December 20th -January 4th

We were so excited to have the kids come down this year to spend Christmas (and New Years!) with us in Antigua. Trevor, Sarah, Ryan, Bridget and Willy all came down – it was an awesome crew! Our great friends the Fillenworth family also joined us as they chartered a catamaran out of English Harbor and we spent the first week cruising together. Their boat name was Quintessence which was renamed “Quintessential Fillies” for the week – took us a while to say it clearly on our radio calls, but after a couple of days we had it down!

Too many fun activities to recount, so will provide the highlights:

Willy arrived first with Kimberly and Scott and we went to Marinaside in Falmouth Harbor which is an open area drinking and dining area where we found Jeff Ford from Marblehead playing with his band. He spends the winter in Antigua and our friend Jack had alerted us that he would be there. We had a blast catching up with him and the music was great!

The rest of the kids arrived the next day except Livi who got stuck with the winter storm that hit the Northeast, but she made it in just one day later – so not so bad. One or our favorites things to do on Antigua is the Sunday night BBQ up at Shirley Heights. We took our gang up while the Fillies waited for Livi to arrive from the airport. We always meet the most interesting people at the BBQ and this was no exception and of course dancing to the reggae music was a blast.

We spent Christmas at Jolly Harbour (doesn’t that make sense?). With such a big crowd we had Christmas Eve dinner on board Carried Away – serving a Ho-Jo tradition of Lobster Newburg which required a lot of coaching from my big brother Peter (thank you Starlink!), but eventually we served it up and all had lovely evening.

Christmas Day was very relaxing. We opened stockings on the bow, everyone had bought one gift for everyone else. My favorite was when Trevor gave Willy and Ryan golf hats with “Best Man” embroidered on the side – this was his way of asking them both to be his best men. They both said yes which of course led to several conversations on how they will approach their big speech in November. We had a nice long walk on Jolly beach and then had Christmas dinner on board. Very merry indeed!

We had a blast during our week with the Fillies – lots of great laughs, float time, Mexican dominoes, chilling in the sky lounge on Quintessence, snorkeling and we finished with a really fun day on the Rainforest Ziplines.

Its amazing how fast time goes by and before we knew it the Fillies were flying home! Note: one week is just not enough!

With the Quintessential Fillies homeward bound, our crew sat thinking (over lunch and a cold Carib) about what to do for week 2. The kids really wanted to get to Guadeloupe which is 40 miles south of Antigua (~6 hours) and ideally to the southern islands Iles des Saintes which is another 4. After plotting it out, all the kids agreed that we should leave right away and do an overnight sail!

We quickly cleared out of customs and readied the boat for departure – we left at about 5:30 pm and had a glorious sail (light winds, bright night skies and calm seas). We took 2 hour shifts – with 2 people on the helm at all times. With 7 of us, it made it pretty easy. We moved right along, almost too fast as we had to slow down when we approached the islands as it was still dark. As the skies lightened we motored in and grabbed a mooring close to the town of Terre-de-Haut.

We spent a day bombing all around the small island on scooters and a golf cart. We also enjoyed a lovely dinner out – and the kids treated!

We headed back up to mainland Guadeloupe and stopped at Pigeon island and the Jacques Cousteau national park for what has been the best snorkel of the season so far. It was so clear and there were so many fish and of course Billy forgot to bring his go pro (so, no photos). After the stop, we continued on to Deshaise where we had booked a tour for the next morning. Phillipe of Pelican Tours was our guide and he was great. The tour highlight was a hike up to the waterfall where the kids took some pretty dramatic jumps and flips off the rocks (which scared the heck out of me).

We celebrated Old Years Night (that’s what they call it in the islands) at a popular local Deshaise restaurant called La Kaz du dounier (translates to the customs house) where we were lucky to get a reservation. While we didn’t all make it to midnight we got to see some fireworks and ring in 2025 which we anticipate will be a great year!

We sailed back up to Antigua to get Willy’s favorite Roti from Sue (a local specialty) before he had to head to the airport. Trevor booked us to go to Rum University on Galleon Beach for their last day and we had a blast. We all graduated and came away with our own personalized bottles of Rum!

It was sad to see the kids off as we had such a blast and likely won’t see them again until the late spring, but we are already in discussions about where to go for next Christmas!

Next we’re sailing back to Guadeloupe to meet up with the Hoyt family who’s coming for a week and then we’ll continue south for the early winter months.

Happy New Year to all!