One of the things that we enjoy about being in Antigua is how friendly the locals are. Being a part of a nation of only 90,000, it’s not hard to imagine that you have to be nice to fit in. We used to tell our boys “watch out what you do in public. Someone we know might see you”. That was true in the small town in NJ where they grew up and is surely true in Antigua.

Here it is just considered good manners to greet someone with a simple “good morning” and if you spend time on one of the many island busses, greetings are shared as each passenger gets on and off the bus. More often than not, the response isn’t a simple “good morning” but “morning, morning” or “good morning, good morning”. I find the “duplicate” greeting to be quite charming.

In NYC, where one of our sons lives, these sort of casual greetings are rare and to look into the eyes of a stranger on a subway may very well be met with suspicion, anxiety or even hostility, wondering what you want or worse, them wondering if you “might not be all there.”

Sadly, over the last decade or so, it seems that we have become accepting of increasingly antisocial or even violent behavior. After walking into town today with so many friendly greetings, I am reminded that today is the third anniversary of the 6th riots in DC. Hopefully, this particularly unpleasant phase in our country will pass over time. I can tell you that our image in the world has suffered.

Unfortunately, we seem to have become a nation of people with the attitude of “I will do what I want, when I want and I dare you to stop me.”

Having spent my life in the general NYC area it seems normal to live in a neighborhood where you know few of those that live close by. Even though I am only on-island for perhaps two months a year, it is hard for me to walk down the street without someone recognizing me. The contrast between home and Antigua is sharp where just about everyone seems to know each other. I am sure it’s not all that simple, but I do enjoy being in a place where nice is the norm.

Most of the Salty Dawg boats have left the island and are roaming about in the Caribbean so we are now flanked by the “big girls”. I have to say that having the “pros” pull in beside us is a lot less anxiety producing than those that are not very familiar with Med Mooring. The Cat beside us is 75′ long and it’s one of the smallest boats around.

Just around the corner are some very impressive yachts, all lined up like sardines. More like cans of fine caviar.

This one in particular, Nadan, about 150′ long, is quite a boat. You can sort of see from the stern that she has a real classic yacht feel.

Here is a photo of her underway. She looks like a true art deco classic but was built in 2019.

I wonder if they will be neighborly and invite us over for dinner? Pretty nice digs.

Or, perhaps for a dip in the hot tub? Not holding my breath.

I think that the closest I will get getting to a tour is this 2 minute video promoting her as a charter. She was built in 2009 and recently changed owners. However, she is still available for charter at $125,000 to $145,000 per week.

Well, I won’t be loosing any sleep if we don’t get invited. However, as they say, timing is everything and we have both docked on the private island in the Bahamas, Over Yonder Cay. Albeit, not at the same time, as you can imagine.

We were there way back in 2016. How we came to be invited to a private island in the Bahamas, and it was our second visit, is a long story. Click here for a post about that visit. Note that Pandora was dark green at the time. No longer.

Here’s our neighbor on the dock there. Well, I think it’s the same place.

Wondering how we were invited to visit a private island? I had written a blog post about the owner, his yacht Marie and this island. I actually wrote the post for my dad, who died ten years ago last week. He loved WWII airplanes and the owner, Ed, owns a bunch. This post earned us two visits to his island and three days of sailing on Marie.

While Ed has since sold Marie, she is currently tied up in nearby Falmouth. It is indeed a small world and one that I like.

And, I particularly enjoy walking in the morning and being able to say “Good morning” to every local I see and to have them return the greeting, “good morning, good morning” and they mean it.

So, before I break, the view of the entrance to English Harbor from Pandora this morning.

And sunrise over the hill.

Not bad and our view is just as good as the view from Nadan. However, I have to make my own coffee to greet the new day.

And when Brenda gets up, “good morning, good morning” and a hug…

We are now solidly into the new year and I have to say that I am more than a bit shocked to realize that I find myself yet one more year beyond “upper middle age”. The bad news is that while I enjoy being on Medicare, I am not all that crazy about being precariously perched on the road to “elderly”. Well, that’s if “just south of 70” falls short of elderly.

New Year’s Eve here in Nelson’s Dockyard, and it now seems like ancient history, was great fun with hoards of locals jamming the place. There was raucous music and plenty of partying. Quite a crowd.

At midnight the fireworks show began. It was not a NYC style event but really wonderful. Nothing like sitting on the bow of Pandora on a beautiful evening.

The display clearly classified as “short and sweet” but the enthusiasm from the crowd saw it as much more.

Earlier in the evening Brenda and I had a wonderful dinner at a local French place, Colibri, with some friends. It was a 5 course dinner and seemingly endless glasses of prosecco. In spite of all the fun, I felt pretty good the next morning. Amazingly, I was able to stay awake until after 1:00. Not to shabby for a guy just south of old age.

The holidays are officially past us and the Salty Dawg events that began here in Antigua in mid November are winding down. Sadly there were only three events planned for this week including last evening’s Cocktail party at Colibri, tonight’s Tot Club event in the Dockyard where I have invited some fellow Dawgs and a New Year’s Day progressive cocktail party here in English Harbor.

Now that we have crossed the threshold to 2024, most of the Salty Dawg boats have moved along and are now scattered from Grenada to the south to the Virgin Islands to the north. It’s hard to keep those Dawgs from roaming.

Brenda and I are planning to stay here in Antigua for a few weeks and then will begin running south to Guadeloupe, Dominica and hope to land in Martinique in time for Carnival in early March. Since we arrived we have had a parade of workers on the boat, cleaning, tracking down an electrical issue (unsuccessfully) and sails being reinstalled. As of this afternoon, Friday, we are by ourselves, finally.

Oh yeah, yesterday I was on a zoom Salty Dawg Board meeting when the boat started to shudder. I jumped up on deck to see the boat that had been moored beside us pulling out. As he passed our bow he realized that he was tangled in our anchor chain. Instead of standing by for help, he continued to pull up his chain and my anchor, along with it. Without my anchor to hold us off the dock, and him pinned to our bow, we both turned sideways to the dock with no fenders to cushion the blow on Pandora. In spite of perhaps a dozen passers by trying to fend Pandora off of the dock, we still ground away.

The dockmaster in the Dockyard came to our rescue along with some divers to reset my anchor. The process took over 30 minutes and meanwhile the “offender” took off and is nowhere to be found.

It’s still a bit unclear if there is any real damage but I will have to explore more carefully. We have the offender’s contact info but I don’t know what I will do about it as the scratch doesn’t look that bad.

Hopefully the excitement is now behind us and we can relax.

Unlike up in CT and our home town, it’s warm and sunny here on Antigua.

So, for now… Just hanging out in Antigua and recovering from way too much holiday crazy and dock excitement…

Setting aside dings, scratches and endless workermen aboard, I am happy to say that Brenda and I are settling in and enjoyed welcoming in the New Year with Antigua.

It is New Year’s Eve and we are moored at Nelson’s Dockyard for the next week.

We arrived in Antigua on Friday night and moved all our stuff aboard Pandora, where she had been on a mooring for the last six weeks. The bottom was pretty nasty so I hired divers to clean her up. (more on why I didn’t do it myself in a moment)

The view when we woke up on Saturday morning. The weather: Mid 80s and sunny with puffy clouds. I do love clouds. A big departure from the grey weather in CT this time of year.

Pandora was on one of the Antigua Yacht Club Marina moorings. Back in October a lightning strike sparked a fire at the marina. The flames consumed every business on the marina pier but luckily, nothing on shore. Fortunately, the wind blew the cinders into the water. Had the wind been from a different direction, the loss would have been far worse. The pier was completely destroyed down to the cement slab.

When I was here in November evidence of the fire was cleared away and there was nothing but a concrete slab. Now, they have put a number of very nice tents covering seating areas and lots of potted palms. I am told that in a few days there will be food served daily. Brenda and I had a few drinks our first night after arrival. (and that is why I was not up to spending an hour under Pandora scraping away)

Of course, a bar would be the first business to open.

When the taxi left us off at the marina I took the luggage out to Pandora, leaving Brenda on the pier with a glass of wine, of course. This gave me an opportunity to air Pandora out and move all our luggage aboard.

When we arrived from the airport we also had some groceries that we had picked up along the way as our driver, Eric, was nice enough to stop at the market. Between all of our luggage and groceries, probably about 200 lbs of stuff, we stacked everything on the dock for me to take out to Pandora. Unfortunately, we left a bag of fresh food, meat, cheese, all expensive stuff, probably about $75 worth, on the dock. It wasn’t until after a few glasses of wine, of course, that I realized that the bag was missing.

I went ashore but nobody had seen the bag. Or so it seemed… Somebody was lucky and got a bag of very nice food, complements of Pandora.

I reported the loss to the marina office and checked back the next morning, just in case.

Amazingly, the bag was there and cool from a night in the fridge. It seems that the marina staff, when they heard of the loss, reviewed security camera footage, recognized the person that had picked up the bag and retrieved it. Mystery solved…

As you can imagine, we were thrilled and more than a little bit amazed to get the bag back and with everything intact.

I often get questions about safety in the islands and tell everyone that it is very safe here in Antigua. Well, it’s actually safer than I thought as I can not imagine another place where a bag of groceries left on a street corner (or marina dock) would ever be returned. I understand that this wasn’t the first time that a security camera saved the day.

I have been told by Carlo, the owner of the marina, that the pier would be fully rebuilt by next season. In the meantime, it’s looking pretty nice already.

Their fleet of Dragons was untouched.

The marina office is now in an adjacent area, spared from the fire.

We moved the Pandora the short distance to English Harbor the next day and are now in the Dockyard where there will be a huge New Year’s Eve bash beginning today at 10:00 and running through 02:00. The loud crowd will be huge as thousands show up every year. We will be hosting BYOB cocktails on Pandora and a few other Salty Dawg boats at 10:00. Midnight fireworks never disappoint. Pandora, second in, on the dock with a number of other Dawg boats that moved here to enjoy the festivities.

They do a nice job of holiday lighting in the Dockyard.

Well, it’s time to get going on preparing some food to share tonight before the fireworks.

Oh yeah, we are meeting our friends Barbara and Ted of Raven for a very fancy dinner at one of our favorite spots, Collibri, a French style spot in Falmouth. I think it’s 7 courses. Hope I can keep up.

Happy new year from Antigua where you only take home what is yours, or else…

One of the best parts of being at anchor in Falmouth Antigua is the beautiful sunrises. While I’ll admit that I am partial to sunsets, a sunrise over the land in Falmouth is particularly beautiful. Over the years I have taken many photos at that special time of day, one more beautiful than the last.

With many conjuring images of, well, you decide…

I am getting excited about returning to Pandora in a week as we begin to wrap up the activities here in CT. It’s hard to believe that it’s only a few days until Christmas. Time flies as I have been away from Pandora for over a month and yet it seems like just yesterday that I arrived back at JFK. What a whirlwind…

This morning my friend Jay, who has been keeping an eye on Pandora while I have been away, sent me this photo, taken shortly after sunrise today.

Our flight takes us to Antigua next Friday and we will turn the page from the fun but hectic holidays. I do enjoy seeing family over Thanksgiving and Christmas but keeping up with all the details of managing a boat along with a home can be overwhelming at times. Just deciding what we need to bring with us to Antigua is complicated enough but getting the house ready, blowing out all of the water pipes, putting antifreeze in the toilets, washing machine, dishwasher, icemaker, is a real head spinner that takes nearly a half day.

We take great care to make sure that everything at home is immune to freezing as a power failure for even a few hours during a cold snap can reek havoc. One of our neighbors had a broken pipe last winter and their entire kitchen and den were destroyed. The ceiling came down, cabinets and floor destroyed. The only thing out of their den and kitchen that was salvaged was the granite top to their kitchen island. Half of the house was stripped down to the bare studs and a year later the repairs are not yet completed.

Fingers crossed that I won’t forget anything. I have been doing the winterizing for a decade now and even with long outages, we have never had any damage.

Our plan, upon arriving in Antigua, will be to move aboard for the night and than heading to nearby English Harbor for the New Year’s celebration the next morning after I clean the bottom. It is probably a mess after sitting for more than a month.

New Year’s eve in the Dockyard is an amazing experience. To sit on the bow of Pandora watching the midnight fireworks as we ring in the new year is an experience not to be missed.

While we are in the Dockyard we are hoping to organize a group to hang out on the docks after dinner but before the midnight display. It’s amazing to see how many locals show up to view the spectacle.

And, on New Year’s Day, another party in the dockyard. And we will be participating in a progressive cocktail party with other Salty Dawg boats.

They really decorate the dockyard for the holidays.

And, of course, lots of beautiful sunrises to look forward to this winter that will surely rival the New Year’s Eve fireworks display.

No, nothing quite like a sunrise in Antigua from aboard Pandora.

Soon, very soon…

In about two weeks Brenda and I will head back to Antigua and Pandora. Plans are mostly in place for getting some work done on Pandora in Trinidad next summer. After spending many years cruising the waters of the eastern Caribbean, Brenda has begun asking the question of why we have to do this for yet another season.

I’ll admit that I am not all that excited about heading to the same places yet again and frankly was looking forward to heading to the northern islands this season, and perhaps spending some time in the Bahamas again. However, the work that needs to be done, painting the decks etc, is just too expensive to do elsewhere so Trinidad it is. Of course, this whole exercise will be made even more complex due to the fact that I will need to change insurance carriers to one that will cover Trinidad for the summer.

Sure, it does seem a bit bratty to suggest that spending time on white sandy beaches and eating French food while others are up north braving sub freezing temperatures is something to tire of but these are our “golden years” and we want to make the best of them.

In my last post, I talked about the importance of having goals and while this is very common for folks during their working years, I believe that many retire, or perhaps put off retirement, as they just don’t know what they will do with themselves without a job to keep them occupied.

I have always been goal oriented and having goals in retirement is no exception.

So, Eastern Caribbean, been there done that… What’s next?

My dad, who was inspiration for this blog for many years, once said “Bob, wouldn’t it be great to see Gibraltar from the deck of Pandora?”. It’s been a decade since he left us but I have not been able to get that image out of my head and just about every year I turn my thoughts to “what about cruising the Med?”, always pushing it to the background.

Let’s face it, Brenda isn’t all that crazy about living for months aboard Pandora and yet she does, year after year. I am grateful for that and constantly feel compelled to do what I can to make the experience more rewarding for her. However, it does get harder each year. So, where does the Med fit into all this?

I have mentioned many times that Brenda and I met in high school back in the 70s and I should add that during that time she studied Latin. In college she majored in the classics, both Latin and Greek and as part of her studies, spent semesters in both Italy and Greece. She loved being there and yet we have not visited those places together.

Our boys have commented our time on the water “is a lifetime of Dad trying to make Mom like sailing”. That’s true and as someone who is self-described as “ever hopeful”, perhaps time in the Mediterranean could fill the bill as a next step. And, back to the Classics, I’d say that if Homer thought that the best way to tour the Med was by boat, who are we to say that he was wrong. Right? Yeah… I’m goin with that…

When you think about the nearly 50 years that Brenda and I have cruised together and the reality that I am still trying to find that elusive “sweet spot” for time on the boat with her, some might say that I am just about out of ideas. We have cruised the US East Coast from Maine to south Florida, all through the Bahamas, much of Cuba and most recently the Eastern Caribbean from the Virgins to Grenada.

So far, nothing has quite filled the bill for Brenda once the novelty has worn off. So, what’s left? Beyond the Med, I am just about out of ideas…

Additionally, we haven’t had a lot of success in getting our kids to join us in the Caribbean. Hey guys? Want to visit us in the French Riviera? Na… Oh, well.

I’d say that revisiting our youth and Brenda’s love of the classics. So, I’m thinking, follow in the footsteps of Homer.

It’s worth a try.

The plan, for 2025 although admittedly still in it’s infancy, is to launch Pandora after getting work done i Trinidad next summer, perhaps early winter and work our way north through the Eastern Caribbean. In the spring of 2025 I would run to Bermuda, onto The Azores and finally to Portugal where Pandora would be hauled for the season and relaunched in the fall for a run to Spain.

The run from the Caribbean to Portugal totals about 3,700 miles. Leg one, about 900 miles to Bermuda where perhaps I’d do a crew change. Then across to The Azores, another 2,000 miles and from there to Portugal.

Along the way I would stop in The Azores, a place that I never imagined going and yet have always been fascinated by. There are plenty of YouTube videos about the area but this piece is pretty good and is short, less than 5 minutes. It gives a pretty good feel I think.

The real gateway to the Med is Gibraltar. Brenda and I almost visited there when we spent a month in Portugal a while back. I think that this would be a great place to meet up with her. This is a short piece by Rick Steves, the travel writer.

Looks awesome. Dad was right.

Oh yeah, any video about Gibraltar shows the famous monkeys. When we were in St Kitts a few years ago Brenda had her “monkey encounter”. An omen?

In the Azores video there is a reference to the Pillars of Hercules. There is a rock formation at the entrance of English Harbor by the same name.

Pillars of Hercules in Antigua and Gibraltar? Coincidence? I don’t think so.

One big issue will be insurance and that may prove to be quite a challenge. Even insurance to run to the Caribbean during the “hurricane off-season” has become very expensive. I have been working on coverage for Pandora this coming summer in Trinidad and that’s proving to be a bit of challenge. My current policy only allows me to go as far south as Grenada, about 85 miles north of Trinidad. And, most applications require a survey within two years and my last full survey is only a few months more than that. I guess I should have moved forward on these plans a few months ago.

I know that spring of 2025 is still a long way off but without a plan, you don’t have much.

In spite of all this, who really knows what will happen next but thinking and planning is fun. Right?

As of now though, I do know that we will be heading back to Pandora in about two weeks and the answer to where Pandora is headed next is simple. The Caribbean, a nice place to spend the winter and that’s a pretty sure thing.

Where will she go after that? Well, it depends…