What a fantastic week! The Oyster Antigua Regatta was hardly the sort of racing that was about to start in the Antigua Sailing Week, but nevertheless, I hadn’t ‘bashed the cans’ since we were in Scotland nearly 20 years ago. Rory had not raced since dinghy racing at school and the girls had never raced. Each race was to be to a different Bay/Venue for evening entertainment hosted by Oyster. We assembled stern-to alongside Arabella on the dockyard with the 23 other Oysters and registered the following day and had drinks in front of the Copper and Lumber store in the evening.
The first race was to Green Island and apart from a (very) near miss when the topping lift parted as we rounded the first mark, all was well. I had eventually got over my apprehension of sailing Moonbeam in close proximity to 24 other big yachts on the start line, once I stopped thinking about the consequences of racing our home! The dinner in Harmony Hall was in an outstanding setting.
Race 2 was to Ffryes beach for a barbeque and Thursday was a much-needed rest day in Jolly Harbour as a result. Race 3 ended in Deep Bay with the evening entertainment in the Andes restaurant and Race 4 was back to Marmura Bay for prize giving in the magnificent Docksider restaurant. We had beaten Arabella for the first time!
Moonbeam came 6/11 which in predominately light airs was a creditable performance, but she took the prize for Concours d’Elegance for the best presented Oyster in her class. This was no doubt a consolation prize for all the work I did in Ipswich polishing her and painting her lines! There are some stunning photos of the week (many taken by helicopter) on photoaction.com. But the spectacle of the evening was when the waitress staff and chef got on to the dance floor for a jump-up. The female chef, who was not a small lady, managed to dance so that her buttocks moved up and down in the vertical plane independently - much like Ballou in Jungle Book!
Sunday took us back to English Harbour where we had to say a sad goodbye to Rory and Chrissie. They had been the perfect boat guests and real fun as racing crew. We wished them well sailing their Oyster ‘Barefoot’ in the Mediterranean and hope they will join us again. On Wednesday we said a fond farewell to Jonathan and Mike some very special friends from Arabella. Alone once more!
It is a mystery to me that something that spends most of its life sitting on the water all day doing very little requires so much TLC – not to mention cash! It had taken a week to track down the cause of air bubbles in the generator fuel line which appeared after I changed the fuel filters. You would (well I would) have thought that 2+2=4 and that there was a problem with the filter bowl seal etc. No – it turned out to be corrosion in the fuel line and fuel pump, a co-incidence that has taken days to sort out. Luckily, I had a spare fuel pump – I wonder if I should get another one.
Other than that, it took several days to recover sufficiently to set off again for Deshaies as we wandered slowly south again to meet Simon and Gemma who planned to join us in Grenada. However, when we dropped anchor in the bay, the first of some very expensive problems presented itself. The windlass overheat protection tripped and on further investigation the motor had burned out because the gearbox was stripped. Now it is true to say that the windlass and winches were on my list of ‘scheduled’ maintenance, but sadly they had never got to the top of it. This is because there never seems to have been the time because I always have to fix things that break or have mysteriously stopped working, and these have a higher priority.
Although we swiftly got quite adept at lifting the anchor using a jury rig and a primary winch, it was clearly necessary to replace the windlass. Needless to say, Lewmar did not make this model anymore and in any case could not source the replacement model in the Caribbean. So, when we reached Le Marin, I replaced it with a Lofrans X3, which I was able to purchase for a £1000 less than the Lewmar. It did not precisely fit the holes but then neither would the replacement Lewmar, so some adjustment and making good was required.
We now had only five days to get down to Grenada, so we decided to return to Bequia which had become a favourite spot for us. Another Thursday evening at the Frangipani which included a barbeque and jump up was, as ever, a delight. Of course, having been bitten by the windlass problem, I decided to service the electric winches. Too late! The starboard primary winch needed a new gearbox due to salt-water ingress resulting in a bearing seized and the gearbox partially stripped. It came as no surprise that Lewmar don’t do that spare any more – you have to buy the gearbox with the motor attached at £750. That was finally sourced in Connecticut and arrived after 3 weeks in Grenada. As I write this, we still await some £500 worth of parts for delivery in the UK to finally make the winch serviceable. Lewmar have a ridiculous and hopeless 12- week delivery schedule, if they are nil stock on an item. This means that we have been without a primary winch for two and a half months. This is pretty poor service for winches that cost £12k a pair! In both cases of the windlass and winch, a timely replacement of a £5 deck seal would have prevented the damage from the salt-water. A very expensive lesson!
We met Gemma and Simon and spent the first day touring Grenada by car. We found a rum distillery employing 90 local people and manufacturing rum traditionally using machinery made in England in the seventeenth century. The waterwheel and crusher looked as though it still had many years of use left in it. We then drifted up to Cariacou where we had a lovely dinner overlooking the bay in Hillsborough. We stayed off Petit St Vincent for a day. It is an up-market resort and is surrounded by a picture book beach and then we spent a few days in the Tobago Cays. We wanted to keep the passage making down as Gemma was newly pregnant and still suffering a little from being unwell.
A visit to Mustique enabled us to have a beach barbeque where the island staff came to clear up after us! Then we sailed back to Clarkes Court Bay marina, via Bequia and Canouan. Canouan boasts the Raffles resort along with much Italian investment. They are in the process of demolishing a hill and using the spoil to reclaim land to extend the runway in order to take heavy jets. It will be interesting to see how the island develops once this work is complete.
Sadly, it was time for Gemma and Simon to return to work and so they left us to fly home via Barbados on the 27th May. It had been lovely to have them with us. In the meantime. we un-bent the sails, cleaned the dinghy, and generally tidied the boat before leaving Moonbeam ourselves for a visit to the UK. We got home in time to celebrate my sister, Linda’s 60th birthday party which was held on a boat on the river Thames on a glorious summer’s evening. We visited with Jane and Willem Westermann, who plan to sail to the Galapagos Islands with us next year, and to celebrate his 60th birthday party which was held in their garden also on a lovely summer’s day.
Our trip included a flying visit to Malta to take possession of our new flat and to arrange for the completion of our Maltese tax affairs. We dealt with piles of paperwork that had built up since our departure as well as the accounts for the block of flats at Woodsome Lodge, as I am still chairman of the association. Sarah’s birthday was celebrated in Kew, where we were joined by Gemma, Simon, Annabel, and Tom for dinner. After 17 days, it was time for us to return to Grenada, so our visit seemed to have flown by.
Moonbeam was as we had left her with the exception that she had grown a garden of weed and barnacles. When Tom arrived a couple of days later, our plan was to sail north back to Martinique. This was because we had been having all sorts of problems with the anchor chain not matching the gypsy on our new windlass. In addition, I wanted more chain than the 60 metres we had to be sure that we had enough when we went through the Pacific. However, when we set off, we had to divert back into Prickly Bay with the engine overheating. This was tracked down to the prop being covered with growth whist trying to drive the boat covered with weed (after changing the impeller and washing out the cooling system – of course).
We took a leisurely eight days to return to Le Marin without incident via Cariacou and Bequia. However, our decision to break the trip from Bequia to Martinique by stopping overnight in Chataeubelair bay in St Vincent resulted in a visit by a cat burglar. Fortunately, the only thing that happened was that he robbed us of Sarah’s telephone and camera, my leatherman and a sea-sickness relief band watch that had served the crew well for many months. We emailed Chris Doyle, the author of the cruising guide, who replied that he was recommending locking yourselves in at night in Chateaubelair Bay in the next edition. All-in-all it was a lesson to be more careful.
We spent 10 days in Le Marin, where we replaced 20 metres of our existing chain with 60 metres of new 12mm chain which was correctly sized for our gypsy, before we returned to Bequia. This was so that we could spend a few days in the Tobago Cays as Tom had not been there for over 15 years. We decided to plan ahead a little and concluded that we would be missing out if we dashed off to the ABC Islands.
This was so we could return to Tobago and explore it some more. This turned out to be delightful. We were in Plymouth for the local heritage festival which is a celebration of the island’s cultural and artistic history. We hired a car and drove around the island before moving further up the west coast. We anchored in the beautifully unspoilt Englishman’s Bay with no other yachts and just the Pelicans to provide entertainment - an occasion never to be forgotten.
When we returned to Store Bay it was with a heavy heart to have a final meal with Tom in the Coco Reef before he returned to start his training later in the month. So, we are alone once more! I had noticed that the propeller anode was missing again and decided to do a PADI refresher course. I had not been diving since I did my original course in 2001 in Mauritius. This was so I could rent some diving equipment in order to replace the anode and to scrape Moonbeam’s bottom. I enjoyed the refresher dive very much, but I was surprised that I needed two tanks of air to complete the tasks under the boat. I have to say that we were growing our own coral reef down below, but hopefully this will keep her clean enough until we lift her when we return to the UK when Gemma gives birth. We plan to get some diving gear of our own.