'...beep..beep..beep...'. It was still dark and I had no time to look at the clock. Hatches open, on deck, and we were alongside a 45 foot catamaran, about one metre away. It was a miracle we had not collided. A leap to the engine controls, engine on, and instantly motoring away to relative safety. Looking behind me I saw the cliff wall about 20 metres away and gratefully getting further away. The swell was now from the northwest and boats appeared everywhere in the shadows. I could hear shouting in the distance from another few boats also in unlucky positions, with problems unknown. Tracey pulled up the anchor and within less than a minute we were on our way out to sea for safety. Our anchor chain had fouled itself in the night by us swinging around in circles and had pulled itself out of the seabed. Prior to starting the engine, we had moved a further 55 metres from our anchor point! Glad to be in the safety of the sea again, we headed straight for Antigua. And..oh yes..it was absolutely tipping down with torrential rain from the moment we were on deck, in the dark, for a good hour longer. Once we had sorted ourselves out, packed anchoring gear away, and settled down for the long trip, into wind, into the swell, we checked on the time; 7-10 am! We estimate that we had left at about 5-30 am. The trip to Antigua was uneventful for the rest of the day but was an awful sail. With the bow into waves and wind all day, we had no option but to motorsail again (rare for us). At one point in the day, we were only making 1.5 knots headway and depression was clearly setting in. With the only escape options, given that the overnight anchorage was no longer tenable, being to return due south to The Saintes (40Nm), or west to Montserrat (the volcano here keeps exploding!), we had to press on, so we did. The sea state was quite bad with several waves reaching 20 feet high and not what we expected on this trip at all, the wind also hovering frequently above 25 knots. Tracey and I were both dressed from head to toe in our Musto foul weather gear, lifejackets, and clipped on to the boat, and were totally drenched when we finally reached the very welcoming safety of Falmouth Harbour, Antigua, last night at about 9pm where we are now drying out! A good curry, good night's sleep, and a smooth check in with Customs this morning, all great. On reaching the dockside in English Harbour this morning for coffee, there were several small, high tech looking, rowing boats. They had left La Gomera in the Canary Islands on the 9th December, last year, and had just arrived... I think we had a cushy trip yesterday compared to some people's experiences over the past 3 months!