Crimson Kathryn and her crew

We’re getting close to the end of our first week in Antigua and we’ve discovered that we really like Five Islands Bay (I think I called it harbour in my last post – same place)! The Bay is very calm, quiet and not crowded at all. After a few days resting here, we headed back to Jolly Harbour on Thursday and anchored in the main bay. The outer part of the harbour is very crowded so we were anchored a good ways out. We went ashore and checked out the marina, the little shops and the grocery store. I can tell you that Antigua is very expensive (Bahamas expensive). All prices are in ec (East Caribbean dollars) and the exchange is $ 1 EC = .50 CAD. I was looking for rye bread which they had but the price was $20EC 😳. Needless to say, I didn’t buy the bread! It’s a good thing we really don’t need to buy a lot of groceries!!

We had another reason for heading into Jolly Harbour on Thursday. Mark has been experiencing pain in his lower right jaw and figured it was a tooth issue. After a day (Wednesday Feb. 11) of phone calling frustration, Mark finally reached a person at our insurance company to confirm that a visit to a dentist was covered in our travel insurance. We stopped by the marina office and got a dentist recommendation from one of the office ladies. Mark was able to get a 10 am appointment on Friday (Feb. 13) so we were good to go. We headed back to the boat in the afternoon and that’s when the rolling started. It continued and actually got worse overnight so we decided that as soon as we were finished with the Dentist (who was in St. John – the capital city of Antigua), we’d move back to Five Islands.

St. John’s is the largest city on the island and it’s about 12 km from Jolly Harbour – we took a taxi to the dentist office. We had a really nice driver who gave us a bit of a tour on the way in and some advice about what to see. It took about 30 minutes to get to the dentist but we really didnt see much of the “downtown” area. The dentist saw Mark fairly quickly (a little after 10am) and did a full exam and X-rays of his teeth. The good news – Mark’s teeth were fine!! The not so good news was that the dentist believed the pain was actually coming from the joint of Mark’s jaw (muscle spasms causing nerve pain basically). The dentist recommended getting a night guard to help lessen the tension in that joint. Mark decided to wait until we get back home to see his own dentist. We left with a prescription for some pain medication and only a roughly $70 CAD bill! So not everything is expensive in Antigua!!

Today, February 14 (Happy Valentine’s Day!) we took the dinghy to shore and glued it up again!! We’re not having great luck with the do it yourself solutions so we’ll probably end up having a professional dinghy repair guy fix it in Trinidad. But for now – we hope the glue holds for a bit. On Wednesday we head into the marina for 2 weeks – one week of that time Evelyn and Liam will be visiting. We’ve decided to rent a car for the week so we can check out the whole island! Very excited to have Evelyn and Liam onboard!!

Sunday Feb. 8th was a very stress free day because we had lots of time to get “crossing ready” before the 4 pm outbound bridge opening. We had everything stowed, prepared and organized by 1 pm so we pulled up anchor and headed to the lagoon fuel dock to fill our starboard water tank. Unfortunately it wasn’t open so no water for us!! We still have water so it’s not a big deal. We dropped anchor again, close to the bridge and waited for the opening. We were last in line to exit but quickly made it into Simpson Bay.

All the weather models were predicting a north east wind, under 15 knots and 1-1.5 m waves from north. This was a good prediction for our 90 nm trip south east to Antigua. We put up all three sails and tried to sail away (south east) from Sint Maarten. We quickly discovered that the island was shadowing all our lovely wind so we ended up adding a bit of engine power to the sails to keep our speed up. We finally got away from the island’s influence after an hour or so but found out that the wind truly wasn’t there. By dusk we decided to take all the sails down and just motor. We motored alongside St. Bart’s and we were seeing east/south east wind 😳! Not what we wanted at all! At around 10pm the wind started to come around to north east so we pulled out the jib and motor sailed until about 3 am. It was definitely a strange wind night that beared little resemblance to the predictions. We had almost straight south wind at one point and a lot of east/south east (which meant it was on our nose). Fortunately the waves and swell did match the forecast and they helped us move along from mostly behind. By sunrise (around 6 am, Feb. 9th) we were within 2 hours of Jolly Harbour, Antigua. We had a bit of rain as we closed in on our destination but at least the wind didn’t pick up with the rain. We were entering the harbour channel around 9:30am. Tired but super happy to be in nice, calm water.

We’d both read a few stories about clearing in at Jolly Harbour – it can be a challenge. The Customs and Immigration office was easy to find but there was no room on their dock for us to tie up (they want all vessels to be on their dock to clear in). We decided to anchor right beside their dock and as we were setting our anchor this woman on a trawler told us we couldn’t anchor in that spot (we found out later from a fellow cruiser that she had no authority to make us move and we should have stayed there – live and learn). So we pulled up anchor and moved beside one of the Jolly Harbour marina mooring fields. We lowered the dinghy and off Mark went to clear us in. There were already 4 dinghies and a sailboat ahead of Mark so he knew it was going to take awhile. As he waited, he watched the sailboat captain (who was German) get in trouble for his docking – not 100% sure what went down here but the captain seemed to have angered the customs folks – they made him do a “time out” and wait to clear in. Very strange. Anyhow Mark got through the process relatively unscathed and he was back on the boat by lunch.

We were both very tired so we decided to just stay the night anchored by the mooring fields. It was a good spot and it was very calm. We had some lunch and then went to take a nap. We weren’t there for more than 2 hours when 2 men in a dinghy came by and knocked on our hull. We believe they were from the marina – they told us we couldn’t anchor where we were but could pick up a mooring ball (for $35 US/night). We decided to leave and find another place to anchor. Just as we started to raise our anchor, the skies opened up and it poured!! We slowly made our way out of Jolly Harbour. Visibly was bad so we put on our range (steaming) light to be more visible in the heavy rain. Slowly we made our way the 4 nm north to Five Island Harbour. We are now securely anchored in this very calm and relatively empty bay. We’re very happy to be here even if our first encounter with Jolly Harbour was not very “jolly”. It now time to relax!

Our month long stay in St. Martin/Sint Maarten has come to an end. We arrived here on January 2nd after a wonderful 90nm crossing (no wind but also no waves!) and anchored in Marigot Bay. We had the chance to explore part of the French coast with our boat but really explored the island by car with John and his family.

Over the last few days we’ve been very busy getting ready for our jump south. We did a good shopping trip to the Carrefour grocery store near Philisburg and we went to the Cost U Less (it’s like Costco) on the same trip. We picked up our new shade that we had made here and it works great (we can now keep the forward hatch open when it’s raining and still get a nice breeze coming in). We went out to the Super U grocery store to get a few more French food items and went to the ACE hardware store one last time.

The best part of the last few days has been the time we’ve spent with John (Sundog), Brian and Greta (Desert Loon). We had another fun happy hour at Lagoonies that turned into dinner out. On Saturday (Feb. 7th) we all went to the opening parade of St. Martin’s Carnaval! It took a bit of time for the parade to get starts but it finally appeared down the main street around 5:30pm. It was very impressive and super cool. The costumes were colourful and the musicians were really good. The parade highlighted the culture of the French side as well as celebrating their Caribbean history. After the parade, we had dinner down by the Port Louis Harbour and enjoyed a good meal, great conversation and the ongoing Carnaval celebrations that included the drum groups from the parade and a local band.

Today Sunday, Feb. 8th we’re getting ourselves ready to head out around 6pm. Mark has cleared us out of Sint Maarten and we’ll be pulling up anchor at 2:30pm to go to the fuel dock to fill our water tank. After that we’ll catch the 4pm Simpson Bay bridge outbound opening and either keep going or anchor for a bit. We’ll see what the wind and waves are like on the outside. We should arrive in Antigua by noon tomorrow – Monday, Feb. 9th.

That was a very fast week – John, Sadhana, Aidan and Sophie flew home on Tuesday, Feb. 3rd. They did manage to squeeze in some fun items during Sophie’s 4 days on the island, visiting several beaches and exploring the island by car. We met up with them for lunch and also spent a lovely afternoon at their Airbnb on Sunday, Feb. 1 – eating snacks and playing 2 rounds of Monopoly card game!

On Monday, Feb. 2 around 9 am, Mark and I had a surprise visit from a fellow cruiser anchored in Marigot Bay. Jim (whom we didn’t know) stopped by to warn us about impending  weather. As you are probably aware, there was a severe nor’easter that impacted Canada and all the way down to the Bahamas (very high winds and cold temps). Well that weather caused some major wave action to head our way. We were informed that waves measuring 3 – 6 ft would be rolling into Marigot Bay from the north west starting Monday night and potentially lasting into Thursday. We were anchored close to shore and apparently that was not a good spot for these kinds of conditions (waves could break around us – and that wouldn’t be good). We decided to pull up anchor and head into the Simpson Bay Lagoon on the Dutch side. That sounds simple enough but it wasn’t. We were going to enter a new country and Sint Maarten has different check in requirements. St. Martin’s check in and out was all done online and digital clearance forms were emailed to us. Sint Maarten wanted a printed copy of these forms so Mark quickly dinghied to a marine shop near the fuel dock and they printed everything for us. We then took off for Simpson Bay, hoping to catch the 11:30am bridge opening. Well the wind and wave gods didn’t help us that morning. All was good until we rounded the west point of the island and headed southeast. Wind and waves were right on the nose and that slowed us enough to miss the opening. We anchored in the rolly, bouncy Simpson Bay for a very long 2 hours until we could enter the lagoon at the 2 pm opening. We were anchored and checked in a little after 3 pm.

We spent the rest of the afternoon with the family aboard CK. It was a lovely way to spend the late afternoon – chatting and relaxing in the cockpit. It was super calm in the lagoon with very little breeze so it got quite hot. We decided to head to Lagoonies for dinner. We all piled into the dinghy and headed over for 6pm. It was a great meal and I think we all enjoyed ourselves.

Our friends on Sundog and Desert Loon decided to stay in Simpson Bay to ride out the overnight waves. There was a lot of concern about what these conditions would bring – big swell can easily dislodge your anchor and send you dragging into shore or other boats. I’m sure there were some tense folks onboard but in the end, it wasn’t much of an issue. The waves did arrive but there was no wind so most boats just moved with the waves and it wasn’t much. It was actually less rolly than in the afternoon when we were anchored out there. 

Tuesday Feb. 3 was a rainy, overcast day. John and family had a 4:30pm flight so they took their time leaving their Airbnb and had one last lunch at Grand Case. We were going to meet them at the airport to say goodbye but the weather was not our friend. Their plane flew over our boat around 4:35pm and we waved to them as they passed overhead. Later that night we had a happy hour / dinner with Sundog – John, Sharron and Sharron’s friend Katherine and Desert Loon – Greta and Brian onboard CK. We’ve never sat 7 people around our table but it was nice and cozy. We had a great night – good food and excellent conversation.

Now we’re making a plan for our jump to Antigua. Evelyn and Liam arrive on Feb. 21st so we have time to get there. Our original plan was to do a shorter trip down to St. Kitts (about 60nm) but the wind looks good for a direct crossing to Antigua this coming weekend. It’s about a 90nm trip so we’ll do any overnight passage. 

We’ve had a whirlwind couple of days touring and exploring both sides of St. Martin/Sint Maarten with John, Sadhana and Aidan. We explored Marigot and had lunch at a lovely little cafe called “So Benedict”. We drove along the north west and east side of the island and rested on a few beaches. We spent 2 days exploring the island and saw many parts most boaters wouldn’t see (unless they rented a car). As things always seem to go, many elements collided at the same time and on Friday, January 30th all those elements all came together.

The day started with a rendezvous at Soggy Dollar – a great dinghy dock for us with an easy pick-up point for John. We had coffee at this nice little spot and then headed to Red Beach (Bay). We were keeping to that side of the island because John and Sadhana’s daughter Sophie was arriving that afternoon (we were close to the airport) around 4 pm.

All the rendezvous happened within hours of each other!! Sophie arrived on a WestJet flight around 3:30pm. Our friends’ Sharron and John had a friend arriving on an Air Canada flight at 4 pm and we had sailing friends, Greta and Brian on Desert Loon arriving that afternoon. So many reunions!!

We met Greta and Brian (Desert Loon) at Ocean World (back in the DR) last February and haven’t seen them since they sailed on to Grenada to store their boat last season. They are now on their way back to Florida so it’s super cool that we could meet up with them here!!

Mark and I did something we haven’t done yet this season – we took the dinghy to Lagoonies (a restaurant on the Dutch side) at night to meet up with our sailing friends!! It was an awesome night!! We got caught up with Brian and Greta (and heard about their adventures south last season and north this season). We met Sharron and John’s friend Katherine and we saw Sharron’s friends Lisa and Lionel again. It was a great night of catching up, exchanging stories and eating some good food!!

Today (January 31) we met up with John, Sadhana, Aidan and Sophie and had lunch in Marigot. They had spent the morning on the beach and it was great to meet up with them and share a meal together. Only a few more days remain before John, Sadhana, Aidan and Sophie head home and we head south!!

It’s always wonderful to have visitors when we are down south and even more so when it’s family visiting for the first time!! On January 27th, John, Sadhana and Aidan arrived and we were at the airport to greet them with a traditional French meal – bread, wine and cheese!!😁 We stayed with them until they picked up their rental car and then we took the dinghy back to our boat and John and family headed to the east side of the island to their Airbnb.

We met up the next morning at the Marigot Market. We walked around the area, had lunch and then visited Fort Louis. We had a really good visit while we explored the French side of the island. Mark and I have had a few weeks to explore this part of St. Martin and it was fun to show others this little part of the island. One thing we all learned on that first day was that Mark and I had very limited knowledge of St. Martin. It’s quite a difference to travel by boat vs car – we really had no knowledge of things that you couldn’t walk to!! So it’s super cool to explore the rest of the island with John, Sadhana and Aidan.

Today (full day 2 – Jan. 29), we met up with the family on the Main Street through Marigot – literally! They drove up – we jumped in and tried not to stop the traffic for too long. John has done a great job driving in this chaotic place so he was very calm and collected as we jumped in and kept going. We had a nice drive up to Grand Case (which we had visited the day before) where we stopped for coffee. We continued up to the next bay – Anse Marcel and found access to the public beach. It was a very nice beach with only a few people around (unusual!) and we had a nice walk!!

After that little visit, we did a drive to the north east side of the island. It was a very interesting drive – google was not our friend!! We went up one road only to find a fence or gate in our way! Again John did a great job driving on these crazy narrow, super steep roads! We finally ended up at Baie Orientale – a beautiful bay with an incredible beach that was slightly busy but not too bad. We did a nice walk along the beach and then drove back to Grand Case for lunch. It was another great day of exploring, walking and of course, eating!!

It has been a very quiet few days anchored here in Marigot Bay. On Thursday, January 22, we had Sharron, John and Peter over for a chili dinner. We also had a visit from Zephyr (John and Sharron’s cat). We had a nice happy hour to start our evening, then dinner and a card game to end our get together. It was lots of fun and well timed because Sundog was heading to Anguilla Friday morning for a short weekend visit. Anguilla is only about 10nm north of Marigot Bay so it’s an easy move.

Mark and I spent Friday and Saturday relaxing on the boat. We didn’t even lower the dinghy – just read our books, watched stuff on our devises and truly did very little. We did go for a swim on Saturday which was super nice. The wind had finally dropped enough so that the waves had died down too. This wind sure has lasted a long time – longer than was predicted!

On Sunday (Jan. 25th), we needed to make water again. In order to keep the membranes of our water maker in good condition, you are supposed to make water every 7 days. It also turned out that we were down to about 5 gallons in our starboard tank! Mark got the Honda generator all set up and we had the water maker all ready to go. Unfortunately the generator had a different plan – it stopped working…again!! Same problem as before where it runs at an idle but won’t generate any power. Mark took his tools to the stern (where the generator lives) and disassembled the whole thing (well as much as he could). It took several hours and a bit of cursing but in the end, the Honda wouldn’t even start (let alone run at an idle). Okay that’s not great!! No generator – no making water. We had to pickle our water maker membranes using our house batteries and the desalinated water I put in jugs (it’s our cold drinking water that we keep in the fridge). We’ve never done this process this way before but it worked well. It’s a good thing our batteries were well charged after a windy night!! Okay so water maker problem solved – great. We decided to not take the generator back to Electec because there is a Honda repair place in Antigua (we’ll be there mid February). All we needed to do now was get water. No worries – there’s a fuel dock close by that sells potable water.

Monday morning rolled around and we still had gusty wind – gusts in the low 20 knots. That’s not the best for trying to get onto a dock that happens to be at the mouth of the canal that leads to the French lagoon. So we decided to check how much water was in the bow tank – if we had enough, we could wait until Tuesday morning (wind predicted to be low) to go to the fuel dock. Well we had less than 10 gallons in that tank!! Yikes – time to go get water. We pulled up anchor and headed to the dock around 9:30 am. Mark had no problem getting us onto the dock. We filled both tanks and all my little jugs (5 – 1 gallon jugs) and were ready to get off the dock around 10am. That was a bit trickier with wind and current pushing us onto the dock but Mark skillfully pulled away from the dock and turned us around to go back out the entrance. We were anchored in our previous spot by 11 am.

After our water adventure, we decided to dinghy over to the Dutch side. We picked up our refilled co2 canisters (for our soda stream) and went to the sail makers loft. With all this rain, we’ve decided to have a fabric cover made for the bow and V-berth hatch. This cover will attach to the windlass and the safety lines and stretch to almost the mast, covering the forward hatch so it can stay open in the rain (letting air in!). We’ve seen many boats with similar covers and hopefully our design will work well. We also took the bus to Philisburg – the cruise ship town!! We walked along the esplanade (only 3 cruise ships in port) and 2 other streets. It wasn’t super busy but we didn’t spend much time there.

Tomorrow (Jan. 27th) Mark’s brother John, his wife Sadhana and their son Aidan arrive for a week (their daughter Sophie will join them on the weekend). We have a bit of a plan – it should be a fun visit! Stay tuned!

It’s Carnival season in the Caribbean and we were fortunate enough to see a small demonstration in Grand Case on Jan. 18th. The drumming parade started at 4 pm but the drumming continued well into the evening. We could still hear the drums while having a nice happy hour aboard Sundog – with Sharron, John and their friend Peter (who arrived on Saturday for a 10 day visit). The parade was colourful and super fun. I think we were all impressed by the quantity and quality of the participants.

On Monday we actually got a tiny bit of sailing in as we made our way back to Marigot Bay. As I mentioned, we’re in the middle of a week and a half “blow” – wind speeds are consistently in the high teeens to mid 20knots. That kind of speed is great when you’re sailing but not much fun when you’re anchored. Our boat has been doing a lot of bouncing and moving around which makes it loads of fun to move around inside. I have a few new bruises!! This type of wind also makes it a challenge to dinghy to shore – it’s often a wet ride!! Marigot Bay is fairly wide open so we are seeing waves along with the wind. It’s all part of the sailing life!

We’ll be anchored here for a bit as we wait for Mark’s brother John and his family to arrive on Jan. 27th and will probably stay in this bay until the beginning of February. The wind is expected to die down by Jan. 23rd so it will be way more comfortable here fairly soon.

We moved the 4 nm from Marigot Bay to Grand Case on Thursday, Jan. 15. It was a super quick and easy motor and we were anchored before lunch. We decided to head into town that afternoon and picked up Sharron and John in our dinghy. We were anchored slightly further away from the dinghy dock so it was very easy for us to stop and get them. We had a nice look around the town and visited two very cool stores – Busco (makes homemade jams and flavoured rums sold in hand painted containers) and Maison Chocolat (you can guess what they sell!!). It’s always nice to support local businesses so we bought jam, rum and chocolate!!

On January 16th we went back to the town with Sharron and John for a bit of shopping and lunch. We met Lisa and Lionel, friends of Sharron and John who just arrived for a 3 week vacation on St. Martin. We had a very tasty lunch and good conversation. We returned to the boat in the afternoon and then we had a great birthday video chat with Evelyn and Caroline! It was a great way to spend my birthday!!

Unfortunately our lovely fairly calm anchorage changed overnight Friday to Saturday. We knew the weather was changing – higher winds being predicted for at least the weekend – and boy did those winds arrive in rare form. We had rain and strong winds in the early hours of Saturday (Jan. 17) and those winds are continuing still (it’s now Jan 18 in the afternoon). We were seeing sustained winds in the low 20 knots and gusts in the high 20 knots / low 30 knots. We also discovered that there were eddies or strange currents in the north east side of the bay (where we were anchored). Our boat was spinning 360° as well as being heeled over by the strong wind. It was very unnerving!! We decided to pull up anchor and move closer to the dinghy dock (basically beside John and Sharron on Sundog). The boats on that side of the bay were not being spun around by the currents. It was a very good decision. We are no longer spinning around!!

Tonight we’re going ashore for a drumming parade! Not sure what this is all about but we’re very interested in seeing some local culture!

We have had quite the time with our little honda generator and this repair is definitely one for the books!! As I said in my last post, we took the generator to Electec on Jan. 9th and left it with them. We were not super hopeful that they would work on it immediately so we weren’t surprised to learn on Monday afternoon (Jan. 12) that the technician hadn’t looked at it yet.   We were very happy to get a call around 3pm today (Jan. 13) from Electec. The tech checked our machine and could find nothing wrong with it 😳. He said we could come and get it. What?? Did it fix itself? Did the generator just want to go for a fun dinghy ride?? Who knows. We headed over to the Dutch side and Mark had a chat with the tech. They started the generator and it seemed to work like usual. So we brought it back to the boat and used it to charge our batteries for about 2 hours. It ran perfectly!!

We had been doing okay charging our house batteries with the solar panel and the main engine. Our major concern was water. We need the generator to run our water maker and we were down to our last 50 gallons (or so) in the bow tank. Fortunately we found out this morning that the fuel station in the channel (leading to the lagoon) sells potable water. I guess it’s moot now because we can make our own water (which we’ll do in the morning).

Although we’ve had to stay close by that hasn’t stopped us from doing some more St. Martin exploration. Today (Jan. 13) we climbed the steps up to Fort Louis. The fort was built in 1789 to protect the harbor’s valuable goods (rum, salt, etc.) from pirates. What’s left of this fort is located on the north east side of Marigot Bay and it has spectacular views of the bay and the surrounding area. We walked up a few steps (brought back memories of Benabbio – we were in better shape 4 months ago!) and had a good look around. After our Fort visit we went to the daily “market in the square”. It’s basically venders selling touristy clothing and some local crafts and jewelry. It was very colourful and Mark bought himself a nice shirt.

Now that we have our generator back, we can leave Marigot Bay. In the morning (after we’ve filled our one water tank) we’re heading slightly east to Grand Case where we’ll hang out for a few days. John and Sharron (Sundog) returned today from St. Bart’s so they’ll be joining us at Grand Case. We’ll find out all about St. Bart’s and plan our visit for next week.