When you’re on an island as pretty as Antigua, it’s hard not to get caught up in taking photographs. I noticed yesterday while sorting through our albums that we had amassed quite a few, more in fact than would be practical to share on this blog. If you’re the type who loves beautiful island scenes as much as we do, please take a few moments to check out the larger-sized photos that we posted on the Zero To Cruising Facebook Page. As always, you need not be a Facebook member to view the pics on our page.
Have a favorite one? Please let us know!
Not that we’re trying to make a habit out of this work thing but Rebecca and I decided to put in a few more hours yesterday, ticking off some boat tasks. While she took on the job of polishing all of the stainless steel on the boat, a time consuming but important job, protecting the metal against one of our arch enemies, rust, I decided to do a bit of preventative maintenance on our lifelines, taking on the other villain, chafe.
It’s important to keep the rust at bay.
Long time readers may recall that almost two years ago I replaced our stainless steel lifelines with Amsteel, one of the newer hi-tech lines that are available. There was some concern amongst readers at the time that the line would be susceptible to chafe and/or UV degradation. While I can’t very easily ascertain what, if any, damage the sun has done to the line, I can check on the chafe issue.
Because the main chafe points are where the line runs through the stanchions, I decided to shift each lifeline an inch or so towards the stern so that a new piece of line would be running through the holes. I could also then see how much of a problem chafe actually is. I began by drawing a pencil mark on the lifeline on each side of a stanchion. I then eased the lashing by the bow, adding a bit of slack until the pencil marks were clear. When the opposite end was then trimmed in, the lifeline shifted aft, exposing each section that had been inside the stanchions. Having now done so, in my opinion, the chafing of the line is negligible, which is as I expected because Amsteel is promoted to be both chafe and UV resistant. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy about that.
Even though the knots holding the lashing together have not come loose in all this time, I decided to put a few more points in the Black Box by lock-stiching them together with some waxed whipping twine that I had on hand. My sewing job may look a bit like the stitches on Frankenstein’s monster’s face but the lashings sure won’t be coming undone without my wanting them to.
It’s a good thing that Amsteel is slippery or I never
would have been able too untie the knots on the lashings.
You can see the tiny bit of chafe to the left of the stanchion where the line is discolored.
Almost as nice as the stitches on Frankenstein’s monster’s face, a movie which coincidentally, we watched just the other day.
While it would be great if life could be all fun and games, every once in a while we do have to force ourselves to do something productive. Yesterday was that “once in a while” and we officially declared it a work day, or at least, a work morning.
I’m not sure where all the dirt and grime tends to originate but a good cockpit scrubbing was well overdue. Rebecca tackled that task as she does any other, with full conviction, and after several hours of scrubbing, the entire area, including the cockpit cushions and sunscreens, is near spotless.
While she was immersed in that, I set out to install some new LED lights that we had picked up in St. Maarten. While we love the lights that we installed from Bebi Electronics, we wanted a couple of other ones situated a bit further forward in the salon to illuminate our Kindles
As most regular readers know, prior to heading south, Rebecca and I ran a martial arts gym. Outside of that line of work, the only other job that I have had as an adult is installing alarm systems, which I did for a few months straight out of college. Now to be honest, my job there was really that of an assistant, and I spent most of my time running wires through confined spaces. Which makes it ironic that the most difficult part of the entire installation yesterday was running one wire down the inside of our mast’s compression post. Sadly, I did not have a fish tape on board to help with the job so I had to improvise and use some heavy gauge wire. When I did actually get around to pulling the lights’ power wire through the post, I planned ahead and ran a messenger line along side it so that, if I ever need to repeat that task, it will be there to help.
Outside of that post, the rest of our boat is super easy to run wires around and thus the remainder of the installation went extremely quickly. I am happy to report that the lights both look, and function great, and they made reading last night much more pleasant.
High Power means very bright, not that they use a lot of power, relatively speaking.
Because I wanted to make sure of the placement of the lights before I started drilling any holes, I rigged up an extension cable that I could plug into the 12 volt receptacle to temporarily power them.
The cabin top comes down easily by removing a bunch of Philips-head screws. The vertical grey post that you see behind the orange drill was the source of some colorful language!
All installed, just waiting for darkness.
Perfect!
They even add a nice glow to our disco ball, don’t you think?
Speaking of lights, I still can’t believe that some boats do not keep an anchor light on at night. Before super-efficient LED lights became readily available, there might almost have been an argument against keeping a light on for those ships on a tight energy budget. Today’s LEDs draw only a fraction of an amp though. I think the one we installed from Bebi Electronics draws in the neighborhood of 0.1 amps per hour. That is nothing! There is a little dark-hulled boat near us now, anchored way out in the open, that keeps absolutely no lights on at night. I don’t think I’d be sleeping too soundly like that.
If you are one of the few people who pay any attention to our Spot track, you may have noticed that we anchored in St. John’s harbor for a little while yesterday. As I already mentioned, St. John’s is the capital city of Antigua and it’s also where all of the visiting cruise ships dock. We had read that this is not an anchorage where a lot of cruisers tend to drop the hook and our experience confirms that. There was only one other boat, a nice ketch, anchored near the shore when we arrived there and he remained the only other boat when we left. There were however, 3 extremely large cruise ships moored to the city docks.
We have had a bit of experience showing up to ports where cruise ships have been docked so we pretty much knew what we were in for. As expected, there were thousands of guests from the boats wandering amongst the shops, with countless taxi drivers vying for the opportunity to whisk them away to a nearby beach. Although I don’t think that we look, or dress, like the average cruise ship passenger, we were still required to give a polite “no thank you, we’re good” to a driver every few minutes. I actually struck up a brief conversation with one of the guys and told him that we were on a yacht, not on one of the ships. He suggested that we get one of the colored wrist bands that they pass out as ID at resorts to help keep the drivers at bay. I have a better idea but I need an artist to draw up a simple design for me. Any illustrators out there care to do a bit of pro bono work?
The ship beside us was blasting out some nice steel pan music. Very relaxing.
I had originally thought that these yellow buoys were showing where submerged wrecks were located. I now am pretty sure that they were designating the turning basin for the large ships (good thing as there would have been a lot of wrecks down there if it were the other). We tend to stay away from marks like that anyway, regardless of what they’re for.
I’m pretty glad that she’s not underway right now!
Nice name. We have a lot of friends who would probably feel quite at home in a place like this.
I have had a craving for pizza for some time now.
Since we have had three gold star days in a row, we decided to treat ourselves to lunch.
A bit too close to the cruise ship dock though, which means that it was pricey ($9.00 EC for a Carib? Come on!). It was tasty though and the service was good.
We love to explore old ruins and forts. Perhaps that’s because we come from Kingston, where Fort Henry sit’s proudly on Lake Ontario’s coast. Or more likely, it’s just the inner child in us that still longs to play Hide and Seek. One thing that differs greatly when it comes to exploring places like this down here is that, in the islands, we seldom see the protective barriers and signs telling us to Keep Off that would be all-too-common in North America. Nope, if you want to take a header off a high wall down here, that’s entirely up to you!
Yesterday morning we raised anchor and moved a few miles north to anchor in Deep Bay, just south of St. John’s, the capital city of Antigua. High on the hill overlooking the bay is Fort Barrington which, the website says, is the only fort in Antigua to have seen military action. Fortunately these days, the only thing being shot up there are photographs, and for good reason, there sure is a beautiful view from the top!
Can you pick out ZTC in the above photo?
We go to great lengths to snap some of these pics!
It’s been far too long since we’ve had the chance to go hashing, that fun bit of alcohol-spiced exercise that we had grown so fond of in Grenada. Unfortunately, there just aren’t hash groups active on all the islands down here. There is a group on St. Kitts and we had hoped to participate in one of their events when we were on the island, but sadly they only run them every 3 weeks and we had just missed one. Now in Antigua though, where they also have an active hashing group, we were determined not to miss out again. We posted on their Facebook page looking for details and possibly transportation and it took only about half a day for us to get a reply with the offer of a ride. From who? From Jose, the sister of our friend George, our hashing buddy in Grenada who used to drive us to the events there! How’s that for it being a small world?
Given that the only place we have ever hashed is Grenada, we were quite curious to see how the event here would compare. To start, the terrain is much different and thus we were spared most of the mud and all of the super-steep hills that we were forced to claw our way up each week in Grenada. In spite of that, Goldilocks, the hashmaster, set a fun trail with lots of checkpoints to keep everyone guessing. I also fell victim to his lie that it would be a short hash and that there would be no hills. I definitely should have known better. I guess hashmasters the world over lie about stuff like that!
Waiting at Jolly Harbor for Jose to pick us up.
Goldilocks, the hashmaster, telling us lies, I mean, telling us about the hash.
Looking for the trail at one of the check points.
There was quite a bit of road running on this hash.
Is that just a normal blob of paper, an X or what?
The pack hangs back by one of the check points.
Off-road again.
This was a textbook example of why you don’t take shortcuts. This guy, when taking the direct route off the trail, fell face first into a hole, disappearing completely while everyone nearby watched.
It was awesome!
Running with the goats?
Beautiful scenery everywhere!
Is this post hash? It can’t be… where’s all the mud?
A pic with a few of the front runners.
A Beer Bus! What an awesome idea… a mobile bar for the hashes!
What is Goldilocks looking at?
If you’ve ever been to a hash, you can imagine where this is going.
All beer not consumed by the end of the song must be…
…poured on your head!
Falling in the hole while taking a short cut wasn’t enough.
He was also punished with a Down Down for his infraction.
Yes, you!
One more bit of advice… don’t brag to others while running the hash
that you are doing so in new shoes!
Although the vast majority of our navigating is done with the aid of the Garmin 546
A screen capture of Polar View running on my Macbook Pro.
Curious to see how that would work, I visited their site and saw that they offered a free 30-day trial. I have since downloaded the application and have been playing with it. I’m also taking advantage of the relatively-strong Wi-Fi signal being shared by the 5-star resort just in front of us to download the Active Captain data. I can’t wait to experiment with this some more, when we’re not out enjoying the beautiful island of Antigua that is.
We spent a couple of days anchored just outside Jolly Harbor and we’ll be moving back there a bit later today so that we can meet up with a new friend to go hashing.
It seems we just can’t get away from all these rainbows… they keep following us!
Out walking around one day we learned a new fact… Antiguans drink Cavalier Rum.
We didn’t know that.
On this same walk we went for a little tour of the Jolly Beach all-inclusive resort. Remember the other day how I said that the Customs and Immigration people should be a little more friendly towards the tourists? Well I think they should take lessons from the guard working the gate at this resort! Not only was he doing his job of controlling who went in and out of the resort, he was also doing a great job of acting as a salesperson, inquiring on a couple of occasions about when we were going to be booking in to stay at their lovely resort. Jolly Beach… he deserves a raise!
Right now we are anchored in Hermitage Bay, just in front of the beautiful 5-star Hermitage Bay resort. Check out their rates… OUCH!
We did have this guy as a neighbor. Someone should tell him that leaving fenders down while at anchor is a bit of a faux pas.
Yesterday we went in search of the illusive (to us anyway) Eden beach.
For privacy reasons, there are no cameras allowed on that beach but I was able to discreetly snap this pic of Rebecca practicing with her Poi.
When we returned to ZTC, we found that fender-boy had left and in his place were two other Canadian-flagged PDQs, Double Exposure and Zanadu Sea! We think it only appropriate that we re-name this place PDQ Bay. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
When I first wrote about Antigua, I commented that their promotional material says that the island has 365 beaches, one for every day of the year. As someone else wrote, they may have used some creative mathematics to come up with that figure, but with that said, there’s obviously still enough beaches that Rebecca and I could mistake one for another.
For the last couple of days, the two of us have been bouncing back and forth between the Five Islands area and Jolly Harbor, right next door. Today we decided to enjoy the sunshine a bit, our intention being to head to Eden Beach on Hawks Bill Bay which, according to our chart, is right around the corner from where we are anchored. For those familiar with the area, this is Antigua’s clothing-optional beach and we were looking forward to erasing some of our tan lines.
After packing a lunch and a few cold beverages, Rebecca and I hopped in the dinghy to zip over there. By the way, I’ve mentioned in the past how important we feel it is to have a dinghy that is powerful enough to plane. The beach we were headed to was 1-2 miles away. In our current dinghy “zipping over there” is no problem. With our old 4 HP engine we likely wouldn’t have even considered it. Anyway, once we rounded the point heading out of Five Islands Bay, our only problem was that we couldn’t quite tell which beach was Eden. As it turns out, we picked an entirely different one in Pinching Bay and as luck would have it, we had this particular stretch of sand all to ourselves for the entire day! That’s right… the only visitors who happened upon us were some wild (I assume) goats, and we were happy to share with them. How cool is that, having your very own beach?
Hawk’s Bill Rock. We think it looks more like a frog than a Hawk’s Bill.
We of course had to bring along our RumShopRyan koozies to keep our drinks cold.
Our only visitors.
By mid-afternoon we’d had our fill of sun though, and so decided to hop back in the dinghy to do a bit more exploring. This, unfortunately, was not to be without a bit of a challenge. I’m not sure if all the readers will remember the Tom Hanks movie Castaway where a lone Fed-Ex employee is “shipwrecked” (plane wrecked actually) on a deserted island. At one point in the movie he builds himself a raft and tries to escape the island by paddling it out beyond the reef. The breaking waves have something to say about that though and end up trashing his raft, injuring him in the process.
In the above clip he actually makes it out, barely!
Although not quite to that extent, yesterday, and several other times like it, we have been faced with a similar challenge. Because there is a fairly large swell running right now, the waves breaking onto the beach were, at times, large enough to “mess us up.” At one point in the day I stopped at just the wrong spot, looking back at Rebecca on the shore. By the time she got my attention directing me to look over my shoulder, I got smashed by a wave taller than my head, flipping me end over end back to the beach. Fortunately the only casualty of that incident was my sunglasses which are now forever damned to the deep I’m afraid. It did however emphasize that we’d have to play our cards right to get out of there without flipping the dinghy. After studying the wave pattern for a considerable period of time while poised at the shoreline, Rebecca and I picked just the right moment to make a mad dash into the water, dragging the dinghy beside us, until we were just beyond the danger area. We were fortunate in that we made the whole thing look simple. It could just as easily have turned out ugly if our timing was off.
Yeah, that one hurt!
After scanning the coast a bit north of where we were, and finding the actual Eden Beach, we headed back to Five Islands Bay. In the distance we could see a tower which we have come to learn is part of the remains of an old leper colony. With a bit more daylight still remaining, Rebecca and I thought that exploring the tower might be fun. We proceeded to land our dinghy along another of the 365 beaches, this one without a huge swell, and set off on foot, searching for a trail. When one wasn’t immediately apparent, we asked a lone gentleman who was lying in the shade on the beach. As it turns out, Keatly is a local fisherman who was tending the net that he had set in front of the beach. He explained to us that there was no easy way to get to the tower from where we were but he did take us for a walk to show us why. We came to see that there is a large pond in between that beach and the ruins that we wanted to visit. After giving us a bit of a wet tour, he then proceeded to explain how we could actually go about getting there by walking on a trail beginning elsewhere. Where does the trail begin? Back on the beach we spent the day on! Oh well, I guess we’ve got another reason to go back there.
Flip flops were not ideal for this walk!
When we first checked into the United States after leaving Canada, the customs agent that we spoke to was most concerned that we didn’t have a telephone. Of course we did have telephones, back in Canada that is, but they would have been prohibitively expensive to use outside the country so we ditched them. That caused the officer a lot of stress. How could we possibly not have a phone?
As we came to learn, having a phone in the US was pretty much going to be a necessity due to the numerous times we would be required to call the Homeland Security people to check in as we moved from port to port, so as such, we picked up a pay-as-you-go TracFone. And this worked pretty well for the most part while we were in the US. We found that it also functioned in the USVI and in Puerto Rico. Outside the American territories though, it was useless. And so, we lived without a phone, all the way to Grenada.
We had been advised by our friends to pick up an inexpensive (inexpensive in case it got lost in the drink), unlocked phone that we could add local SIM (Subscriber Identity Module — I’m not that smart… I had to look up what SIM stood for) cards to. And we intended to, but just never got around to it. On the rare occasions that we needed to call someone, we just used Skype. Shortly before we were to leave Grenada though, our good friend and fellow-hasher George gave us a Nokia telephone. It had belonged to his young daughter but since she had recently upgraded, it wasn’t needed. Yes, we get hand-me-downs from kids now. Anyway, this free phone has served us well, and in islands where we plan to stay for some time, such as Antigua, we can purchase an inexpensive local SIM card with a bit of prepaid time so that it’ll work. Because it’s not unlocked, we do need to deal with Digicel, but that has proven to be fine up to this point. Isn’t technology wonderful?
On a more nautical note, here is a quick video of us sailing to windward between St. Martin, which you can see in the distance, and St. Barths. It was not a good time to be suntanning on the trampoline!
On the day that we hiked to the top of the Mt. Liamuiga, our driver Everton was playing the part of tour guide, telling us about the island of St. Kitts. He was explaining how the sugar industry has all but disappeared from his island with tourism now accounting for the majority of their income. I assume this is a similar situation to what is occurring in most Caribbean islands. Tourism = dollars! With that said, it’s time to stop the madness.
Tourism offices really need to have a “sit down” with the Customs and Immigration people and explain to them that they represent the all-important first impression that tourists have of their island. Good impressions = more tourists and more dollars spent. Bad impressions = the obvious, less and less. I bring this up because so often we are met with stone-faced government employees who seem to be trying extra hard to appear unpleasant. Why anyone would want to do that is beyond me but it’s true.
Here is our Antigua experience (don’t worry — it’s not all bad). After reading our guidebook and determining that there is a Customs and Immigration office near the Jolly Harbor Marina, Rebecca and I anchored just outside the channel, near the other boats. As we always do, we took great care to make sure that we were secure in our chosen spot, including diving on the anchor and backing down on it to make sure that it was well set. As you might imagine, this takes a bit of time. With official documents in hand, we then left ZTC at anchor with her yellow Q flag (Quarantine flag) flying in the breeze as we went to check in. As often happens, we underestimated the size of the harbor and ended up touring all over the huge area, searching for the Customs office. We ultimately tied our tender to the first dinghy dock that we saw and then, after asking directions, ended up walking a considerable distance until we found the place. After entering the office, I presented the Customs officer with a big smile and informed her that we had just arrived and were there to check in. Her response? We were told to go back, get our boat and bring it in there and tie it up to their dock! Seriously? Yes, seriously!
Furious was probably a good way to describe my mood at the time, and it didn’t help that my blood sugar was low because I had yet to eat anything that day (as Rebecca will attest, this is never a good thing). I was convinced that the process of taking our dinghy back to our boat, raising anchor, rigging lines and fenders to go in there to check in and then reversing the procedure to re-anchor again, was going to take us about 2 hours start to finish (and I was right). Grrrr!
As it turns out, when we actually did arrive back at their dock, the three ladies that we had to fill out paper for were all very pleasant to us, including the first officer who made us move our boat. And we appreciate that. Thank you! At this point I am blaming the guidebook for not being strong enough in its wording to say that you MUST take your boat into the dock. Although it says to “head straight to customs dock,” that is pretty much what you’re supposed to do everywhere so we followed the exact same procedure that we have used in every other island that we’ve visited, but in this case, it wasn’t enough. So to be clear, if you do go to Antigua and wish to check in at Jolly Harbor, which is a nice place, you MUST take your boat in and tie it up to the Customs dock to do so (look for the large yellow flag flying in front of their office — that too is an important piece of info that would have saved us some time but was not mentioned in the guide book).
Anyway, we are checked in now and were issued a month-long cruising permit for the grand total of $30.00 EC, less than what we had to pay to stay 1 DAY in St. Barth’s. Can you believe that? I think we’re going to like this place. But tourist bureaus, please do as I suggest… have a heart-to-heart with your front-line troops. It really is important.
Be different… smile. Trust me, it won’t hurt!
