It's been a couple of years since we have been to Antigua. Heck, last year we didn't get much above 16 deg N, and that was on what ended up being a day sail to Desirade, and now we are north of 17! Yup, heady days indeed {{smirk}}.
We could easily spend our time in Dominica and Les Saintes, but there are some islands we haven't visited yet (mostly St Kitt's and Nevis, and Montserrat are of interest). It makes it hard to know which islands to really spend time at if you haven't sampled most of them. Statia and Saba are very weather dependent (swells make them untenable places to be, so we have been told). St Bart's has some interest for us, too.
In the meantime, Antigua makes for an excellent starting point for the rest of the Leeward Islands, with everything else being quite reachable from here. However, we aren't rushing off just yet.
We uncharacteristically left Les Saintes after deciding that morning to head to Antigua. The weather forecast gave us a couple of days of moderate winds with a southerly component, and we figured it would be wise of us to take advantage of that gift. We got our "poop in a group" and took off for our next planned anchorage, Pigeon Island, on the west coast of Guadeloupe. The wind was actually from a direction to give us a broad reach! Wow, that does not seem to happen very often. We enjoyed a relaxed sail along the bottom of Guadeloupe and up the coast. Eventually the island affected the wind to the extent that we would either have to tack a million times, or motor for an hour. Thank you Mr. Volvo.
Next morning, bright and early, but making sure that we had enough light to see the buoys that marked the fish traps, we took off for Antigua. We had a beam reach all the way up, hardly having to touch the sheets. Nice.
It is always easier arriving somewhere you have been before. Falmouth Harbour is not difficult to negotiate, but having been here before made it even easier. Anchoring was easy, and we had the dinghy thrown together fast enough to get to Customs and Immigration before they closed. It is always a relief to get that done quickly so that we can get on with just enjoying where we are.
So now we will enjoy some of the walks and hikes around here before wandering off to another anchorage. We may do a little gunkholing, but we will be keeping an eye on the weather to look for good opportunities to go elsewhere.
We need to take pictures of our less than two month old dinghy, too. Some of the glued joints are already de-laminating, and the "stainless steel" is rusting shamelessly on the transom. There are two chunks of gelcoat out of the bottom (we have landed the dinghy once, on a soft sand beach). These pictures will be sent to the chandlery we bought it from, since it has a one year warranty. If necessary, we will go up to St. Martin to deal with it, but we would rather work by email first... we still haven't recovered from our 11 week visit there on our initial trip down south. It is not our favourite island, but it is a good place to get things done, and to buy things, as it is a duty free island. It is also where the head offices are for the two major chandleries that we have in the Eastern Caribbean. Anyway, if we can offload the "Flexboat", we will. We are not impressed with its construction, and are hoping to get a refund so we can buy the dinghy we want.
And we finally got a little rain to rinse the salt off of the boat. Bonus! Since they seem to have the highest price for water that we have yet seen in the islands (Bahamas included), we are hoping to catch a little water while we are here.