Location: 17° 0.52 N, 61° 45.89 W
Sunday 12:00, 04.16.2006

The Schooner Maggie B arrived safely at Nelson’s Dockyard, English Harbor, Antigua at approximately noon on 16 April. Almost exactly a week from Bermuda to here. Our position is 17° 0.52 N, 61° 45.89 W. Drill down some on the Google map and you can see that we are literally at the dock the Hero of the Nile blessed.

Last night the excitement was catching a nice small (4 foot, @ 25#) Wahoo. Almost no fight until close to the boat. Frank cranked in, Paul handled the boat with Bori, and Anne Louise handled the gaff. Not too much mess on the stern and Anne Louise only gaffed herself a bit (only a flesh wound as they say In Monty Python). The fish was cut up and sautéed in oil, butter, garlic and a bit of lemon and on the table in an hour. Absolutely delicious.

English Harbor is full of Big Dogs. Lovely hundred foot sloops with tons of brightwork and professional crews. Also lots of plastic white sloops with more biminis than sail area. We should have lots of fun. The next step is to put the Reepicheep in the water and row around to see the other boats.

All is well.

Location: 19° 49 N, 61° 29 W
Saturday 12:00, 04.15.2006

Finally we are in the pleasant NE’erly Trades, bowling down to Antigua, except that the wind is from the NW. Our noon position on April 15th was 19° 49 N, 61° 29 W. Our course is 197 degrees, right for Antigua and our speed 8.4 knots. Our ETA in English Harbor is noon tomorrow, or seven days from Bermuda.

Not much to report otherwise. We saw a swallow, the first land bird for a while, but I imagine that he was blown off course and rather glad to have us to perch on for a bit.

The trip has been good to us, but we are all rather looking forward to the land — to see pals, to explore Antigua, for the fun of Race Week, and to fix some things.

All is well.

A Little Paranoia is a Good Thing

On this leg from Bermuda to Antigua we got reminded that a little paranoia is a Good Thing.

We set out from Bermuda for the 940 mile trip to Antigua with three good pieces of weather advice: 1) the excellent four day forecast from Bermuda Weather, 2) a trip plan from Commanders Weather and 3) Advice from the marvelous Canadian Weather Sage, Herb, of Southbound II.

We also left with the expectation (Gee, it’s in all the brochures, isn’t it?) that we would quickly get into the Easterly Trades and bowl on down reading our novels and never touching a sheet for days at a time.

All three professional forecasts said that we would pick up the Easterlies at about 29 or 30 North, and we did on Tuesday, two days out.

It was just like in the brochures.

Our forecasts generally covered four days and were right on. For four days. The plan had been to give Herb a call each day at 2000 to update, but propagation was terrible and we didn’t get through.

Four days out the barometer started to fall modestly (to 1011 millibar’s from 1019 the day before and the wind picked up from the SSE.

That evening we had a Southerly gale, Beaufort 8. The boat and crew handled it fine, but we should have anticipated it better. We would not have done much different, though it would have made sense to have run East a bit more when we had an easterly to moderate the impact. I should have, when unable to contact Herb, spent more time with the difficult-to-understand USCG SSB weather reports, called Commanders Weather on the Sat phone, and gotten the weather fax working in Bermuda. All three. We’re still learning.

Now we are a day out of Antigua, bowling along in a nice 15 knot Westerly, reading our novels and improving our tans. God and Herb know where the Easterly trades are.