Falmouth Harbour

On the 9th we traveled across Antigua to see the main town of St. John. The town had a number of small specialty shops and a cruise ship dock with stores focused on catering to its passengers. In town tourist drivers kept asking us if we wanted a ride to the beach so Amy starting saying she was a local! We took the public bus system (very inexpensive) and stopped along the way to pick up several people both ways. The countryside was cool up in the hills as we rode through the center of the island. Like the Virgin Islands, the elder population here strongly adheres to moral convictions. When someone on the bus used a curse word, passengers shouted “guard your language!”

Yesterday big winds came in and increased the swell coming into the harbour from behind near where we were anchored. This morning we moved to the north side of the harbour so we only will deal with the big breeze and escape the swell. We are going to have this 20 to 30 knot wind into next week so we will stay put here. It was great to see the Optimist fleet from the Antigua YC practicing in the breeze today. Seeing all the kids racing to bail out large amounts of water between races brought back memories of crazy windy Optimist regattas in Miami Jim sailed in the olden days. It is easy to forget Optimists are not self bailing like Lasers. We also went by Maiden today of 89-90 Whitbread Round the World Race fame, we never saw the award wining movie but hope to one day.