So…Where Was I?

With the last post, Ruth explained that I’d arrived in Antigua waters, but was waiting for daylight before heading into port. If you zoom in on the Google map associated with the tracker, you’ll get an indication of how I spent the night—sailing up and down the leeward (in this case, west) side of the island, outside of the worst of the waves and wind.

I sailed back and forth something like eight times, tacking 180° every time the wind built to 20+ kts and/or the seas got big. So I didn’t get much sleep that night. Since I was sailing as close to the coast as I felt comfortable (less wind/waves), I had a shallow depth alarm set. At first I used 30′. But the alarm went off a lot. At the end of the day, I settled on 20′, which almost never was triggered, but also didn’t give much cushion vs. the 7’+ depth of my keel. Needless to say (now), I got through the night.

Since I subscribe to the theory that one should always arrive “fresh,” I took a shower and shaved around 6am, then started to head around the bottom of the island, then eastward toward Falmouth harbor and my 9am “tow date.”

What a surprise! As soon as I rounded the southwest corner of the island, the winds began to build again–from 16kts to 20+ pretty quickly. Worse, they were coming from the east, which meant that, as soon as I rounded the corner, I was heading directly into the wind. And still worse, the winds were building quickly, to more than 28kts.

On a boat like Resolute, beating into 25+ kts of wind can be pretty wet. Plus, the waves built quickly, so the bow was going into/under several of the waves from time to time. Pretty quickly, my freshly showered self was drenched with salt water—head to toe.

Anyway, I managed to work my way to windward to be ready for the tow about 9:10-9:15am, so not too bad. Thanks to Shawn Malone and his compatriots, the tow was uneventful (no grounding!), and Resolute tied up next to a Travel Lift (for lifting the boat out of the water) in anticipation of installing a new propeller.

But first, I had to clear Customs and Immigration. So, thanks to a lift from Shawn, we were off to the Customs office in Nelson’s Dockyard, English Harbor (a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

More later!