December 6, 2025

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a month since we dropped the dock lines in Hampton VA bound for Antigua.

As I explained in my last installment, we hit a rough spell on what we now refer to as “Night 2” of the passage, with winds up to 38 knots and high seas breaking over the top of the steering station, it was a rough 24 hours – not horrible, but challenging. Fortunately for us, that was definitely the worst weather that we saw on our 10+ day journey. Not so for some of our Salty Dawg friends who found themselves in worse conditions and faced tougher boat issues (loss of engines, broken forestays and more!) many of them (almost half) pulled into Bermuda for a pit stop.

The balance of our passage was a challenge only due to the light winds. For several days we were constantly calculating fuel consumption to make sure we had enough to make it to Antigua without having to bob around in the Atlantic waiting for the wind to fill in. On day 9 the wind filled in just enough to turn off the engines and we sailed the rest of the way to Antigua with plenty of fuel left in the tanks. Phew!

After 10 1/2 days at sea, we puled into Falmouth Harbor, Antigua on Friday November 14th at 11:10 pm. We always seem to arrive at night in the dark! We set the anchor and celebrated with a traditional swim and arrival toast of rum and followed by a much needed good nights sleep.

The next morning we moved over into Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbor to join the arrival celebrations. We were moored stern-to along with SV Persephone (The Bloxhams from Marblehead) and SV Critical Path (our Salty friends the Barrs who are also related to Karl) who had arrived ahead of us and we jumped right into the welcome activities which included hikes, dinners, local service provider receptions, rum tastings and more.

Scott had to get back to Florida for another delivery so he left after a few days and Karl stayed through the week to enjoy more of the events. Since so many Salty Dawg boats had diverted to Bermuda the arrival of the fleet spanned over two weeks and so what is usually 7-10 days of revelry turned out to be more like 3 weeks! Billy and I really enjoyed connecting with old friends and meeting new ones too. In addition to the celebrations we enjoyed supporting the local community with a beach clean up and charity dingy race. It has all been amazing – but exhausting!

Just this week, the 2025 Caribbean Rally arrival activities wrapped up, so we headed just 10 miles north to Jolly Harbor for a quick provision and to clear out of customs. Today we are bound for St. Barts (75 nm) to catch up with our friends Dawn and Stephen Bell on SV Pilar. From there we will stop for a few days in St. Martin before heading west to St John USVI to meet the kids for the Christmas holidays – can’t wait!