Saturday 26^th November   ……   Antigua 17.00.529N 61 45.864W

Today’s blog by David

Well, here we are in Antigua - awaiting Simone’s and Linda’s arrival.  Hard to imagine a nicer place to await them.

The remainder of our passage to Antigua was uneventful, even if the sea north of Guadeloupe was confused and there wasn’t enough wind to make headway (at least not without the ‘iron topsail’ hoisted). We got here towards dusk, successfully moored stern to (without trauma) and spent the evening tidying up.

Friday was a day on which Oyster had arranged various trades to attend to assess the various issues and develop a programme to fix them. It is an ever increasing list:

1                     Chafe – We have a serious chafe problem around the end of the spinnaker pole. It chopped through a sheet in about 24 hours – protective leather on a spinnaker guy lasted 4 hours. The spinnaker pole needs some investigation.

2                     Consequently, we experimented with varying different rigs with blocks, strops and tackle with varying success. We have lit on a solution now but not without  a certain amount of superficial damage to the spinnaker pole and boom which need to be repaired.

3                     The freezer has stopped freezing – needs to be fixed. Consequently, there is a lot of food that needs eating!

4                     The ‘fix’ to the Raymarine system in Tenerife, did not fix it. So the Antigua rep is going to do what the guy in Tenerife should have done.

5                     We still have battery problems – the overall battery voltage looks low – drops below 24v too soon and I think we have (another!) dead cell developing.  

6                     The water tank gauge (that tells us how much domestic water we have ) doesn’t work.

7                     We have continuing slackness (back lash)  in the steering system which needs to be adjusted out.

8                     And a number of other issues

A couple of these could keep us in  Antigua for longer than anyone would like. 

Ho – hum. Shades of Gibraltar?

How big is it?

One of the things I learned early – even if it is a lesson I sometimes forget – is that there is nothing to be gained from boasting.  The school changing rooms showers taught me never to boast how big it was, because there was always someone with a bigger  one (stomach, that is!). Equally, smallest is normally a comparative rather than a superlative term. There is normally someone or something, somewhere that is smaller.

Against this background,  whatever some European marinas may have said when deciding how much to charge us for a berth, we have tried to avoid calling  Serendipity a ‘big’ yacht.  There is good reason for that here in Antigua,  where we are berthed at  Nelson’s Dockyard which is known as a gathering point for REALLY BIG yachts.   And I mean BIG:

I have no real idea how long that one is, but here are photos of both boats taken from the same distance with the same magnification:

There is a big boat Show over the weekend – we have been asked to leave by Thursday – there being no room for us at the inn.  Let’s hope Oyster’s various trades can get through it by then.