We had our first encounter with a pod of whales today! Spencer said that there was a whale at one o'clock and I looked and looked and was afraid I missed it but then I went out into the cockpit while he was getting the camera and one jumped halfway out of the water and another launched himself fully out of the water, did a spin and landed joyfully on his back!!! Spencer caught one tail on film, but of course the amazing flip was only seen with my eyes! Such a fantastic experience! I called on the VHF to let the other two sailboats behind us know that we had sighted a pod and they were headed right for them!
We landed in Barbuda under serious cloud cover and had gone through a rough squall, the first ever in the Caribbean! We had had all sails flying, but made the conservative rig-saving decision to take down the main and roll in the Genny and it was not bad at all. The gusts were up to 25 but it was very rainy and of course the seas got bumpy, but it wasn't too bad. It looked much worse on radar.
Barbuda's town, Codrington, and only place to clear out after Antigua is across a very large lagoon which is accessed only over a sand dune between the anchorage and the saltwater lagoon. Yes, you can hail a water taxi on 16 but the whole trip sounds like it is about $110 US, so we the ever frugal and intrepid cruisers took everything but the two life vests and the small 2 HP Honda off the boat which is a considerable amount of stuff and hoofed the dinghy over the spit of sand. The guide says something about being able to row to the town which is all the way across the lagoon being possibly about 2 miles away, but we aren't THAT intrepid and I workout for just these sorts of occasions!
The bugaboo to start was after Spencer had filled the outboard with gas and we cast ourselves off from Vicarious as we always do with the Honda because it is usually so reliable the motor wouldn't start! We had to paddle back to the boat! It finally started after much pulling and swearing by Spencer. Actually it had been acting up recently which Spencer had just mentioned that he hoped it would heal itself without having to take it somewhere. Well it seems it has! It is starting just fine again and seems to have blown through the carburetor whatever the culprit was. Just like the air-cooled Volkswagon bugs both Spencer and I had in HS! They always seemed to heal themselves!
Now the tricky part was finding the three places on opposite ends of town where you must clear! Why do they make it so damn hard? There is no reason for it! They don't even collect money! The first place is supposed to be the Port Authority which DOES collect a few bucks for anchoring and they were supposed to be in the post office, but the post office said they weren't there and did not tell us that they are now housed in the building directly across the street from them, so we walked to immigration and she said that PA had moved to the new Tourism office where we had just been, so we went back there and all the doors were locked and so I went to the store across the street and asked if maybe they knew how to get in touch with PA and he said that there was a funeral on the island today and they were probably there. Ok, can't argue with that so we went back to immigration and told her that and she said, Ah, yes, I guess they would be closed. (Not that she could have or would have mentioned that to us before.) So she directed us to Customs which was in some guy's home. Spencer filled out the form, he was very nice we talked about the whales and he told us that the new construction we saw on the waterfront was not indeed a new port authority, customs, and immigration office, but a brand new Japanese whaling depot! (If you haven't seen The Cove you must or as I did have someone else watch it and tell you what happens because I knew I would forever be scarred if I had seen it. Spencer saw it and told me all about the people who kill the dolphin and whale and then sell the meat to the Japanese people as tuna because they wouldn't eat it if they knew the truth, which makes me wonder about the Japanese karma and what is going on there right now!!! Maybe the whales and dolphin are getting together and creating a huge sonic boom that is displacing the tectonic plates! YOU NEVER KNOW!) Anyway, the Japanese have their hands in all the pots they can to get the whales. It just makes me wonder WTH!!! Can it really be that profitable to go around the world spending millions of dollars to build these fisheries for the Whale meat? It is vicious, vicious killing BTW and absolutely should be stopped. But wow, now you have seen me pull up the soap box in my b-log. I'll step down now...
So, we went back to immigration and she stamped our passports with a stamp with no ink and sent us on our way. The upshot of all that is we didn't have to spend a penny and that is the way it should be. It was interesting because the customs guy asked Spencer if he had tried to be stopped by any of the taxi guys who apparently have tried to keep cruisers from using their own dinghies to get to the town! Spencer would never have allowed them to stop him, but I wondered myself before we left if that was going to be a problem.
It was a grey rainy day and the walk along the east side of the island grew less interesting and now we have only seen the dreary side of Codrington, but once we got back from the lagoon and made it back over the spit we were greeted with Bahama colored water for as far as the eye could see.
Yes, we are blowing through places but we will be back one day and we will be able to pick and chose the places WE want to visit and spend more time. I just hope all the whales won't be gone!