Antigua

Thursday 7th May 2009, day 292, 6,797 miles. 17° 00’.87 N, 061° 46’.48 W. Falmouth Harbour, Antigua

Today could be described as trying.

About five days ago, the generator started to give problems: the fuel lift pump was working too fast, and the engine began to hunt after a few minutes’ running. Hmm. Filters checked, fuel-lines checked, no obvious dirt, leaks or airlocks, oil both plentiful and clean. A bank holiday weekend intervened before we could get an engineer to come and look at it. So we used the time to go off to Green Island, in Nonsuch Bay on the east side of Antigua, and had a lovely two days relaxing, reading and snorkelling. Except that Tomia’s engine (which, is apart from anything else, our back up means of producing power) also started to act up. Different symptoms: it didn’t want to start, and ran very ragged. Hmm. Filters checked, fuel-lines checked, no obvious dirt, leaks or airlocks, oil both plentiful and clean.

So yesterday we got back to Antigua, got an engineer on board. Hmm. Filters checked, fuel-lines checked, no obvious dirt, leaks or airlocks, oil both plentiful and clean. He was an expensive echo. Our friend Pete came for a beer, helped us discount some more possibilities. Another friend, Alex, came, and started methodically to work back through the engine. We changed a filter, Anthony went to get some diesel from the cans to prime it – and it was petrol. The girl in the filling station had sold us 40 litres of petrol rather than the requested diesel. No wonder the engines were unhappy. If there is a silver lining, it is that the tank was only half full, so we “only” had to throw away 200 litres of contaminated diesel … Like I said, a trying day.

Apart from that, we’ve had a busy time here since the last post. I got a position on a fast racing boat, Lost Horizon, a J122, for the first three days of Antigua Week (Anthony’s back wasn’t up to it, having been hauling on an anchor chain, but that is a whole other story) and we got three firsts (and three thirds overall in the racing division). It was fascinating being on such a competitive, tight boat – everybody with their own task, absolutely no requirement for initiative, or that constant looking around to check that all is well on one’s own boat, and NO TALKING on the rail! There were 11 of us on board a 40ft boat, so it was a free fight when it came to changing sides on the tacks.

The round the island race, at 50 miles, was a long hard day, surviving like a camel on an enormous breakfast, and one chocolate biscuit. We had some wonderful reaching at almost 12 knots, all of us at the front continually soaked with the wash thrown up at the bow, drying off again, soaked again. I still can’t get over the pleasure of sailing in warm waters, where getting drenched just doesn’t matter.

Then on the fourth day I didn’t go out (it didn’t seem fair to leave Anthony behind again, and his back still wasn’t up to it) and a series of things went wrong, culminating in the boom breaking, a tragedy for all concerned. Apparently a known weakness with the newer Js – the owner had an email from the manufacturer saying “we knew it would happen sooner or later” ! Really a great shame after all the hard work put in by so many.

We got invited one evening of Race Week to join in with one of Antigua’s traditions – the Royal Naval Tot Club. A hardened bunch they are. The daily “meetings” start off with a reading of the key events of British naval history from that day (mainly victories, of course), then there is one of seven daily toasts (with “Our wives and girlfriends, may they never meet” being very popular) followed by “The Queen, God bless her” and down goes a substantial quantity of rum, in one. [We later found out that the chap’s tot is a whole quarter of a pint. I got away quite lightly at half that.] The tot doesn’t seem too bad at first, but after about 10 minutes, life gets most cheerful, at twenty minutes, we are swinging from the chandeliers, and after thirty, finding it hysterically funny just how carefully we shall have to concentrate when walking back to the boat. Very wobbly, these pontoons!

The club was founded by an ex Chief Petty Officer, small, stocky, twinkly, heavily bearded, an irrefutable authority on all things related to rum, the Navy and Antigua. Members fly a white ensign as a burgee, so the whole is an engaging mixture of the official and the anarchic.

After our Oyster Regatta, and then Barbuda, and then Race Week, we had a few days recovering, waited for some repairs to the spinnaker and cruising chute snuffers, and were just about to set off for Montserrat when the generator started playing up, which brings us back to the start of the blog.

The diesel has been drained and refilled, the engine has been put back together again and bled, and is now humming like a sewing machine. Then the same thing has to happen to the generator, and we’ll spend the rest of the day vittling and scrubbing, then set off. Antigua is as far north as we’re going to get this season; now we’re about to start the last leg of this trip, and head south to Martinique and then Grenada, to lay Tomia up for the summer.