Sunday 15 April 2012

Anguilla to Antigua with some job hunting

After the long journey east, from Florida to Anguilla it was a relief to arrive at the end of the ‘Thorny Path’ This is the difficult journey against the prevailing wind to find the beautiful islands and easier sailing of the eastern Caribbean. Along the way we had passed through the beauty of the Bahamas, the more out of the way islands of Turks and Caicos, the mountains and differing culture of Dom. Rep. then the friendly island of Puerto Rico. On to the popular Virgin islands and now a new adventure of a different island every day.

Anguilla and Road Bay was a pleasant laid back island, not not much chance to explore on a yacht. Most bays were off limits for overnight anchoring and not much shelter to be found. After a couple of days we headed for the shelter of the St Martin Lagoon.

St Martin being a centre for yachting large and small has big cruising and super yacht communities. An ideal place to stock up on chandlery, and then realise how much it all costs.

The summer was approaching and it was time to make a plan for hurricane season and beyond. After much deliberation we decided to seek work for the summer and store the boat locally. We found a delivery job on SY Runaway Bunny, a 74ft sloop heading for Palma. Originally a 3 week job for us both, which turned into  a longer term opportunity.

After a couple of weeks in St Martin it was time to move on. We sailed to Antigua and started our search for a yard to keep Sea Gal safe for the summer.

We met up with old friends Ash and Summer on Cherokee and managed to get a couple of days work helping to deliver to St Thomas.

Then with our start date on Runaway Bunny fast approaching we quickly came to the decision the storing the boat further south in Grenada or Trinidad was too expensive with the flights back included and it was much easier to leave her in Antigua.

 

 

Sea Gal ended up in a small yard in the north of Antigua. The benefits was she the biggest boat there. No-one to fall on to of her in the event of a storm. The yard dropped her in a hole so she didn’t have so far to fall. We packed her up, kissed her goodbye, shed a tear or two and headed on to our next adventure, crossing the Atlantic on a luxury yacht.