Debi and Jack sailing on SV Iroquois

We now have a tentative plan to leave in about a week, and try to make landfall in Antigua. If all goes well we should check into Jolly Harbour between the 7th and 14th of January. After exploring Antigua our plan is to make our way north through the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas, landing in Savannah or Charleston by May. Of course it's all very tentative (written in sand at low tide).

Watching the rowers get ready has provided steady entertainment. Across from us are two solo boats, one Scotland one New Zealand. Yesterday there was a lot of swearing from the New Zealand boat which might have been related to something with the watermaker. I did see them loading bottled water also as a safety precaution--and we think we have a lot of water weight!  There are lots of videographers  running around with cameras and microphones. I hope they edit out the underwear that's drying on our lifelines!  We heard that the rowers don't wear clothes because they're wet all the time but Jack had a chance meeting in the shower room with one of the support staff who has done it four times, twice with a two man boat and twice as a single. He said the single is easier because you don't have to get along with another person. He also said that they wear shorts and their skin does get raw. Jack was also able to confirm that they do have AIS, which somewhat alleviates concern about us following the same route. More and more people come everyday to see them off. As Jack says, it's a mother's nightmare.

There's been so much going on around the harbor that we haven't explored much up the mountain yet. There was a concert last night with fireworks at the end followed by Christmas songs and then rocknroll disco. This morning early the huge cruise ship left and once it was gone the quiet was noticeable. Mondays lots of things are closed so I think on Tuesday and Wednesday we'll go up the mountain and do some hiking. We want to get our last minute produce from the Saturday morning market because it seems fresher. They claim it's all picked on Friday, but that makes me wonder what they do on Sunday through Thursday. We also met a cheese vendor there so we can get some goat cheese waxed and vacuum packed which doesn't need refrigeration. We've been to the hardware and the fishing store and the supermarket. We spent most of yesterday fiddling around with lines and blocks trying to find a better way to lower the WattandSea and hold it down. After giving up last evening not satisfied, Jack woke this morning with the solution in his head. By the time I got the washing done and hung to dry he had it all set up. Hopefully it will work well at sea. We keep finding things to do before leaving.  Luckily the tasks are becoming less critical and smaller. For example, I bagged up premeasured bread dough batches in ziplocks so we can just add water and mix it in the bag. We did that on our first crossing and it worked well. We've used around 9 liters of water for washing and cooking over the last days. At that rate we would use 270 liters for 30 days. We have about 300 in our tanks. Plus we have four 5 gallon jerry cans on deck. And we plan to use salt water for washing with a final rinse of fresh water (or as they say in Europe 'sweet water'). So we have plenty of water.
It's been cool since we got here but today is sunny and hot --more like what we expected.