Anquilla, Sint Maarten & St. Martin, St. Barts (St. Bathelemy), Statia (St. Eustatius), St. Kitts (St. Christopher), Nevis, & Antigua
We caught this beautiful Mahi-Mahi while sailing on our passage from Nevis to Antigua.
Greetings friends and family from Antigua in the Leeward Islands of the Eastern Caribbean. We are safe, well and having a wonderful time. Our goal since we made the trip from Venezuela has been to spend more time in the islands that we didn't spend time in last season.
But first of all, we wanted to mention that we had our first guests onboard for a whirlwind week of cruising some of the islands. They are good friends Brad and Marilyn who have a sailboat on Lake Pepin, our old stomping grounds in Lake City, MN. They joined us in St. Martin and we covered a lot of water in a weeks time and packed in many, many activities. We sailed to Statia and dove with a dive company there. We also hiked up to the rim of the dormant Quill Volcano on Statia, then sailed to St. Barts for scuba diving and watching the mega yacht "Bucket Race". We caught a fish while underway, sailed into squalls, and made a dive at Isle Fourche to name just a few of our activities. They got a taste of the true cruising life, like meeting some of our cruising friends at the St. Martin Yacht club, hoisting the dinghy every night to prevent it from being stolen, dining '"street side" in Grand Case, having several "rolly" uncomfortable nights sleep, and last but not least not having much time to sleep, as a cruisers life begins bright and early with coffee at 7am!
Since then we have made stops in St. Kitts and Nevis to do a little island touring and biking. We have mainly been traveling by ourselves but we arrived in Antigua over a week ago to catch up with sailing friends and to watch the Annual Classic Sailboat Regatta. It is a spectacular sight to see the gaffed rigged, wooden masted, (some all-wooden) classic sailing yachts of all sizes up to 100 feet, and they are all in perfect mint condition.
Yesterday, we spotted what we believe to be humpback whales. We were sailing from Green Island off of Antigua back to Falmouth Harbor when we saw a huge splash about a 1/2 mile off our port bow. They were huge, black, with white undersides and probably 30-40 feet. They were breaching, spouting and splashing their tales. One actually surfaced directly in front of us as were sailing along and came up behind the boat and breached only about 4 boat lengths behind us. Unfortunetly we didn't have the camera out becuase it was a little rough!
We don't have much else to report, but here are just a few pictures we thought you might enjoy.
Cheeseburgers in Paradise! Jimmy Buffett was live in concert on the island of Anquilla March 24th. The venue was small, just a couple thousand crazy parrotheads, plus Jimmy was making a music video.
Lake City sailing friends Brad & Marilyn of Minnepaolis flew to St. Martin for a whirlwind-week long sailing adventure onboard Dream Chaser.
Lucia "hanging out" on top of our dive gear.
Looking out over Anse Columbier anchorage at St. Barts