Last time our location was reported, we were in Baie de Friar, St-Martin. Next day we sailed 12NM in moderate seas and 8 knots of easterly winds to Anse de Colombier on the island of St Barth's. This is a lovely secluded bay which lies at the bottom of a steep, craggy hill and is where the Rockerfellers built a home. We snorkelled and swam around the beautiful bay, walked the beach many times and climbed some steep steps at one end of the beach, which provided excellent views of the wild crashing waves in the small bay across the narrow isthmus of the peninsula on the windward side. We were fascinated to see several joggers hurtling down the rocky hill, run up to a locked gate barring them from running on the rest of the peninsula, do a U turn and disappearing on another track running parallel with the beach. It clearly is a favoured track for those on the island wanting a fitness challenge!
Reluctantly we left this beautiful spot and motored the 1NM to Port Gustavia, to do the customs check out. We were amazed at the much slower pace of this previously bustling township, now that the season had officially ended. It had been coming up to race week last visit and certainly the flags-a-fluttering were long gone. Lots of the exclusive shops were closed, and not just for the French long lunch! We found an Italian restaurant which served us lunch, and the Italian chef was excited to tell us he had spent a year in Australia. After lunch, the girls found a place to have some feet pampering while the boys caught up on Internet matters. Trilogy was anchored in the outer harbour and we took it easy getting back across the water as there was quite a swell running.
We were up before dawn for the last big sail of the trip. There had been considerable discussion and planning regarding the best route south east, and given all the information to hand on the various weather charts, Antigua was the favoured route on Saturday, the window we had been waiting for. We lifted the anchor at 04:30 and made our way out through the shoals into open water to hoist the mainsail with a second reef and later unfurled the staysail. Dawn came without a sunrise as the sky was still ominously grey. At 06:00 we broke into 3 hour watches, which were continued throughout the day, until arrival at 17:00. The sky slowly cleared the further south east we sailed, leaving St Barth's behind. The wind was pretty strong, gusting up to 25 knots for several hours, before the wind strength dropped to a more comfortable 19 knots, as predicted. We motor sailed the 84 NM, as Trilogy liked the motor's assistance in these conditions, to keep up the momentum. We hoped to see dolphins, but our only visitors were flying fish and the occasional seabird. There was only one sighting of another sizeable vessel, which turned out to be a large cargo barge, which was being towed by a mighty little tug to the island of Stasia. We also encountered a few random fishing buoys which came too close for comfort before noticed, which a fisherman later appeared from nowhere and zoomed past us to attend.
It was great to sight Antigua about 20 NM away and to stay on the same tack to the way point, before negotiating the long stretch of reefs that protect the island's leeward coast. Our first night was in beautiful Ffreys Bay. We felt quite at home with blue skies and a lovely sunset, the only yacht in the anchorage and the sounds of local children happily playing at the water's edge. Along the long crescent of sand were some large bits of driftwood half buried that were unique, as nowhere else in the Caribbean had we seen driftwood. We really enjoyed our swims in the tepid sea and the Sunday morning drink at Dennis' Cocktail Lounge and Bar, situated at one end of this unspoilt haven. Dennis, born in Antigua, was a charming man and we enjoyed a long chat with him. We asked about the change in weather and he explained that he was looking for some haze that forms in the surrounding hills at this time of the year, which is dust from Africa and he says that is a good sign of stable weather, but it has not come so far this year. He also pointed out the mass numbers of small white butterflies we had already noticed, and he shrugged his shoulders as he explained that this is the wrong time of the year for this occurrence. The butterflies are usually present in December/January, another odd and unusual phenomenon. We had observed a pipeline at one end of the beach which we surmised was sewerage related, but Dennis put our minds at rest when he explained it was an intake pipe for a desalination plant designed to meet water shortages in St John's, the island's capital about 12 kms away. For a while we thought he was referring to the island of St John, which prompted some odd questions from us about why it would be necessary to pipe water between islands so far away. Eventually Dennis twigged on our mistake and we all had a good laugh!
Next morning, we motored to Jolly Harbour and the marina that we had visited 10 weeks before. After completing customs formalities, we manoeuvred Trilogy into her berth for the next few nights. The first thing we learnt was that there would be only a trickle of water available dockside, due to a marina water pump being out of service....great!