Nelsons Dockyard is the place to be in Antigua. Sea Cloud was docked next to Nina Too. It was good to catch up with Andy, her skipper, who we’d in Corfu at the beginning of last season.
The Dockyard has been beautifully restored.
Some of the beautiful old yachts are here – Antigua race week is less than a month away.
The Sunday night BBQ at Shirley Heights was fun. The view of the anchorage at Freemans Bay, the Dockyard and Falmouth harbour was wonderful at sunset.
The Dockyard seems to be the end of many great journeys. How people paddle across the Atlantic is a mind boggling concept for us. Sea Cloud seems small at sea, but these craft?
The horns of the large boats started blowing early one morning, heralding the arrival of Chris, a South African who had just arrived after paddling his stand up paddleboard across the Atlantic, in 93 days. he’s talking about continuing around the world…
He had arrived earlier than expected to a small, but enthusiastic crowd. Seeing the 3-4m seas off the coast to Antigua we could see why he didn’t linger to arrive later in the day.
Antigua was a good place to get jobs done, our hair cut, and enjoy the Dockyard.
The view out of the hairdressers window.
It is always fun to see the items for sale in local supermarkets
The wind dropped below 30knots, and the seas below 3m, time for us to leave for Dominica.
We were met by at the mouth of Prince Rupert Bay by Cobra, who helped us with a mooring and tours. The bay is very well organised by the local group, PAYS who provide security, tours and services for the many yachts (60 in the anchorage) who visit this wonderful island.
The local town of Portsmouth is very colourful, the dogs friendly and the beach lovely.
A tour of the north of the island took us through small colourful villages, rainforests and fishing villages.
One village boast being the home of the oldest woman in the world.
We walked through the rainforest and jumped off the rocks into the Chaudiere pool
then were guided around the beautiful windswept red rock area by the resident caretaker.
David, one of Cobra’s team was our guide for an early morning tour along the Indian River, spotting many river birds, crabs and iguanas along the way.
Dominica is so green – lots of rainbows, and rain.
After a few days of sun, the rain had set in. We left Portsmouth for Roseau, the capital of Dominica hoping to do some walks.
Unfortunately, the unseasonably heavy rain made many of the walks we’d hoped to do unsafe. Our planned hiking tour out of Roseau abandoned, we pottered around the colourful town.
We’d hoped to do some walks in Guadeloupe as well, but as this was all we could see of Guadeloupe we moved on.
We thought we’d have plenty of time to explore the Caribbean slowly, but here we are with only a month before we need to be in Curacao. The sailing has been great, with Sea Cloud and crew speeding down through the Leeward Islands, with just short overnight stops before moving on to the next island. We’ll spend our last few weeks in the Grenadines and Grenada, hopefully relaxing, before our 4 day passage across to Bonaire in the ABC islands.
Cruising on Sea Cloud 