Yesterday Christi slept in especially late, and when she did get up, she was moving slow. Between swimming all day and dancing all night, she had gotten more exercise than normal and she was feeling it.
We puttered around all morning, and at 1330, she finally got underwater to do the metal. On the port side, the metal had a small amount of growth, nothing major. The bottom has a fine, thin layer of grass starting to grow. She scraped the metal, then moved to the starboard side and almost had a heart attack. The metal on this side was covered with thick growth, and on this side the bottom had much thicker and longer grass than the other side. She finds it odd that the underneath of the port side would be little growth and the waterline much, much thicker growth, and on the starboard side, very little growth on the waterline but a lot underneath. Weird.
She spent over an hour scraping metal and decided she had enough for today. The bottom would have to wait. She got out and we pulled up anchor and moved to the marina. It is real med moor system, where you drop your anchor and back in to the sea wall. Fortunately for us, the spot was absolutely huge, with almost 3 feet of clearance on each side. The wind was blowing, but not that hard. The boats on both sides of us complimented us for doing a good job in backing in, which was nice to hear.
We were absolutely delighted to find out they have American voltage power, which we haven’t had since we left San Diego. For all you non-technical people, that means instead of only plugging our battery charger into power and running off the batteries, we can plug the whole boat into power. We can run the AC and washing machine any time we want to without turning the generator on. And we will have hot water all the time. Wow. It will be interesting to see how our power consumption changes once we have more power to use.
After we got the boat situated, we visited with the neighbors on both sides for a little while. We found out our mystery mud is actually ash from the volcano on the nearby island of Montserrat. In recent years the volcano has been quite active, including a lava flow so big that it wiped out most of the town. It sounds like a couple of days ago there was another burst of activity, with more lava and ash spewing forth. The volcanic activity is also likely responsible for the bizarre swell from the west that was not forecast.
Then we walked around Nelson’s Dockyard. It is adorable. We see why it is the biggest tourist attraction on the island. The peninsula is quite small and there are only about a dozen or so buildings. Most of the buildings are set far apart from one another, with lots of grass in between them, so it feels spacious and open. Each building has a sign explaining the building’s original use. They did a great job with the restoration. Here are a few shots to give you a feel for the place. The first photo is of the sawpit shed and cabin, built in 1769. They used to roll trees up the ramp and then cut the trees into planks and timber. The cabin was used as a smith’s shop and for storing lead and coal. Today the sawpit shed is a sailmaker’s and we are not sure what business is in the cabin. The second picture is of the Officer’s Quarters, the very last building constructed there in 1855. The original kitchen is now a bakery and the rest of the building is a museum. The last photo is of a careening stand. Rather than swim under the ship to scrape growth like Christi does, they used to pull the ships out of the water and lean them on their sides against these stands to scrape all the gook off. You can see the boats are backed in and tied up to the sea wall.
Directly across the way from Nelson’s Dockyard is St. Helena’s Dockyard, located on another tiny spit of flat land jutting out into the harbor called St. Helena’s Dockyard. St. Helena’s was the original dockyard in English Harbor, built in 1725, but as time went on it became too small, so in 1745 the British moved the main dockyard across the way to what is now Nelson’s. Today St Helena’s has an active haul out facility and a couple of attractive bright yellow buildings.
Ever since we pulled in to the dockyard, we have had a conga line of people stopping by to offer their services to us. Boat washers/waxing, restuaranteers, masseuses, interior cleaning, engine room work, etc. The neighbors on both sides of us also had recommendations. Antigua is truly the place to get your boat worked on. They have every service here you can think of, and the service people are incredibly accommodating.
Today, as soon as we got up, we got to work organizing labor. We found a boat washer/waxer who could start right then. We found someone to service our dinghy motor. He came right away to pick it up. We had two people come out to give us an estimate on carpet and upholstery cleaning. Finally, we found someone to come out and take a look at the downstairs air conditioner. He also came out right away. As we suspected, the air conditioning compressor works fine, just the blower died. He said he would get back to us about part availability on the blower. He commented that we had a “cute little boat”. Of course, as soon as he left, we realized we forgot to have him look at the engine room blower.
Needless to say, we spent most of the day on board waiting for the assorted service people. After all the workers had come and gone, we ventured a little farther out to Falmouth Harbor. Falmouth Harbor is separated from English harbor by a small isthmus of land, so it is literally a 5 minute walk across the isthmus to the other harbor. Beyond the dockyard, the road is lined with small bungalows, most of which look to be restaurants. Falmouth harbor has a modern marina facility with floating docks. The marina is full of big yachts, including several mega yachts. The marina has a two story building with assorted businesses in it. Around the marina there is a nice looking condo complex, a nice looking hotel and some more small bungalows housing assorted tourist businesses, such as a car rental places. This bay looks to be almost as protected as English harbor, and there are a lot of boats anchored out in the bay.
