatever it is, it’s been a tricky year.

So, where does that leave us? Well, numerous factors mean that we are committed to staying in the Eastern Caribbean until early next year, by which time we’ll have been in the Caribbean for nearly two years. We both agree that if the overall experience over the coming months is the same as it has been since we arrived, then it will be time for pastures new.

All that said, we are looking forward to seeing (hopefully still St Martin) and sailing back down the island chain over the spring and early summer.

For now, we have a couple more days of rain, difficult wind directions and a busy anchorage where we’ll have to remain onboard and vigilant. Then, it may, MAY, be possible to fit in St Martin for a week or two prior to returning to Antigua for the arrival of my in-laws. The mate is very much looking forward to their arrival and it would be bad passage planning, in the extreme, for us to get ‘stuck’ up in St Martin..!

Endnote: At 1530 today (8^th Feb) whilst I was typing, the mate reported that an abandoned boat ahead was now too close to our bow. I’d been aware of this boat since we arrived as she usually sat on our port side, a decent distance away, of course. However, the mate was right, she was too close! I couldn’t easily drop back as this would make Stargazer too close to some of the aforementioned Norwegians. So, with the help of our mate Steve’s dinghy (conditions were a bit lively to use Pierre) I went over to the abandoned boat, got onboard and saw that the anchor chain was simply looped around a bow cleat – that was it! So I tied a line to its chain, led it to one of the cockpit winches and heaved in some chain. I left the line I’d put on on the winch and then tied another line to the chain which I tied off on the opposite bow cleat. At least this would mean that the chain wouldn’t run out over the bow and she wouldn’t drop back any further for that reason. At that point one of the Norwegians came over so I politely asked him to go and tell his friend on the Norwegian boat just off our starboard quarter that we were going to let out more anchor chain on Stargazer. Returning to Stargazer, and with the help of the mate, I let out another seven metres of chain – which is all we could sensibly do given the proximity of all the Norwegian boats around us. At least this meant that we were now a little further away from the abandoned boat! Phew – what a palaver…

Well, that wasn’t quite the endnote! The reason for the delay in posting this blog (it is now Saturday 10^th Feb) is that on the night of the 8^th/9^th (after the mate and I had sat up waiting for the wind to change which would swing us towards from the abandoned boat, which hadn’t happened so we went to bed) the wind got up, it was pretty squally, and I was awoken quite suddenly about 0130. I looked out and saw my worst fear about the abandoned boat. It had dragged further and had hit us on the starboard quarter. I rushed on deck and pushed off its pulpit – the wind, thankfully was calmer by then but it was still raining. I woke the mate and we checked for damage; luckily the only damage to Stargazer was some scratching to the starboard solar panel (which I had thoughtfully folded down, in case this very thing happened). However, with the mate and I pushing the abandoned boat (she is called Calima) off we had to think quick. I was able to pull up some of our anchor chain, maybe 10m, which had the effect of leaving Calima 2m to 3m or so astern of us but as we were penned in by the Norwegians there was no way we could leave and Calima was still far too close especially with shifting winds. It was now around 0230 and so we did the only thing we could do and entered into our offshore watch system with one of us trying to get some ‘sleep’ and one of us on deck. I’d checked the weather forecast and the wind was forecast to change direction in our favour by early light and so we sat there and waited. By about 0800 the wind had come round and I could see that we could actually extract ourselves from the anchorage. With the mate at the windlass and me at the helm, off we went, however, the mate reported that the windlass was working far too hard. We switched places and I could see the chain had jammed underneath the gypsy. I bashed it off with the clutch handle and eventually got the chain up to a point where extracting the anchor proved very tough indeed. After many weeks of pretty windy weather the anchor was very well dug in!  I locked the chain off and told the mate to motor gently ahead. This had the effect of freeing the anchor from the seabed and up it came. Motoring off we saw that a few boats had left the harbour and there was a nice big gap near our friend Steve. We dropped anchor in about 6m and sat back in a westerly wind, which was supposed to be a north easterly! A few hours later, the wind came round to the NE and there we were – maybe a little too close to a racing boat on a mooring on this angle, but I deemed it ‘OK enough’. The wind isn’t forecast to change direction and here we will stay until we get some rest, stock up with the usual food water etc. What next? We’re not really sure yet. It might be possible to get to Saint Martin, but there is another front on the longer range forecast and I don’t fancy being up there if it comes. Steve has hired a car and the mate and I are sharing it. We’re off to a massive supermarket in St John’s – I suspect the mate will decide if it is an adequate place to stock up and, if it is, it will affect our decisions on what to do next.

Wait… there was a further delay in posting this blog. During the night of the 9^th/10^th all the boats in the harbour swung round to the prevailing wind direction. As some had anchored that way in the first place and some had anchored (including us) when the wind was in the opposite direction distances between boats became suspect as we straightened out our anchor chains. We would have had no issue, except a new arrival had anchored pretty close to our port side, just before the wind changed direction. This meant that we were definitely too close on the morning of the 10^th. As they weren’t onboard we had no option but to move, again. We had arranged with Steve to share a car and go to a few megastores in the middle if the island, but we had to re-anchor (again) first. I’ll cut a long story short, but after the chain jamming on the windlass a couple of times and the mate being sent to the wheel in very gusty conditions (which did her nerves no good at all [especially as the anchor freed itself from the seabed on a particularly strong gust just as a large catamaran was steaming past which reduced my wriggle room even further! Said catamaran then started to anchor in the spot we were about to return to after re-approaching, but was then hailed by a neighbour saying they were over his anchor chain. We had pottered over to another prospective spot which looked a bit close to a shallow sandy patch and saw the catamaran had disappeared (hoorah!) so returned to our original location but the wind was still up. Given the choice of wrestling with the misbehaving windlass or being at the wheel fighting to keep SG head to wind I had a bit of a crisis of confidence and meltdown! - Mate] I called Steve over. He arrived in his dinghy, jumped onboard and I asked him to take the wheel. After a fight with the jammed chain I got us into a spot where we could drop the anchor, the wind by now blowing pretty hard. The procedure here is to just let the bow blow off as you pay out chain. Steve, who does it differently on his boat, decided to go hard astern, thus making a right mess out of things with our method. Another stab at it proved successful, which it had to be, as by now the mate was near to exploding… Once settled we took relevant transits and once satisfied, we headed off to Steve’s hire care and the shops (but that, is a whole other story).

In the meantime: Caribbean – where is your nice weather?!! The mate is hoping that the next “Have you been mis-sold something” drive will be “Have you been miss-sold Caribbean cruising weather?” She will be at the front of the queue!