Falmouth / English Harbour
Thu Jan 16 2025
With the wind in our sails, we are looking forward to more adventures and the joys of cruising Antigua!
We took a short sail to the south around to Falmouth Harbour which is adjacent to English Harbour where Nelson’s Dockyard is located, a world UNESCO heritage site. It’s a bit busy here and not exactly our cup of tea, but the dockyard was cool and had an interesting museum. It is in between our next anchorage and makes the sailing day shorter so seemed worth a stop. It’s super yatch city here. It’s kind of crazy how much money is in one place!
The sail was beautiful and it felt good to get the boat moving again after being in the marina for almost a week. Not sure we prefer marina life too much…
Green Island
Fri Jan 17 2025
After a night in super yatch city and a very expensive meal out, it was time to move on to quieter and better places. The plan today was to sail to the east side of the island to Nonsuch bay / green island which is an eaten protected from the Atlantic by a reef.
The bilge pump continued to constantly run and after shutting it off in the middle of the night to tame the whine I decided it was time to try and deal with it yet again. We knew there was debris in the bilge which could cause the sensor to think it’s full of water, and I hesitated to deal with it in the marina because I didn’t want to have to figure out where I could dump the disgusting bilge water. We were going out away from shore so it seemed like the right time. We spent about an hour using the shop vac, gaff, boat hook and funnel duck taped to a piece of pvc to fish numerous items out of the extremely deep bilge while belly over the engine. During our fishing marathon we found the rubber back-flow preventer to the bilge pump and we thought, this is the issue all along! Problem solved…
Next we proceed to bring the anchor home. So far so good and going quick until I hear Tony say “Anchor off the bottom. We have another anchor stuck on our anchor.” Hmmm…. I can’t leave the helm. We are in between numerous boats. I catch the neighbor grab binoculars which ultimately makes me warm and fuzzy inside knowing it may lead to a helping hand. Tony grabs the boat hook and tries without success to free the derelict anchor. It apparently was a stray and likely had been down there for some time. No luck. The neighbor screams to use a line to free it, no luck. The neighbor then gets in his dinghy and comes over to help free the anchor. Life saver! Now we are on our way.
I know it would be a bit of an upwind battle today into the trades, but the waves were annoying…. Big surprise. We begin our tacking and pounding journey upwind to our destination after a bit of an uncomfortable fight getting the sails up. We are following a few other boats along the same journey, one catamaran that easily overtakes our heavy slow boat. We round the southern edge of the island and all the sudden hear a loud noise. The mainsail clew (the stern end foot ring) ripped out of the sail leaving it on the track in the boom. Basically the mainsail is now completely loose on the stern end. Time for an emergency reefing. Reefing will allow to use another “clew” so to speak and at least get the mainsail rigged properly even if it means a smaller sail area. The waves made this a fun endeavor and as I was trying to get the boat into the wind so Tony could execute it, the jib kept back winding making it tougher to steer into the wind even with the engine running. The waves were really the culprit of all the issues constantly pushing the boat in a different direction. We managed to get the main sail reefed and just as Tony comes back into the cockpit he rips the dodger window on his way it. Not that it was a very nice dodger, but it’s our only dodger. It seems that’s the icing on the cake.
We get closer to our destination and I notice yet again the bilge pump is continuously running. I hope it’s just because the rudder packing gland leaks. We had a bit of a challenging time dropping sails and motor into the anchorage. We get the anchor set without knowing the depth since our depth finder struggles to register after being in deep water. Turns out is a relatively deep anchorage. Just as we are getting settled we realize the bilge pump has barely been pumping water out. Here we go again…. This time we just replaced it with a spare pump as at this point it must be faulty. So far so good, but I won’t hold my breath.
The Problems So Far
Sat Jan 18 2025
Before I share our current anchorageand the beauty that surrounds us – Reality check! Many cruisers will say that cruising around the world with your sailboat is more like traveling uncomfortably to exotic locations to fix your boat. The maintenance on a sailboat never lets up, especially with an antique like Reverie. All boats break and it tends to happens at the most inoportune times. Here’s an exhaustive list of all the problems we encountered during our transit from west Florida to Antigua.
- Auxiliary diesel tank is leaking at a weld. This was discovered after splashing and at the dock in safe cove. 60 gallon capacity down to 30.
- The windlass chain stripper jams easily. This basically means we have to line up the chain directly to pull up the anchor, just took some learning…
- Run aground 2x: first was in the south cove canal system right in the middle of the channel, second going out captiva pass. Neither resulted in getting stuck, but after diving the boat in the Bahamas it was noted the brand new anti foul paint job was scraped up and one area of fiberglass near the bow directly under the boat is delaminated slightly. Repairs will have to take place when she is pulled out of the water for hurricane season.
- Water tank leaks when healing. Required a full refit and re-coating of the tank, emergency repairs in Marathon.
- Galley port hole leaks significantly resulting in a lot of water pouring into the galley and a food store locker. Required extraction and re-bedding in Marathon.
- Hand / manual bilge pump not operating. This continues to be an issue as it sucks up debris that are floating deep in the bilge. Hopefully the last effort to remove debris will eleviate this issue.
- Sea grass block engine intake sea cock. Resulted in stealing water intake from refrigeration on Gulf Stream passage. Then after diving the boat and no luck externally we pulled the hose and found the clog at the ball valve.
- The above resulted in replacing the intake hose since it was destroyed when trying to remove it in the Bahamas.
- Too many poops with 3 people aboard in our composting toilet resulted in needing to empty it before it was fully composted. Mostly just not nice…. We had chosen to replace the original marine head based on experience with the smell of those things and extensive research.
- Electrical charging issues- solar was not charging batteries on a sunny day and 1 of 2 DC / DC chargers was not on during engine use. This seemed to resolve itself by a reset and some adjustments to amperage cut in in the DC charger.
- Engine exhaust thru hull leaking when healed and drill hole notice adjacent also streaming water into bilge. Resulted in first shoving a pencil in the hole, then heaving to in the middle of the ocean, widdling down a proper wooden bung and spreading a bunch of sealant around the area. Later in Jolly Harbour we pulled the thru hull, had to repair the inner rubber gasket with high temp gasket maker, reinstalled and re-sealed. Additionally filled the small hole adjacent with epoxy and some chop Matt fiber internally.
- Autopilot hydraulic pump bolt going through the quadrant severs. This resulted in heaving to in the middle of the ocean and making another bolt we luckily had of the same size work.
- Galley sink hot water hose disconnects dumping a few gallons of the pressurized water into the galley and bilge. Relatively quick fix while still underway at sea.
- Automatic bilge pump saga continues, multiple repositions with no luck.
- Bow pulpit stern end screws and wood blocks require re-bedding as the starboard side was stripped and port side upper screws were not seated.
- Pull up derelict anchor while pulling our anchor up. The windlass took a slight beating and hadn’t sounded great since but still seems operational. We have a maintenance kit so just need to make that happen in port.
- Bilge debris removal and discovery of pump back-flow gasket in the bilge. Try to fix, no luck, replace pump.
- Clew rips out of mainsail while underway. Resulted in emergency reefing. Can probably hand sew, but eventually needs to go to sailmaker.
- Dodger window rips out of seam. Already knew we needed a new one but it’s a custom item so not cheap.
After all the problems, today was a beautiful day. We moved our anchorage this morning around the corner to a beautiful protected bay. We went snorkeling, read and took much needed naps after yesterday’s challenging day. It’s a bit squally this afternoon so a good excuse for the Starlink and some tv.
A Short But Rowdy Sail
Sun Jan 19 2025
This morning I made a decision I started to regret as we went out into the Atlantic coast to head northwest to the next planned anchorage. The trade winds have been doing what they do best, blow hard and this lead to a pretty serious sea state. I knew this based on the forecast and Antigua did post a small craft advisory. That said, it’s was supposed to continue for a number of days and there was a charter boat (catamaran, which is so much less sea worthy than Reverie) with local captain in our anchorage that left and headed straight out there. The latter sealed the deal for me and I was also not loving being stuck at that anchorage for days. Therefore, we prepared for the worst, deflated the dinghy and secured it to the foredeck, attempted to secure everything in the cabin, got snacks ready to go, and decided to eliminate the staysail due to the challenge of raising and dropping it, even though technically it’s the storm sail. It’s a bit ironic, but the bottom line is we need to change it to a roller furling and it will be simpler to deploy and bring in.
We pull anchor and immediately raise the mainsail so we could avoid doing it in the waves and motor sail into the wind out of the bay. It very quickly was full on, going almost directly into large waves, some of which were breaking around us. I specifically chose to keep them at an angle and head south east for a bit just to get further away from shore where the waves were definitely affected by the contour of the ocean floor changing. I definitely had more than one moment of “what the fuck was I thinking” as I watched the bow bury itself into water, us going up what seemed like mountainous waves, and a lot of spray coming across the deck. We contemplated turning around, but that didn’t seem any better. I decided to change course, as we needed to anyway and see what it felt like with the waves at our beam / stern quarter. We pulled out the headsail and finally stopped the motor. Things began to become more comfortable and other than a bit of a challenge at the helm navigating some following seas it got much more reasonable. We saw another boat, also making me feel better. It was a short sail, only 10 miles so I knew the craziness wouldn’t last long.
The next anchorage was inside another reef behind a small island. The chart plotter had an inlet on it that was narrow, but deep and this was the suggested route from all my research. I saw some small rock islands that were not charted and it caused confusion. We pulled the head sail and decided we would motor sail in with the main, but we neglected to sheet it in quick enough. It seemed we still had some time, but all the sudden I saw breaking waves and a reef ahead marking the channel and had to quickly turn even further downwind which resulted in an accidental jibe. Luckily the main sheet wasn’t out too far but it was still jarring. We sheeted in and navigated the channel. The waves went to nothing and all the sudden we were in a beautiful protected bay. We anchored at Great Bird Island and took a deep breath! Phew, in the end it was worth it. This is a better spot and we are now no longer subject to the Atlantic side of the island to get back to Jolly Harbour in a few days.
We took the dinghy to the island for a quick exploration. You can walk to the top, as there are cliffs on the Atlantic side of it, but you have to pay a fee and we weren’t prepared. So we walked on the beech for a minute and Tony followed me in the dinghy while I snorkeled back to the boat.
The Bilge Saga Continued and Minnie Me…
Mon Jan 20 2025
We spent the day at the same anchorage. Last night the wind was intense and you could constantly hear the snubber pull on the anchor. Tony didn’t sleep well due to the intensity but I slept relatively ok knowing the anchor was solid after diving it yesterday. At some point the halyards woke me banging relentlessly on the mast and I was confused thinking I had dealt with moving them to a different location to avoid that, but I missed the spinnaker halyard , the ultimate culprit.
This morning we decided to change back the angle of the bilge pump and try and get the manual bilge pump working again. While it may seem we are obsessing over our bilge issues, this is a critical component of the system to ensure the boat doesn’t sink when it takes on water. So yet again we dove into the hole. We pulled the automatic bilge pump which we have mounted on an aluminum bar stock for easy retrieval and changed the angle. Originally, we had mounted a second higher pump but it was never completed with an outlet hose. This was the pump we used to replace the one deep in the bilge the other day so I decided to remove it and fix the wiring so it was cleaner. Tony worked on cleaning the manual pump again and found some electrical tape lodged in it, big surprise. We wanted to get a look at the hose coming from the manual pump into the bilge which is in an even deeper portion of the bilge than the auto pump. It’s extremely hard to reach. While Tony pulled up on it, I was belly down on the engine, head in the hole pushing it up toward him. When it came up high enough I could see that it had a weight on the end of it. It was not going to fit between the prop shaft and the hull wall. I tried to inspect it and it immediately came apart. The hose clamp was completely corroded and simply broke. Yay another thing to fix in a super tight place!
We finished the other tasks and I needed Tony to hold onto my feet as I dove in to re-attach the weight to the hose. It was not easy to say the least and the weight was a tight fit and I struggled to get it on the end of the hose and put a new hose clamp on it, but eventually made it happen the best I could.
With our boat maintenance tasks complete, we ate lunch and took “Minnie Me” (our dinghy) to the island to walk to the top and go for a snorkel.
“Minnie Me” is another story. She’s named after our recently passed cat Miss Minnie Moo. The reason for her name is based on the story of how she came about. When we first purchased Reverie, I did a bunch of research on dinghy’s and somewhat hastily purchased a very nice 10’ 2” dingy with an aluminum plated floor. I will leave out the reason for haste, but in the end that dinghy was simply too tough to assemble / disassemble and too large for the boat to hang on our stern arch or put
On the foredeck. It resulted in a very quick Facebook sale for about a quarter of what I paid for it in FL before leaving and the purchase of Minnie Me at West Marine for a Black Friday sale price. Minnie Me is nowhere near as stable a dinghy (similar to Minnie Moo who without a tail always struggled to jump with the same confidence and finesse as other cats). One thing is she is tiny and light weight. She fits great on the arch and she is easy to deflate and roll up on the foredeck. She currently hosts a very underpowered electric outboard and some oars which can be limiting, but she does the job for now!
Off To Another Anchorage
Tue Jan 21 2025
The wind continued to blow extremely hard all night and into the morning. Being on the windward side of the island seemed like it would be worse than the leeward side so we decided to make our way around the north end to a new anchorage not far from the marina the boat lives in. We were a little slow in deciding and I wanted to try and make a meeting for work that wasn’t super important but preferred to be there for. That didn’t work and only stressed me out more.
We switched positions and I tried to raise the anchor with Tony at the helm. It was windy, gusting to 27 knots! I was mostly successful until the end when it kept getting stuck. We switched positions back and Tony got the last bit up. It was either the mountain of chain piling in the locker or just very stuck in the bottom and after a few days of 20+ knots of wind and a 20,000 lb boat yanking on it, the anchor was definitely set. I probably just needed to be more persistent.
We raised the mainsail with both reefs in, but failed to think about our downwind situation in the bay through a narrow pass, not preparing the jibe preventer ahead of time. That resulted in me at the helm trying to stay in the wind once the mainsail was up for longer than I wanted to while Tony rigged the preventers. It was a fight. Jibe preventer set we navigated a narrow pass under sail, which I didn’t love but all went ok. We got the headsail out just after and had some issues with it flogging and getting the sheet line in the winch properly, mostly my fault by not preparing it well to start. This resulted in the lazy sheet side getting wrapped around the other sheet line in an insane mess. I had to go forward clip into the mast and unravel it, which was not easy. All said and done I was not having a good day and Tony was stuck with my extremely imperfect reactions to the mess that felt like was unfolding. After all of that we sailed downwind to our destination relatively easy and fast! The sea state wasn’t too bad, especially on that point of sail even with the excessive amount of wind.
We arrived in deep bay by 12:30pm, had lunch, worked a bit and then took the dingy to the beach to hike up to the old fort. The wind didn’t seem a ton better but it improved as the day went on.
Back in Jolly Harbour
Wed Jan 22 2025
This morning we tried to snorkel and dive the wreck of a very old 3 masted ship at the mouth of Deep Bay, but the visibility was just terrible. Even with the battery scuba and going down closer to it, fish and the structure weren’t easy to see. I could tell it would be a cool dive if the vis was better, but it wasn’t very enjoyable in these conditions. Too bad, maybe in a different season it’s better. In general the visibility of all the snorkeling we have done here hasn’t been great. It was a little better on the eastern side of the island. That said, it’s been windy and I’m sure that plays a role.
After lunch and a some work stuff, we pick up anchor to go back to the marina. Of course we had to have an issue with the windlass. Just as we pulled the anchor off the bottom it got stuck at the chain stripper again. This basically meant we had the 45lb anchor hanging for an unknown length (< or = 14’ or so) at the bow while Tony tried to fix it. It’s not ideal to say the least so I just tried to hover in the bay. We had been very close to the beach when we initially got it off the bottom so I definitely wanted to back off, but backing up Reverie isn’t easy. Yes, she goes backwards, but there’s no way to steer backwards, so it’s a constant game of bump forward thrust, steer, bump back, bump forward, steer, bump back. This is something that makes it very challenging getting in and out of slips, but I’m finally getting the hang of it. Tony fixed the issue, anchor is home and we were on our way.
It was a short jaunt over to Jolly Harbour and mostly downwind with a little bit at the beam so to simplify it we just sailed with the headsail which is easily deployed from the roller furling. Wind was up and down, but when it was up we still managed 5 knots with that sail alone. It was a squally day with rain showers on and off so the boat got a bath, as did we and then a better bath once back in the marina.
Now we are back to marina life for a little over a week before we have to leave her behind to go home. 
Discovering More Things…
Thu Jan 23 2025
Today was a work day, normal $ making work and boat work, at the marina. We tested the automatic bilge pump by spraying water into the bilge with the hose and ensuring it was operating properly. Since we are leaving the boat behind in a week, this is important! Then we tested the manual bilge pump. It’s such a frustrating situation with that thing. It continues to be a problem. This time it clogged due a piece of wire insulation. We have tried so hard to clean the 46 yr old bilge and there’s just things, little things that cannot be easily retrieved, especially with the aux diesel tank in the way and not having the gift of go go gadget arms. We added some screen at one of the hose elbows up near the manual pump and for now it’s working! I’m imagine it will clog eventually, but the location should be easier to deal with instead of at the end of the hose in the bottom of the bilge.
After that we pulled the mainsail so we could take it to the sailmaker to fix the clew ring. In the process we wanted to try and deal with the outhaul which for some reason seems to be two different lines that are not feeding properly in either direction. Essentially, we cannot get either of them out of the boom. It appears there some kind of grommet or other piece of rigging stuck inside the boom. So then we thought we needed to remove on the the end caps on the boom. That’s when we noticed the goose neck cap has a significant crack in one of the welds. Not cool! Arghhh! This will not be an easy or cheap fix. That said, discovering it now is better than the boom falling off at sea, but still it was not what we needed at the moment. So goes the woes of an old sailboat!
We decided we just need to stop looking. Haha, like that would ever work!
St. John & An Awesome Hike!
Sun Jan 26 2025
We rented a car for the weekend. Driving on the left! On Friday we drove our mainsail to Nelson’s Dockyard – A&F Sails to drop off to repair the clew. Luckily they will deliver it on Wednesday to Jolly Harbour since it’s a bit of a drive and we won’t have a car past Monday. The drive was a nice little tour of part of the island. We went inland on the way there and the coast on the way back.
Yesterday we did some stainless polishing and worked on removing the peeling varnish from the teak toe rail in the morning and then drove into St. John’s in the afternoon (main city and cruise port). Not a lot to say about St John’s. It was busy and nothing very special. There was a restaurant we wanted to go to there, but we couldn’t stay downtown here until dinner time and decided to come back. It was a mistake not to make a reservation and we drove back for nothing. The drive was a little hectic, as I missed a turn and google weaved us through some tight neighborhoods with a lot of traffic. It was a bit nerve racking in the dark, on the left on the right, just trying to get through to my next turn. Then when the restaurant turned us around, it was a bit of a bummer. To top it all off I slid in dog shit getting into the car. :).
Driving in Antigua is a very different experience than most places I’ve driven. Cars tend to just stop in the middle / side of the road wherever they want and you just have to zig zag and play games with traffic going both directions to get through. Staying close behind the car in front of you tends to be the ticket to get through these mazes. It appears there’s no real right of way when turning at intersections either, and people just alternate or take the next best shot and oncoming traffic slows down. This is a tough one to learn. It feels like a crap shoot. Additionally blinking red lights mean nothing and there is no rhyme to reason on who stops and doesn’t. Just keep moving…. Don’t forget during all of this, you are driving on the left!
Today we went on this amazing hike. I didn’t have high expectations and it may be one of the best hikes I’ve ever done. It was more of a scramble most of the way and went to the top of the 3 rocky peaks on Jolly Harbour’s north side. The views were stunning the entire way. Every corner and new peak had a slightly different view. We thought it was supposed to be short, 2.8 miles based on the guide online, but it seemed longer. We left at 11:30 and didn’t return until 3:30pm. Granted lots of class 2 and some class 3 scrambling, and a little bushwhacking so it slows you down. The flora / fauna is a mix of desert and jungle. It’s quite interesting with a lot of cactus, yucca, and palm type plants. The rock was actually pretty solid and we saw a little cliff that definitely could be good enough for climbing. Now our legs are tired!
