Birthdays, parties, rescue at sea and super-yacht regatta

24th January 2011

The last month has been amazing. Mostly it has been taken up with birthday celebrations though I keep wondering why I would want to celebrate getting older! William, Pete and I run a birthday club. You can only join it if your birthday is 17th January but it does seem to be a good club to be a member of. Will arrived in Antigua on the 15th and his feet have hardly hit the ground since he has been here. Since Will arrived we have had three birthday bar-b-ques (two were ours), a full moon party, an aborted sail around the island, a rescue at sea, an after sailing fancy dress party and the usual Friday night out and today is only day 9 of his visit! Pete dropped in for one day but we made sure he had a birthday celebration to remember!

The 17th was a Monday and after our swim and birthday breakfast table Will and I spent the day taking the bus to St Johns for fish, meat and veggies. Dreadlocked, laidback Jusbos, my fish man, had sold all his fish to my horror and so had all the other fishermen but Jusbos told me not to worry cause he would have some nice fish for me tomorrow. “But Jusbos that is no good. It is my twin and my birthday today and we need some for our celebrations”. “Wait - then in that case I have a birthday present for you”. He went to a cool box and pulled out a bag of prepared fish and gave it to me. There was a lovely mix of fishes and tuna fish (he has a small boat and I feel his tuna is probably OK) and I was very flattered. He turned to Will and said “you must come to my ghetto for a drink” and “knocked hands” in the Antiguan fist to fist way. I slipped him some money to cover the fish and we went in search of vegetables.

That evening our small party went large. The Airds came en-mass and so did the Vicky and Jonty group. Vicky used to be a BA air-hostess and she had a group of girl friends to stay - all very glamorous and wonderfully friendly. Of course… they were all retired air hostesses. They were such fun and the men especially enjoyed the evening! When I first met Vicky I tried to guess what her husbands business was in 20 questions but NO-ONE would ever guess. He makes the machinery that makes concrete railway sleepers and consults companies on building the factories to manufacture sleepers! His Swan sailing yacht is called Sleeper and now we know why!

The round the island race was an absolute must. Unfortunately for William especially it followed a rather late night in Abras and we had to be on the dock at 7am. We were sailing in Seal - Vince’s 35foot cruiser class yacht. I had persuaded him we should sail round the island and not the shortened course. He had spent the previous day scrubbing Seals waterline and was looking forward to the sail. There were just the three of us on board - William, Vince and myself. I think William felt ill before we stepped on Seal and this was not helped by the 3 metre waves and strong winds once out of Falmouth Harbour. I was enjoying myself and we were sailing really well for the two hour upwind leg.

As we approached Green Island, and were starting to ease the sheets we noticed the faster boats ahead were pointing in a direction that appeared to be away from the island so I went below to check the charts (I was navigator). As I pulled out the charts I heard someone faintly on the VHF “This is Elethea. We require urgent assistance, we have lost our rudder, our anchor is dragging and we are on a leeward shore”

I yelled up to Vince. “She is just ahead, I can see her on the reef”. Elethea is a heavily modified First 38 and she had 12 crew! First I tried radioing ABSAR - Antiguans rescue service. No reply. Then I tried phoning ABSAR. They were on Montserrat and would be at least 2 hours. Well we could not sail by. In heavy seas William and I had to get the sails down and secured. I found a heavy line to use as a tow rope and Vince steered very expertly close to Elethea. With great effort we managed to get a line to her and one of the crew - a dreadlocked islander - hung on to the line and managed to attach it through the bow roller onto a cleat. I do not know how he managed to hold that line because Vince and I could not manage to hang onto the line they threw to us. The whole time this was going on our depth alarm was constantly going off. I don’t think William will mind me saying that while all this was going on his seasickness got the better of him and he sat on the coach roof watching the proceedings with a growing horror.

For me the fear set in while we towed Elethea. The tow line was snatching as the two boats were thrown about by the swell. I tried to make sure that Seal was not damaged and that the line did not come off the winch. We towed Elethea for 20 minutes before a couple of guys brought out a ski boat and a rib to take over. Just as they arrived the tow line snapped with a gun like retort at Elethes’s bow and I thought “this is it” as the line came flying towards me like a rocket as the tension was released. It glanced my elbow and suddenly it was my turn to feel ill!

When Vince asked “Shall we continue the race” William and I, almost in unison said “No”. We were both looking forward to getting back to dry land. In the event we had a lovely sail back to Jolly Harbour with me at the helm. Vince was exhausted, William perked up and I began to feel better with the wind behind us as we surfed our way homeward.

31st January 2011

Pete and Paula sailed in on Sunday 23rd on a huge cruise liner and we had another mega barbeque. The lovely Airds were rent a party and so we were at least 15 (I lost count!) for lunch. Champagne and conversation flowed - it was great to see the third member of our birthday club (Pete) and Paula. It was sad to say goodbye to them late afternoon just before the ship left.

So now the whole of January has flown past. The last three days have been spent on a super-yacht called “This is Us” as race crew in the Antiguan Super Yacht challenge. We had a brilliant time sailing in near perfect conditions on a beautiful yacht with a great crew though our performance in the racing was diabolical mainly due to the terrible helming (on one downwind leg the helm - a local white guy - crash gybed the schooner booms three times on the trot - crash, crash, crash). Despite the bad performance we have been invited by the owner to crew the St Barts Bucket which is THE yacht race to go to in the Caribbean. We have accepted . So our Antiguan life continues.