Will
02/24/2011, Falmouth Harbor, Antigua, West Indies

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.

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Will
02/08/2011, Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, West Indies

We've been in Rodney Bay now for about a week. Unfortunately we are now having to stay till Sunday because of some rather large seas in the passage between here and Martinique (see the Passage Weather link). So I guess we have some quality (and unwanted) time in St. Lucia. Not that we don't like St. Lucia, but after staying upwards of a month here, it'd be nice to go see some other islands in the Caribbean.

Today we went shopping at the malls in 'town'. We were running kind of low on food, so it was important to go shopping. We also managed to pick up some other essentials (ok, maybe they weren't essential, but they were important). Now we'll just hang out around here and maybe go on some inland tours.

It's important for us to try and explore the Caribbean with out rushing because we don't want another last summer. So being stuck here rather bothersome when we could be exploring Martinique or Dominica.

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Will
02/01/2011, La Marin, Martinique, France, West Indies

You may think from the title of this blog that in the last few days we've traversed almost 3,000 n.m. and returned to the Mediterranean in the wrong season. The fact is, is that while we are indeed in France, France was one of the more fortunate European countries and managed to hold on to some of their Caribbean territories.

We've been in Martinique now for 3 days. The first night we spent out at anchor after a semi-rough passage up the "milk run of the Caribbean." The passage from Pigeon Island (St. Lucia) to Martinique is supposedly a wonderful passage with winds either behind or on the beam. We hit the bad day (go figure) and it was upwind most of the way.

The next day (yesterday) we came in to the marina to prepare for a mass repair project. It turned out that instead of repairing everything, we scrapped most of the repair list for a later time. Today we planned to move out to anchor again, but got waylaid when my dad decided to go to Le Lamentin to try and get our computer keyboard fixed. That turned out to be not a total wast of time (they said 'no'), but close to it.

This will be our third night in Martinique and hopefully our last in the marina. We don't have a real clear idea of where we are going next, but we are eventually going to visit the east coast (it looks very protected).

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Will
01/27/2011, Rodney Bay Marina, St. Lucia,West Indies

We plan to head out to Martinique tomorrow. We met up with Ouma today, who are friends that we met in Marmaris, so it is too bad that we are leaving tomorrow because they are going south. We hope to go to La Marin (I think it`s called that) because of repair facilities. Fort-de-France is the capitol and the largest city on Martinique, but we`ve heard that La Marin has good facilities (and I don`t mean toilets!).

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Will
01/26/2011, Rodney Bay Marina, St. Lucia, West Indies

We left St. Vincent about 3 days ago. It was a rough passage. We got hit by a gigantic squall and winds got up to 35 knots. The winds otherwise weren't too bad -- about 20 knots. We were going to go to Vieux Fort, but decided to go to Soufriere instead. We got to Soufriere, but only checked in there because it is under the Pitons and everything under the Pitons is expensive. The Pitons are two large, dramatic peaks on the south-west side of the island. A lot of the tourism is focused there. Then we went to Marigot Bay and spent the last 2 nights there. Now we're in Rodney Bay, the beginning of our Caribbean cruises and the end of our Atlantic crossing. It's also the start of another section in our exploration of the Caribbean. If you want to go that route, it's also the place where we (supposedly, I wasn't paying real close attention) decided to end our trip and go to Seattle after Panama.

For now, however, we plan to go to Martinique tomorrow. We have repairs to do, so we'll likely stay there for a few days. After that, we'll probably head north, but I don't know. We have a friend coming in soon, so we may hang around here.

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Will
01/21/2011, Admiralty Bay, Bequia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, West Indies

From Chatham Bay, we made it to Canouan. We did not originally intend to go to Canouan, but as the winds were up and the seas uncomfortable, we decided to split up the 26 n.m. journey to Bequia. Canouan was a nice island, for no particular reason. It is just like every other Caribbean island, but its quaintness, I guess, is what makes it so nice. We anchored in the considerably rolly anchorage right in the middle of the mooring field. They were well spaced, though, so it wasn't much of an issue.

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