Sailing to Marigot Bay St Martin

English Harbour and Shirley Heights behind us

We left English Harbour, Antigua at around 1600 on Friday 13 December, expecting a brisk sail up to Marigot Bay, St Martin.  It started off well enough with an east-southeasterly wind in the upper teens, scudding clouds and a few rain showers around.

Passing Falmouth Harbour

We had a good broad reach along the south coast of the island and then headed northwest but for several hours whilst we were off Antigua’s west coast we experienced remarkably light winds, frustratingly so.  In fact, it wasn’t until around 2200hrs that the wind got up above 10kts again and then an hour later we had 2 reefs in the main and a slightly reefed genoa and were roaring along!  Being just an overnight passage we worked a 3hrs on, 3hrs off watch system which meant that Nicky was available to run the OCC’s morning HF radio net.  She’s the net controller on Saturday mornings, at least until we go too far west and can’t hear/be heard by the net any more.  Hearing that we were heading for St Martin, Alastair Hill on Cranstackie warned that friends of his on the Dutch side (Sint Maarten) had told him of rioting and roadblocks on the French side.  This was later confirmed when we raised Innamorata II on the VHF radio.  Steve said that they were having problems obtaining fuel and might end up moving to the Dutch side to do so.

The island of Tintemarre (L) and the hills of St Martin beyond

The final few hours of our passage past Tintemarre and Grande Case Bay to Marigot Bay provided good sailing conditions with bright sunshine and just the odd shower.  We rounded the headland into Marigot Bay at about 1030, noting that the anchorage seemed pretty full for a place where the locals were rioting, and found a suitably BV-sized space conveniently close to Innamorata II.

Anchored in Marigot Bay

With our anchor down, Steve and Carol brought us up to speed on the situation.  The riots had started a couple of days previously, a protest against the slow speed of recovery following the hurricanes of 2017 and, specifically, about the lack of potable water in most of the poorer areas of town (despite the population having to pay full water rates).  The bridge over the entrance into the lagoon had been blockaded and on the Thursday some of the rioters had thrown bricks and stones at dinghies passing under the bridge.  Very quickly this had been seen to be a counter-productive move and it was now safe again to travel by dinghy into the lagoon but the town was still quiet, with shops opening in the morning and closing early before any unrest started up once more.  Innamorata II, along with Wild Iris and Endless Summer had been in the anchorage for the best part of a month and, with all their boat chores now complete, planned to head over to the BVIs overnight Sunday into Monday.

Armed with this information and the knowledge that the Ile Marine chandlery was open (Steve and Carol had managed to get diesel there that morning) we headed there to check in.  We arrived just after the store had shut for the day, 5 hours early due to security concerns, but the owner/manager was still there and was happy enough to let us in to complete the formalities.  Check-in on the French islands is a remarkably painless experience, though using a French computer keyboard takes some getting used to, and within 15min we were formally stamped in and looking forward to buying some decent French bread and nice cheese, riots and shop closures permitting, of course!

Marigot Bay, St Martin

English Harbour (5) Antigua

Nicky enjoying a view over the anchorage

With a somewhat unfavourable wind forecast until Thursday 12 December, we took advantage of the Tot Club’s work on the National Park Trails on the Wednesday to walk some of them.  We left the dinghy on the beach behind BV and headed out to Charlotte Point, which overlooks the reef protecting ‘our’ end of English Harbour.

Top:  English Harbour as seen from Fort Charlotte.  Charlotte Reef is the white water
at the bottom of the picture.  Bottom: south coast path scenery

From there we followed the coast path up and along, past the remains of Fort Charlotte and on to the part of the trail we recognised from our work at the weekend.

Coastal path scenery and wildlife

After that it was hard uphill to Shirley Heights where we joined a throng of cruise ship passengers and other tourists enjoying the views down onto English Harbour and over to Falmouth Harbour beyond.

View from Shirley Heights.  English Harbour (foreground and right mid-ground)
with Falmouth Harbour just visible beyond

We had forgotten to bring our binoculars but we thought that we could still see Anura anchored in Falmouth, which surprised us.  We later discovered that their propane bottle refill had not gone as planned the previous day and that the company was busy rectifying the problem – at the expense of delaying them a day.  Just as well they hadn’t checked out in advance.

Left: Ruined buildings at Fort Blockhouse.  Right: View into Indian Creek, with the St James inlet just beyond

From Shirley Heights we followed the road and then a new trail past the ruins of the Officers’ Mess and the cemetery (which houses a regimental monument to those personnel who had died in the British West Indies on active service mostly, it has to be said, of ‘dread disease’) towards Fort Blockhouse.  Fort Blockhouse was the main accommodation and headquarters area for the fortifications on this part of the coast but was, of course, a lookout point and military stronghold in its own right.  We enjoyed the views east and west along the coast, particularly down into Indian Creek, a narrow hurricane hole just to the east of English Harbour.

Large land hermit crabs: the shell was the size of a grapefruit

We’ve walked the Lookout Trail from Galleon Beach to Shirley Heights several times in the past, so we decided to return to the bay via the Jones Valley Trail and are delighted that we did.  It’s a very different trail to the others we have walked, winding through dense, damp woodland, almost like rain forest.  There are no views out but the trail does pass another 18^th/19^th century cemetery, a similarly aged dam across the stream in the base of the valley and more military ruins.  It was a surprisingly cool walk out of the sun, though harder going than the Lookout Trail with the path damp and slippery underfoot in many places and much less well-defined, but certainly a pleasant and worthwhile walk.

In the evening Richard accompanied us to the Tot Club, his tot number 4 of 7 and time for him to obtain the crib sheet for boning up on Nelsonian history in preparation for his joining viva.  Sadly we’d miss his final qualifying tot.

A truly miserable day, blustery, rainy and yuck!

We had intended that to have been our final visit to the Tot Club this season and had expected to leave the next day but the weather was so squally and blustery overnight, with worse forecast to come that we decided to stay an additional night.  And we’re very glad we did.  The next day (Thursday 12 December) dawned overcast and grim.  The wind continued to gust and swirl down off Shirley Heights and the rain poured down almost ceaselessly.  With the solar panels on strike because of the weather and the wind generator not knowing which way was up because of the downdraughts and backdraughts, we fired up the generator to charge the batteries.  Well, we tried to fire up the generator…..  Cue much swearing.  Happily, I found the problem pretty quickly: the low-tension cable had broken at its connection to the starter motor, probably because I had leant on it when I was working on the generator on Tuesday.  A quick fix on that and we were up and running again to heat hot water and charge the batteries.

The previous week’s skippered-charter catamaran in situ (it doesn’t rain all the time in paradise!)

By the time that job was complete and everything packed away again we were, once more, surrounded by skippered-charter catamarans.  The last time this end of the bay had been so busy was the previous Thursday.  Had we really been in English Harbour so long that we were getting to know the charter yacht schedule?  Definitely time to move on!

At the Tot Club that evening everyone, Mike and Anne in particular, were keen to point out to us that sailing lore has it that it’s bad luck to leave harbour on passage on a Friday, which we guess makes Friday the 13^thparticularly inauspicious.  But despite our friends’ many entreaties to stay for longer, we knew that we should be moving on.  But before we left we had one last social engagement……

The OCC coffee morning: (Left to right) Nicky, Ed, Jody, Jane, Richard and Bob)

During one of the few breaks in the rain on Thursday we had spotted that 2 of the fairly recently arrived yachts in English Harbour belonged to OCC members and so had invited their crews over for coffee on Friday morning, along with Richard and Jane on Zwailer.  As we put it in our short Roving Rear Commodore report back to the OCC: “What do you do when it’s raining hard in English Harbour, Antigua?  Have a very British OCC coffee morning, of course.  The crews of Zwailer (Richard and Jane Kingsnorth), Oyster (Bob Morris, also PO for Woods Hole and Nantuckett) and Contigo (Ed and Jody Chamberlain) assembled on board Blue Velvet of Sark (Reg and Nicky Barker).  Tea and coffee provided by the latter, a variety of excellent sticky buns and cakes kindly provided by all the guests and laughter and conversation provided by all.  Rain doesn’t stop play here!”  It was an excellent end to a fab time in Antigua.  We hadn’t done as many swimming sessions as Nicky had originally planned or walked as many trails as we had first thought we would but we had had a lot of fun with old friends and new, and even managed to tick off a number of jobs as well.  And we will be back again but St Martin/Sint Maarten was beckoning so we lifted the kedge anchor, stowed the dinghy and at 1600 headed off to the northwest.

English Harbour, Antigua

English Harbour (4) Antigua

Amongst the superyachts in Falmouth

We had fully intended to return to BV for an early night to sleep off the excesses of the day but Richard Fear announced that the captain of Ariadne, one of the superyachts on display at the Antigua Charter Yacht Show, had invited Tot Club members to the end of show drinks party on board the yacht.

Drinks on board Ariadne

Through the Tot Club we had become friendly with Mike Nelson, Ariadne’s First Mate/XO, so we headed down to Falmouth Harbour, keen to have an opportunity to see aboard his charge.  We were surprised to get through the security gate as easily as we did, later learning that Richard and Zoë had paved the way, with some considerable difficulty, for us.  Mike was manning the gangway and welcomed us aboard and we had a thoroughly enjoyable evening chatting to crewmembers and to other guests.  Eventually, the crew stopped having to host ‘proper’ guests and we were able to chat at length with Mike and Ian (the captain) and other members of the crew.  It all ended much later than we had intended and, the following day we had much more poorly heads than we would have wanted but we had a hugely fun evening and a close-up look at how the other half (halves?) live in the superyacht world.

Top row and bottom right: views of Nelson’s Dockyard.  Bottom left and centre: Ariadne when she had moved into Nelson’s Dockyard a few days after we went aboard

So, Monday 9 December was a lazier day than we had originally planned.  I added an anti-chafe cover to the No 2 reefing pennant which we had noticed was chafing inside the boom when we had the second reef in the mainsail.  It was a job that took me longer than it should have done but then Nicky’s tasks also took her longer than she might have anticipated and generally required her to be wearing dark glasses – even down below.

Zwailer anchored with a line ashore alongside BV

But we recovered in good time for lunch aboard Zwailer with Richard and Jane hosting us and David and Roberta (Pleione).  And an excellent lunch it was too, though Jane had had life made difficult for her by delays in the local supermarket’s delivery schedule.  The hectic social whirl continued into the evening when we were invited aboard Anura for drinks.  We spent a lovely few hours catching up properly with Stephen and Katherine and, of course, spent a fair proportion of that time crawling through their machinery spaces and oohing and ahhing over generators, fuel polishing units, fridges, freezers, batteries, charging systems, you name it.  Yachties love peering at other people’s boats and to have the opportunity to crawl over our friends’ new pride and joy, to ask questions and to hear something of all their hopes, dreams and frustrations is absolutely fascinating……..and Anura is a fabulous vessel.  We can absolutely understand their delight in her.

Views of Nelson’s Dockyard

Amongst the boat chores we managed to find the
time to eat well with some great BBQ kebabs

By this point we had been in Antigua for 10 days and were beginning to feel that we should move on but the weather wasn’t really playing ball and wasn’t forecast to do so until Thursday.  So we set to with the boat chores again, this time changing the capacitor on the generator again which had a marked effect on the output voltage.  We had changed this capacitor about a month previously and it had initially produced 240V. However, after a month of use we were seeing the voltage drop off again.  With a new dive tank compressor on board (which requires 230V and which works the generator very hard) we probably need to buy a several more spare capacitors in St Martin/Sint Maarten.

English Harbour, Antigua

English Harbour (3) Antigua

Sunday keep-fit with the Tot Club

Sunday was a day of Tot Club activity.  We spent the morning hacking and slashing on one of the many trails around English Harbour, which was hugely satisfying, particularly when we walked that route again later in the week.

Hot work

John Denby hard at work on the cliff-top path

Views from Mike and Anne’s home

After a short stop at the Hot, Hot, Hot Spot for post ‘Keep Fit’ beers, John Denby gave us and his crew, Carwen and Sharon, a lift to Mike and Anne’s home on Fig Tree Drive.  Mike and Anne hosted us magnificently, feeding us a wonderful roast pork Sunday lunch with all the trimmings, followed by mango crumble and ice-cream [Ed: with mangoes from the trees in their garden].

Frangipani moth caterpillar – hated by Mike and Anne as they can strip all the leaves off a tree practically overnight

Feeding the birds…..

Mike has a bit of a soft spot for the local birds and feeds them every day.  It was quite a spectacle with them draining the sugar water in the dispenser in around 5 minutes.

We even saw a hummingbird on the feeder but I couldn’t get a picture of it

It was a fabulous afternoon with great company.  The conversation flowed and it was with some surprise that we noted the time and realised that we needed to make a move if we were to get back to English Harbour in time for the Tot Club meeting that evening.  However, Mike is a past master at that particular time/distance/motion problem and we arrived at the Hot, Hot, Hot Spot with a couple of minutes to spare before the Rum Bosun called us in to ‘Up Spirits’.

English Harbour, Antigua

English Harbour (2) Antigua

Views of Freeman Bay and Galleon Beach in English Harbour

The time in Antigua slid past remarkably fast and mostly to a fairly standard format: boat jobs and tasks during the day and social activity in the evening.  With internet access assured from our trip to St Johns, our next major task was working on re-calibrating our fuel tank gauge.  BV has 2 fuel tanks, one forward and one aft.  The aft tank contains both the feed to the engine and the fuel gauge.  The forward tank feeds into the aft tank via a cross-feed that can be closed off and has no gauge or supply direct to the engine.  We have previously always kept the tanks linked together but the disadvantage of this, as was highlighted to us on passage down to Antigua, is that the gauge effectively reads one level consistently over a large volume, whilst the forward tank feeds into the aft tank.  So, we decided to close the valve between the forward and aft tanks, fill the forward tank to full (which according to BV’s records is about 140litres) and then fill the aft tank whilst making a note of the gauge readings and the volume of fuel added.  Then, we will use the fuel from the aft tank until we reach an appropriately low level (say 50litres, at which point the tank is narrow and steeply sided and the gauge reads most accurately) and then open the cross-feed from the forward tank which will immediately provide a further 140litres and we will have a pretty accurate idea of the volume of fuel remaining at all times, but certainly from about 190litres down (about 60hrs engine running).

It was a long, time-consuming job.  We filled the tanks using the jerry cans we have on deck, running them back and forth to the fuel dock to refill them as required.  We could have moved BV to the fuel dock but that would have risked our losing our space in the anchorage.  Also, using the jerry cans to fill the tanks for this job is better for us as it results in less frothing of the fuel as it goes into the tanks so we get more accurate gauge readings.  It was a good 6-8 hours work to achieve but we now have a ‘new and improved’ fuel graph so we’ll see how it compares with our estimate of fuel used based on a nominal fuel usage per hour.  And at the end of it all, to celebrate our achievement, we had a lovely evening on board Zipporah with Doug and Mary Mann.

Not a bad place to carry out maintenance chores!

The next day’s task (Thursday 5 December) was to fix the steaming light which had failed part way down to Antigua.  I had hoped that it was just the bulb that had failed but, inevitably, the quick fix didn’t solve the problem.  Happily, the wiring to light was good and it turned out that it was the bulb holder itself that needed tweaking to make the contacts just that little bit better.  With that task complete, Nicky set to more sanding and varnishing, this time in the forward heads where a leaking porthole had resulted in damage to the varnish on the grabrails and where old age had resulted in some tired-looking trim.

After a couple of hours’ work, and suitably fed up with sanding and varnishing, she suggested we do a different type of cleaning and we took to the water to scrub over BV’s new Coppercoat.  It was all still looking remarkably new and coppery (we had expected the verdigris to be developing by this stage) and much to our satisfaction there was very little growth or slime on the hull at all.

Tot Club at the Hot Hot Hot Spot

We hosted Richard and Jane (Zwailer) at the Tot Club for the first time that evening and to our surprise met up with David and Roberta (Pleione) there.  It was a fun evening at the Club, and David and Roberta then invited us back to Pleione which ended with an excellent impromptu pasta dinner on board.   The conversation on Pleione that evening ranged far and wide but one of the topics that came up was the problem that David and Roberta were having with their HF radio.

Two of the 26 new teak plugs that I replaced,
 glued in and almost ready for sanding flush

So, the following day, after more varnishing for Nicky and after I had replaced far too many (26!!) teak plugs in our cockpit teak deck, we popped over to see them, armed with a useful book about HF/SSB radios and several lists of Caribbean HF radio nets and weather broadcasts.  It was not at all clear what the problem with their system was but our combined best guesses were a short in the aerial system and/or one or more poor connections.  David and Roberta spent several days checking the system through from top to toe and eventually they announced that they could at least hear the OCC Net, though their transmissions were still very weak.  Chasing down a fault like that is a nightmare, not helped by the fact that Pleione is made of aluminium, so the risk of stray currents and short circuits is far more than on, say, BV.  If they’re very lucky, the fault will come to light quickly but if they’re not, they could still be working on the problem for the rest of the season………

Dinner out in Falmouth at the Cap Horn with Stephen (left) and Katherine Paine (Anura) and their crew Mike (right) who was flying home the next day after their trans-Atlantic passage

We spent that evening with Stephen and Katherine Paine (Anura) who are friends from back home in Guernsey, and their crew for their trans-Atlantic passage, Mike.  Inevitably, we started off at the Tot Club which, on a Friday, always gathers at the Copper and Lumber which always feels a little bit special.  We kept the evening going with an excellent meal out at the Cap Horn restaurant, somewhere we had not eaten before but where we would happily go again.

English Harbour, Antigua

English Harbour (1) Antigua

Cruise ships at St Johns

Bars and restaurants close to the cruise ship dock in St Johns

We had several very busy days at anchor in English Harbour but also several very lazy days reading books and generally enjoying the scenery.  One of the first things we needed/wanted to do was to go into St Johns to buy a Digicel sim card so that we could check emails and access the internet from BV rather than having to find a bar with variable access via wifi.  The bus journey in was the usual rocket-sled ride, excellent value for money provided that you arrive alive!  The queue in Digicel moved remarkably quickly and we were out as the proud owners of a Digicel sim well before 1030.  That gave us time for a wander around St John’s to work up an appetite before, what has become a tradition for us, lunch at the Indian Spice curry house.  It was an excellent meal (as always) and more replete than perhaps we should have been, we returned to the bus station via some of the many fresh food stalls for a slightly less rocket-propelled ride back home.

And after a successful morning out, we found that the lady in the laundry at English Harbour had been very good in the service she had provided for us.  We had handed over all our cold weather kit and duvets for laundering before heading into town in the morning but had asked that some items not be tumble dried.  She had said that she would wash them late in the day for us to collect, damp, at 1600hr.  As it turned out, she had washed everything early on and had then hung our ‘do not tumble dry’ clothes on a washing line outside, so when we arrived everything was almost fully dried.  An excellent service, not a cheap one, but we had everything clean and ready to pack away into long term storage.  Hopefully the next time we need to dig out those duvets will be late on in 2020.

Ashore in Nelson’s Dockyard for a Royal Naval Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda gathering

Unsurprisingly, since we are members of the Royal Naval Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda, we had a very social time whilst we were in English Harbour.  Once we’d worked out the normal locations for each evening’s get-together we made it to most of the Tots and also took part in a morning’s ‘keep fit’ (trail clearing) on the Sunday with the Club.  The Tot Club is responsible for maintaining the various trails that link many of the historic sites and viewpoints around English and Falmouth Harbours.  We have always enjoyed walking the trails and it seems only fair to put in a couple of hours cutting back undergrowth for the benefit it brings.

Hosting Richard and Jane (Zwailer) and David and Roberta (Pleione) on board BV

We also introduced several of our friends to the Tot Club, some as guests for one evening, some as potential members in their own right.  Richard and Jane Kingsnorth (Zwailer) were frequent guests as Richard was keen to join the Club (he took and passed his test and had his joining mismuster after we had left Antigua unfortunately).  We also saw David and Roberta Hobbs (Pleione) at the Club most nights, with David joining during our stay on the island.  Katherine and Stephen Paine, friends from Guernsey who crossed to Antigua from Tenerife in their new motoryacht, Anura, joined us for a Friday night Tot in the Copper and Lumber, along with their crew for the crossing, Stephen’s brother Mike.

Top: David’s joining mismuster.  Bottom right: (Facing the camera L to R) Nicky, Richard Kingsnorth (Zwailer), Doug Mann (Zipporah), me

And we also hosted Doug and Mary Mann (Zipporah), as it happens the same night as David’s joining mismuster which made it a particularly fun night and one that Doug will remember [Ed: or not!] for some time: the new Tot Club rum really is ‘gunpowder strength’, which perhaps makes it a little unfair on the guests!

English Harbour, Antigua

Sailing to English Harbour Antigua

Jolly Harbour slipping away into the distance behind us

We made an early start from Jolly Harbour on Monday 2 December, getting the anchor up at around 0645.  The wind was quite light to begin with and we had a pleasant close reach out across the shallows and along the west coast of Antigua.  At the southwest tip we hardened up, further than might have been expected as the wind bent around the headland following the coast, so the wind was more easterly than southeasterly along the south coast.

Falmouth and English Harbours ahead

Looking into Falmouth Harbour where large yachts had
started gathering for the Antigua Superyacht Show

It also increased quite significantly and BV romped along happily.  It was all going beautifully but there was a very large, very black cloud ahead and slightly to port, bearing down on us, with the view underneath blocked by lots of very heavy rain.  Discretion being the better part of valour, we tacked in towards the coast and continued to sail in bright sunshine whilst the squall passed us by and messed up someone else’s day.

Approaching the narrow entrance to English Harbour

Half way between the entrances to Falmouth and English Harbours we lost the wind under the high ground and resorted to engine power a little earlier than we had intended.  But it gave us time to get things prepared for anchoring in English Harbour, a longer job than normal as we planned to anchor close off the beach in the very south of the harbour, with the main anchor out to our north and our kedge anchor out towards the beach.  We’ve done this before and it works well, keeping BV well clear of the main anchoring pool off Galleon Beach, where the swirling current and variably down-drafting breezes keep the yachts spinning around randomly.  And we were pleased to have the plan as the anchorage was busy and our friends, Doug and Mary Mann in Zipporah (whom we had last seen in Annapolis) were in ‘our’ spot in the main anchorage, close to the entrance channel.

BV nicely settled anchored fore-aft

We made a bit more of a job of anchoring fore-aft than we had intended, partly because we wanted to get the kedge anchor into good sand close in towards the beach and for that we needed to launch the dinghy.  Perhaps it would have been better to have started with a line ashore to a tree and then convert to the kedge anchor afterwards.  Or maybe not.  Most other yachts that anchored/moored fore-aft off the beach us during the time that we were there used a line ashore to a tree rather than a kedge anchor.  We just didn’t want to put lines ashore across a beach that we knew people walk along.  Anyway, after a bit of back and forth faff we got ourselves sorted out and BV nicely settled for the duration.

The view of Galleon Beach to starboard of BV

Charlotte Reef out to port

‘The duration’ turned out to be quite a lot longer than we had originally envisaged; in the in the end we spent 11 days in English Harbour and had a thoroughly enjoyable time.  Indeed we were very tempted just to stay put and celebrate Christmas there as we had the previous year but if we’d done that we’d probably have ended up staying all season!

Top: Looking south along the anchorage in English Harbour and up towards Shirley Heights.  Bottom: Once we’d anchored fore-aft others copied so we started to get neighbours

English Harbour, Antigua