A pilgrimage
24 February 2011 | Falmouth Harbor, Antigua, West Indies
Will
Today we had a rough 50 n.m. passage to Antigua. It was one of those days where the hours blend to lessen the monotony (or because of the monotony!) of up, down, up, down, wave breaking, up down, up, down, etc. Now we are sitting safe at anchor in Falmouth Harbor in Antigua. We originally wanted to make English Harbor, but we were swept to leeward, and so we wanted a safe harbor on the west coast. Then we decided that motoring upwind isn't so bad, and so we made it here. We will only have a few days here, unfortunately, so we will try to make the best of that.
The reason this is a pilgrimage is because my dad has heard so much about Antigua Race Week and so he wanted to visit the 'famous' site. We haven't found it yet. [Update: we did actually find it.] But we will try to explore as many of the many anchorages in Antigua. We are trying to make St. Maarten by March 2 or 3 because of the Heineken regatta. So that is kind of limiting our time in other places.
Guadeloupe was a very big, and opinion, annoying island. Their channel that runs right down the middle of the island is just too shallow for us to go through, so we have to take the 60 n.m. route around the island. We didn't do a full circumnavigation, but came close. It's not worth it to go the additional 15 n.m. around to the exit of the river because it is the same distance to Antigua from there vs. where we left from. It was, however, a nice island with a very large supermarket and was one of the memorable occasions that we went into a marina.
Dominica is one of the most mountainous islands in the Caribbean. We took a tour there (our first one where we acted like tourists with lots of money), and found it to be a very interesting island. There are no poisonous plants or animals (don't know about bugs), and you can find the most expensive or exotic spice just growing on the side of the road. There are many rivers, which is more than you can say about any other Caribbean island. It also has 8 active volcanoes[?].
So that's about it for now. We plan to go to English Bay tomorrow, so I may blog from there. Supposedly it's really nice there.