A few years ago Brenda and I were in Antigua and learned about a rowing race across the Atlantic, 3,000 miles, the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.  That’s twice as far as the Salty Dawg Rally run from Hampton VA to Antigua and to make matters worse, they have to row the entire way in an open boat.

The idea of purposely heading out into the ocean in an open boat for a month or more sounds nuts.  For me, the 9-12 day run from VA to Antigua in the relative comfort of Pandora is not all that appealing but I do it because I want to spend a winter in the Caribbean.

The crews that make their run do it for the experience, not to enjoy time here as I expect that after being in Antigua for a short time, they fly home and back to work.

For me, the run to Antigua is a big deal and not all that comfortable.  However, rowing across the Atlantic? Now that is an entire different kettle of fish.

It seems that several dozen boats do this every year and some crews do it more than once, perhaps as many as ten times for some, I am told.  And every crew has a specific goal beyond successfully completing the trip, a charity or something to raise money for.

Here’s one of the boats that made the trip.  All of them are very similar in design with one, two three or four crew.  This one, had a crew of three.Their goal is clearly stated on the aft portion of the hull. When I think about what being at sea for a month in an open boat doing nothing but sleeping and rowing, day after day, I guess that they were truly living their goal.   Misery!  Or should I say, “misery loves company” and they lived that, all together for a month.

And they can’t say that they did it for the cuisine.   This is a lovely sample of food that they enjoyed on passage.  I also saw bags of vacuum packed stuff that looked like oatmeal.   Every item brought aboard has to be accounted for at the end of the trip and a race official audits the items as they are removed to ensure that every single items that they took aboard is accounted for and noting was tossed over the side. The race officials are very serious about all this and monitor the boats for any perceived infraction.   I  had heard about a women’s team a few years ago that thought it would be fun to hold up a sheet as a sail and make a video of what they must have thought was a moment of hilarity.

The committee saw the clip and disqualified them on the spot.  I’ll bet that they had fun explaining this to their supporters.

Like the boats in the Salty Dawg Rally, each boat in the race has a tracker on board so that folks on shore can follow along.   This is a screen shot of the fleet.  A few days ago I decided to go over to English Harbor to welcome one of the boats that was arriving.  There were hundreds on hand to welcome the crew including perhaps 20 or so that were wearing matching shirts.  It was fun to see the boat as they entered the harbor, serenaded by the horns of the big yachts and accompanied by a number of dinks that were happy to greet them too. These guys, all members of the Scots Guard or military, were clearly pretty excited to be nearing land.  I was told that one of them played the bagpipe but I didn’t see or hear that.  Ashore was all done up with banners and such. While I was standing around waiting for the boat to appear, I heard someone call my name.  It was Ann-Marie Martin leaning out of her office window, obviously also excited about the arrival of the boat.  She’s the Park’s Commissioner who I have come to know over the years of bringing the SDSA fleet to Antigua.  As each of the crew stepped ashore, after more than a month at sea, emotions ran high.  It was moving to see them greeted by family after so long apart. There was plenty of enthusiasm for the UK and Scotland in evidence. Next on the agenda was a sit down interview and when that was over, a meal of cheeseburgers and beer.  I’ll bet that it was a welcome change from oatmeal and freeze dried food.  Their accomplishment was really something, rowing across the Atlantic but it didn’t take long for them to announce that “the Atlantic Guardsman were formally retiring from ocean rowing”.  That makes sense to me.  For them, been there, done that.  If you’re curious about this team and want to learn more, follow this link. 

When asked about a memorable moment on the trip, one shared the experience of looking up at the stars on a clear night.  Another, recounted when the boat was rolled completely over, tossing all of them overboard.   Yes, that sounds memorable if not in a good way.  I’ll take the Milky Way above being tossed into the drink.

And if you are part of the “I want to cross the Atlantic because it’s there” group, follow this link to learn more about the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.

And, I expect that the crew of the Atlantic Guardsman would have something to say about that other team’s campaign against living miserably.

Finally, tomorrow we head to the other side of Antigua to provision in Jolly Harbor with our friends Mark and Lynn on Roxy and then on to Guadeloupe in a few days.

Perhaps I’ll close with a shot of the rainbow that we enjoyed this morning following a brief shower.  Another beautiful day in paradise.   Nope, no rowing in my future.  Well, at least unless my dink motor fails.

There are an amazing number of beautiful yachts here in Antigua.  Between English Harbor and Falmouth they are too numerous to count.

I’ve been taking photos of a number of particularly memorable ones and yet have struggled to find a way to put them all in a single post.

Today it became clear to me about which boat I wanted to write about when the iconic Christina O pulled into the harbor.  You may remember hearing a lot about her years ago as she was once one of the very largest yachts in the world.  She was certainly the most famous of all as the private yacht of Aristotle Onassis who entertained, heads of state and movie stars too numerous to mention.    She still ranks up there in the list of the 100 largest yachts in the world at #65.  The fact that she is now more than half way down the list speaks to the increasing size of yachts in the world.

She really is an amazing yacht and her design has stood the test of time, standing out in any harbor she visits. She has a long and storied history with many famous people gracing her decks.

I expect that her launch has tales to tell.  While Onassis owned her she had an amazing guest list including this list that I pulled from her Wikipedia page.

Apart from Onassis’s mistress Maria Callas and his wife Jackie Kennedy Onassis, he entertained celebrities such as Umberto Agnelli, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, Richard Burton, Clementine Churchill, Diana Churchill, Winston Churchill, Jacqueline de Ribes, John F. Kennedy, Greta Garbo, Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, Grace Kelly, Anthony Montague Browne, Rudolf Nureyev, Begum Om Habibeh Aga Khan, J. Paul Getty, Eva Perón, Françoise Sagan, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne.^{[12][15][16][17][18]}

In 1956 the wedding of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and Grace Kelly held its reception on Christina O

This video is packed with amazing photos of her years entertaining luminaries.
Now as a private yacht available for charter, she continues to have a remarkable number of luxury appointments worthy of note including some that aren’t particularly PC these days.  I’ll let you be the judge…

Christina O has a master suite, eighteen passenger staterooms, and numerous indoor and outdoor living areas, all connected by a spiral staircase. Compared to a typical 21st-century superyacht, her staterooms are small and Christina O lacks the indoor boat storage that is now standard; however, the number of living areas is large, and the amount of outdoor deck space is generous. The aft main deck has an outdoor pool with a minotaur-themed mosaic floor that rises at the push of a button to become a dance floor. Bar appointments included whales’ teeth carved into pornographic scenes from Homer‘s Odyssey.^[7] The bar stools in Ari’s Bar retain the original upholstery crafted from soft, fine leather made from the foreskins of whales.^[32]

As is the case of many yachts that are available for charter, there are a number of promotional videos.  This short piece follows a model who wanders languidly  through the yacht, drawing attention to various aspects of Christina O’s appointments. It’s hard to imagine any yacht that is more remarkable than Christina O.  Wonder if I can wrangle a tour?  Not likely.  However perhaps I can find some friends to split a charter.  It’s only $800,000 a week plus expense, whatever that might total.

It’s hard to imagine a yacht that is more amazing than Christina O but there are actually a number of other classic yachts here right now including one that once was chartered by King Edward and his wife Wallis Simpson.

In more ways than one, royalty has definitely entered the harbor.

But I’ll just have to be happy with little Pandora swinging on her anchor.  Besides, nobody had a better view of the sunrise this morning than we did. Or the rainbow yesterday, one of many in the last few showery days. And those puffy clouds that pass overhead all day long. I guess I’ll stick with Pandora for now royal or not.

Recently, I have been thinking about all the changes that have come to the cruising community in the decades Brenda and I began sailing together.

It wasn’t all that long ago, for those of a “certain age,” that electronics onboard were mostly limited to a few cabin lights and a VHF.   Forget navigation equipment beyond perhaps Loran or an RDF, and if you were a “real” cruiser, you found your way around using a sextant.

Just a few years back the Iridium Go was the hottest new thing and in this year’s rally, nearly every boat in the fleet had one.  The Predict Wind maps and routing software, were a game changer and great addition to Chris Parker’s forecasts when on passage.  However, the GO service, at $135/month is limited to downloading weather information and sending email.  And, it is terribly slow at that.

In the months leading up to the departure of this year’s rally, I learned that a few boats had installed Starlink but didn’t think much about it.  All that changed for me when one of the Bahamas rally boats called in for a Zoom weather briefing.  They were on passage, 200 miles north of the Bahamas and while the rest of us were using sketchy marina WiFi or cell data to connect, there they were calling in on video, clear as day, with a view of their wake streaming to the horizon.

So, here I am just a few months later and it seems like every other boat around us here in Antigua has Starlink and are enjoying streaming video.

Starlink is a product of Elon Musk’s Space X and just in case you have been living under a rock I expect that you would have at least heard about it through reporting of the war in Ukraine as he sent over a bunch of stations for the Ukrainians to use to stay in touch.

The Starlink service is powered by thousands of satellites in orbit that Space X launched over the last few years and much of the world, including the Caribbean and north America are now blanketed by this service.  There are several versions of the service available, including, residential, RV and marine.   I had assumed that the marine version was what we’d need to use and that’s really expensive, I think about $2,500 for the hardware and $5,000 a month for the service.  That’s not a lot different in cost than the satellite services that have been around for years and there is no way that it would be useful for small cruising boats like Pandora.

The residential unit uses a fixed antenna that you mount on the roof or somewhere with a good view of the sky.  It is fixed and doesn’t move.

The RV version, designed to be used on a moving object like a van or RV that travels from place to place looks about the same as the fixed version but has a built in motor to point the unit toward the best satellites.  That’s the version that cruisers are putting on their boats.  It’s not designed for use on boats and I have no idea how long it will work in the harsh marine environment.  However, at $600 it’s not expensive compared to other things for a boat and the monthly charge is $135 for something like a terabyte of data at high speed, I think about 100 mb/sec which I believe is faster than our home internet.

A common question that I get when folks are preparing for the rally is “what sort of connectivity is there in the Caribbean?”  The answer was always about a mix of WiFi hotspots and the best options for cellular, island by island.  Starlink changes all that with its low entry price and reasonable monthly charge.

So, after seeing a unit in action here in Antigua on my friend Herb’s boat,  I had to have one.  I ordered it a few weeks ago to be shipped to another Salty Dawg’s home in VT and he carried it down to Antigua, arriving on the island a few days ago.

Yesterday I installed it and while I had to fuss with it for a few hours using the Starlink app on my iPad, I gave up on that, installed the app on my Android Google fi pbone and it worked almost immediately.  Yahoo!

I will say that when it initialized and the antenna moved around to find the best sight to the sky, it was amazing to watch.  Magic!

Here it is, temporarily installed on Pandora’s cabin top.   After I get a feel for it, I will install it more permanently on the radar arch. A closeup of the unit.   It’s crazy as when you turn it on, it rotates and automatically points to the optimal source of signal.  As the boat moves around in the very light winds that we have right now, it follows the satellites by rotating to compensate for the boat’s movement. 

While you turn the unit on it draws a good amount of power but once it settled down and the router is initialized it doesn’t use a ton of power but more than I would want to leave on 24/7 when we aren’t using the unit.

The Starlink website says that the power drain doesn’t seem to be much I’ll know more once the sun goes down and I see what it uses this evening.

This unit should be  game changer for Pandora and having the power to watch movies on Netflix while on the hook will be a remarkable change.  Actually, last night we streamed PBS All Creatures Great and Small and it was amazing.   It wasn’t without a few glitches as Antigua isn’t in a high speed area yet, compared to other islands in the Caribbean but I did a speed check a moment ago and while the speed varied moment to moment, it peaked at about 80MBS, about the same as at home with cable.

The pace of change in every aspect of our lives continues to accelerate and none will have more of an impact on the cruising community than reasonably priced broadband internet.  The need to stay in touch with aging parents, grandchildren or with customers for those who are still working is more critical than ever.

Now that I have seen this amazing service first hand, I just had to get one and now it’s here.

Who know how this will all unfold and if Space X will decide that using the RV unit on small boats thousands of miles from where they shipped the unit, remains to be seen.   However, given all of the boat dollars we burn on Pandora this seems to be a decent risk, even if the service is somehow restricted in the future.

For now, having broadband aboard Pandora!  Who knew?

We’ve come so far and it’s hard to imagine what’s next.

Now, if Pandora could make the run north to CT on her own.  That would be awesome.

 

It’s Saturday afternoon and we have been aboard Pandora for a week since heading back to Antigua from the US.

We are now anchored in our “normal spot” in Falmouth Harbor and are getting rain showers every few hours, night and day.  It is mostly sunny and then the skies open up for perhaps ten minutes and then it’s sunny again.  As they say “into every life a little rain must fall”.  And, of course a rainbows follow.  This one at dawn yesterday. For the first few days we moved over to historic Nelson’s Dockyard and tied up to the quay.  This involved Mediterranean mooring where we dropped our anchor out in the harbor and backed up to the marina wall, using the anchor to hold ourselves off and safe from hitting the dock.  It’s a tricky process but after you get the hang of it, not too bad.    When we moor this way, Brenda is up forward dropping the anchor.  I power backwards, using the bow thruster to steer the boat.  I say not too hard but my heart is racing the whole time as we always have to do this between a few other boats with feet on each side and of course there is always a nasty cross wind.   And, to add a bit of fun, this is a very popular spectator sport, as is all docking.  Sometimes it feels more like Nascar with the excitement of crashes always a moment away.

In spite of this, it’s very convenient to be able to step off of Pandora right onto the dock. We had some canvas repairs done while we have been in Antigua and that included a new mast boot, to keep the water out of the boat.  Actually, this “fix” included an inner boot of rubber covered by the canvas.  That part was done in Annapolis.

The finished boot looks very sharp.Even more impressive from the back as it’s pretty intricate with multiple Velcro flaps to keep it affixed. .  It’s a bit hard to see but there is a lot going on including fittings for the boom vang and lots of other stuff to work around.  This is what’s under the new canvas boot.This has been a major source of leaking down below, especially on this last passage so I hope that things are finally solved.  Fingers crossed.

Brenda’s also getting settled in and has met some new friends who knit.  They meet twice a week at the Antigua Yacht Club for a few hours.  A very nice group.  The knitter on the right lives in Antigua year round having visited years ago and fell in love with the island. All that electrical upgrades we had done on Pandora over the summer are paying off with plenty of excess electricity to power the boat.  Lots of hot water and I am thinking of having a change done on my electrical panel that will allow us to run our washing machine off of the batteries as well.  We have a very powerful inverter to run appliances and it seems pretty clear that we can use a lot more power with the wind generator, new solar panels and those power hungry lithium batteries to suck all that juice up.

Here’s the solar array and wind generator.   This combo is a remarkable supply of power in the sunny and windy Caribbean.  Of course, Falmouth Harbor in the background.  Beyond the entrance, the island of Monserrate, home to one of the active volcanoes in the Caribbean. Of course, it’s Saturday afternoon and it’s time for club racing.  This lovely classic sloop tacked back and forth before heading out for the races.   What a contrast to all the huge mega yachts lined up cheek to jowl in the Antigua Yacht Club marina. And, speaking of clubs.  I belong to plenty and enjoy flying the flags.    Of course, the Antigua courtesy flag followed by the “white penant” of the Royal Naval Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda.  Of course, I am a card carrying member of this terrific group.  Below that, a big Salty Dawg rally flag. And speaking of the White Pennant.  This beautiful classic yacht, Shemara, built in 1938, pulled in today flying a White Ensign, which is very similar to the Tot Club flag.  This version signifies that someone aboard is a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron.  I have seen this yacht before and wrote about her in this post.  With one million man hours in the restoration, she deserves to be beautiful. On the port side…  The Salty Dawg battle flag and club burgee, the “flying fish” of the Ocean Cruising Club and finally, the Seven Seas Cruising Association Commodore Burgee.   Brenda and I earned that one for living aboard for 12 out of 18 months a number of years ago and also sailing at least 1,000 miles in that  season as well.Beyond that, not a lot to talk about.  Brenda’s birthday is coming up on the 15th and she’s none too happy about being away from family so I will have to work hard to make it up to her.

I guess that’s one part of living aboard that she will never settle into.  Other than that,  we are settling pretty well into life aboard Pandora, here in Antigua.

It’s hard to believe that it is 2023.  Happy new year wherever you are.

2023 brings with it the beginning of Brenda’s and my 11th year of winters south aboard our Pandora(s).  I say “plural” as our current Pandora is the second in that line.  Now that I have cleared that up…

Let’s just say that it’s been a long time since that first winter south and our run down the ICW.    Our first stop after exiting the CT River was to visit Black Rock and and our first yacht club, Fairweather Yacht Club.

This photo of us on the dock at Fairweather as we prepared to head to NYC and south. It’s amazing that this year is a full decade as a retired person.  If you haven’t tried it, being retired is easier than working, most of the time, anyway.

It’s remarkable to think about all of the places that Brenda and I have been since 2012 when we took our first run south.

I can still remember heading down the East River and having our youngest, ride his bike to across town to wave from us as we exited Hell Gate on our way down the length of Manhattan island. This post was about heading through NYC aboard Pandora #1.  Camera in hand, Chris took this shot of us as we headed down the East River.   He then jumped on his bike and raced us downtown and waved us bon voyage from Battery Park.  That moment was so long ago and yet it seems like yesterday.  Christopher was at Columbia University for grad school where he would ultimately earn is PhD in Physics.  Brenda cried alligator tears as we made our way down the harbor, Christopher fading into the distance.

After finising up at Columbia he flew to CA to find his future, bunking with a friend for a few months while he began work on a tech startup.  He’s now on his third startup attempt.  He’s still in the fairly early stages of building his company, with more than a dozen employees.  It’s going well.

Even better, he’s back living in NYC again, this time with his partner Melody and their husky dawg, Mila.  After months of begging them to come east, during the early days of the pandemic, they finally agreed to move back east and stay with us.  Nearly a year and a half later living with us, the pull of NYC became too much to ignore and they moved into “the city” and are now on the Upper East Side.

It’s interesting to note that 2012 was also the first year that we spied our “new” Pandora, Arial at the time, on a mooring in Block Island.  I was immediately smitten with her and more than a few years later she was ours. Now she’s a light grey, a lot cooler in the tropical sun.  Here she is in English Harbor, Antigua.   She’s in better shape than ever and really tricked out for long distance cruising, sitting in a place that we could not have imagined all those years ago. What a view from her bow, tropical breezes blowing while it’s cold and rainy up in CT.  A week ago at home  it was in the low teens, a lot different, that’s for sure.  And the boats in the neighborhood are a lot bigger these days. The show of wealth here in the Caribbean, especially Antigua, is remarkable.  How many outboards does it take to push your dink?Happily we haven’t been home for too many winters since that first run to the Bahamas and during that time, our travels have taken us the entire length of the US east coast, the Bahamas, Cuba and most of the islands of the eastern Caribbean.

I still remember how awestruck we were when we first saw the unreal blue waters of the Bahamas.   Anyway, it’s been a long time and here we are in historic English Harbor.  And speaking of “here”, what a spot to sit and have a glass of wine.  Ok, getting another glass of wine…And speaking of here, you should have seen the fireworks on New Year’s Eve.A short but remarkable display. There is nothing like tropical fireworks and we actually stayed up till midnight when the show began.We were not alone with a big crowd in the Dockyard, thumping music and all that ran until 02:00.  We had no trouble “tuning” out the revelers out with the hatches closed and AC humming…

It’s hard to believe how much has changed in the last decade and to now find us wintering in Antigua,  place that I could not have even found on a map when we began heading south in 2012 is still a bit of a head spinner.

So, happy new year to you and I hope that 2023 is a good one for you.

Ah, to our second decade…