A day spent in and around Nelson’s Dockyard, in English Harbour. We are so glad we came in here (and managed to get a berth). It is an iconic part of Antigua and of the Antigua sailing scene. We spent some of the day meandering around the buildings in the dockyard and some of the day looking at amazing yachts. They have created a good museum in the centre which gives excellent background on what went on here in the past. This was a great opportunity for Dunx and KK to do some onshore exploration.

In the evening we went up to the Sunday night Jump Up at Shirley Heights – what an absolutely fantastic evening. Quite spectacular views down over the two harbours (Falmouth and English) with the tall ships all lit up, and a beautiful place to watch the sun set. They had a steel band playing, followed by a reggae band – great music, dancing, food, drink – all in all a really fun last night for D&KK.

This morning we watched the start of the Caribbean 600. The winds were pretty high so it was a really thrilling start with some amazing high performance sailing, and some very impressive boats.

D&KK have now headed back to Boston via Miami, and we are back to just two of us rattling around on Barracuda. It has been a lot of fun having them on board and it has given us good reason to explore Antigua in more detail than we might have done otherwise. We will definitely make a stop here if we come back through the islands.

We have quite a nice social group developing with our various neighbours. One (Dutch) boat did the ARC with us this year. One (German) did the ARC last year. There are also various other boats we crossed with who are now here for the Caribbean 600 race. Apparently many do the transatlantic circuit every year – summer in the Solent, winter in the Caribbean – and probably a few other places in between.

We think we will stay here for a couple more days. We have a couple of technical repairs to do, including the outboard, and the wind is howling, so we will use some downtime profitably.