Jolly Harbor, Antigua

Ruth and I spent a pleasant week in Jolly Harbor Antigua . This is a very large purpose build resort/marina with lots of houses and condos each with their own boat slip very similar to Tahoe Keys. The place is operational, but not teeming with tourists. Some of the condos are empty and the big fancy casino is boarded up. Still – a pleasant place with great beaches, warm water, supermarket, and golf course.

One day we splurged and went on a luxury tour of the island. We took a local minibus into the capital city of St. Johns and had lunch at Burger King. The bus wanders along the bumpy narrow road picking up or dropping off passengers every quarter mile or so. Real local color! Cost $1.50. You drive on the left here and need good brakes and a horn. It dropped us off at the central terminal, next to the fish market and open air meat market. Ya gotta like flies with your meat. The city isn’t very big and has seen better days, but was interesting a bit of old colonial Britain. We bought a T-shirt, a couple of small non skid carpets, and some plastic containers. The money here is EC dollars. All coins and bills have an image of the Queen (Elizabeth) since this used to be a British colony and is still part of the commonwealth. I don’t see much wealth left. The people seem quite friendly, dress colorful, and have some spectacular hairdoos, especially the Rastafarians.

Yesterday we took the bus all across the island to English Harbor and had a great lunch at 5 star Admirals Inn at Nelson’s dockyard over looking the spot where we moored 15 yrs ago. Tom and Tambra joined us there, at that time and sailed with us to St. Martin.

To date we have taken our laundry ashore and paid someone to wash and dry. Yesterday we cranked up our own washing machine and it worked fine. It operates on 220V only, so we ran the generator for only the second time. The generator was a bit cantankerous and shut down a couple of time, but finally settled down after I had a talk with it. The problem is that the generator is higher than the fuel tank and does not have fuel pump. So I cut the fuel line and installed a squeeze bulb, similar to the one on the outboard. Squeeze it a few times and all is well. Clothes hung on the handrails dried in an hour or two. If it wasn’t for needing wifi, we could stay out at sea for a long, long time. We get weather reports via SSB radio each morning from George in St. Thomas US Virgin Islands, but today he says he is going to quit in 3 weeks, so we will have to look for another SSB contact. I miss the Sailmail that we had before, so if we do another season , I will join Sailmail and have daily E-mail and weather from sea.

3/31/15 – We are now in Deshaies, Guadeloupe. Left Jolly Harbor at 7 am and arrived in Deshaies at about 2:30 in the afternoon. That is 50 miles of open ocean in 71/2 hours average almost 7 knots. Lots of big seas and winds all over the place from 9 knots to 23 knots – still a great sail – we set the sail once and just hung on for the ride, no tacks and no jibes. Early we had a bit of trouble with the hydraulic steering but it seemed to sort itself out. I do not like hydraulic steering – don’t know why someone would put hydraulic steering on a catamaran. Heck – a tiller would be better. Will have a technician look at it in Martinique, if we get that far.

This is a beautiful French village set into the side of a hill. Will go ashore and send this E-mail tomorrow. We are really laid back and starting to have a good time!!