Its been a funny old week or two!

We sailed from Guadeloupe to Antigua early one morning, starting at 04:45 in order to catch the bridges on the channel that separates the two halves of the island. Next we had to negotiate the mangrove swamps before crossing about 3 miles of reef and the out into the Atlantic swell for a trade wind trip to Antigua.

Antigua is an island of several halves; the sailors half all clean and tidy and very English; the locals half, poor tin shacks and Caribbean; the urban half retched and smelly and the wild half to name four. We sailed into English Harbour, little changed since Nelsons day except for the yachts and jazz bars. Customs let us in and we passed a couple of happy days between there and Falmouth the bay next door. Next we went wild, finding a lonely bay a mile from the nearest neighbour but with wifi access via our monster aerial.

Chris's brother Ian is coming to meet us tomorrow (Friday) and so we had a few days to kick our heels and places to visit. A quick call confirmed that Ian would rather visit the volcano on Montserrat than Barbuda so not wanting to back track we headed of to Barbuda. Barbuda is just wild and Caribbean, flat and isolated with a tiny population who live in a village in the middle of the island. The only way to get to Codrington, the capital, is by water taxi across the lagoon ($30 US return). We walked up one street and down the other and I searched the convenience sheds for beer before calling up Samson on the VHF for our return trip. We were growing weary of risotto and the rubbish was filling the locker and St John's, the capital of Antigua was just 30 miles away. Dawn saw the wind blowing 25 knots from the east, an ideal direction but a little robust for our sail back to Antigua but off we went with fully reefed sails. Soon the wind was 30 knots and the waves were breaking over the bow. The boat reached spreads of 9 knots as we shot across the straights. St John's is Caribbean urban and we spent the night anchored close to the outfall. We did not linger long spending the next night in a secluded bay before coming to Jolly Harbour (English sailors Antigua) for our rendezvous with Ian.