With the utmost respect, the Sir Viv commercial doesn't do it for me.

Here is the new Tourism commercial that has just been released to promote the island's sports tourism sector in an industry which is getting more competitive all the time according to this article in Caribbean Journal.
I kinda get what they were trying to do but I'm a 41 year old Antiguan who's never seen Sir Viv play cricket. I know about him and to me his incredible feats are accomplishments I learned about from essentially historical accounts. He's one of our greatest sportsmen for sure, but many here and across the Caribbean don't really relate and for sure hardly any potential visitors from the US have ever heard of him. The golf angle is totally weird and I feel that it's seriously time we market tourism and especially the segment many here are overly obsessed with, Sport Tourism, using younger more dynamic characters. If we are going to use a "star" to market our tourism or sport tourism, then I think we need a rethink. Antigua's America's Cup winner, Shannon Falcone or Antigua's international Kitesurfing sensation, Andre Phillip would be a thousand times more appealing showing off Antigua in my opinion. I mean, think about sailing and how many come to Antigua because of it? Imagine how much trickle down happens in this economy because of sailing. Compare that to golf or even cricket. We really need to examine these sectors carefully and do some very good market research in the future if we want to be competitive. I mean if we had direct flights from India then I would say lets push this all the way, but for now our markets are not all cricket hotspots. Our successful competitors who were cutting cane a few year ago have done the research.
It's time to think outside the box!

Cruise ship passengers missing our boat

Please be advised that we have left people behind at the cruise ship dock far too many times because they were on cruise ship time and arrived late, so make sure you check what is local time as that is the time we quote and run our operation on. Thanks much.

Some fun photos of our sailing day trip off Antigua yesterday

These Instagram photos were taken yesterday on my phone while we were out on a Classic Yacht Day Tour. The winds were blowing hard and after snorkeling and lunch up in Carlisle Bay we flew downwind outside Cades Reef to Pinchin Bay for some lovely beach time. Enjoy the photos and come out with us one of these days.

www.adventureantigua.com

An Antiguan in "The Everest of sailing" once again. The Volvo Ocean Race

The Volvo Ocean Race is considered the Everest of sailing and fellow Antiguan and friend, Shannon Falcone, has done the race around the world once before. But that wasn't the highlight of his professional sailing career. After crewing on the winning America's Cup boat in the last cup challenge he has been training for the next cup and spending more time in Antigua than he has been able to in recent years. A few weeks ago he was asked to come back to the Volvo Ocean Race once again to replace an injured crew member. Their Puma sponsored boat is leading the Brazil to Miami leg and will pass close to Antigua in a few days. For more on the race click here: http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/the_race/1_Overview.html and for more on where the boats are in real time check here: http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/racetracker/rdc.html and for more on one of Antigua's top sportsmen ever check here: http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/news/5923_Falcone-gets-his-PUMA-boots-on.html

Hope you find it interesting. eli

Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta

After four days of racing in various conditions and courses, Adventure Antigua's team Zemi wins in the Traditional Class. We had a huge team which reached 14 people in two of the races.  

  

After our engine was installed by A1 Marine in Jolly Harbour we had to do some rigging changes before the regatta and they were completed just in time for the race. With only minutes to spare, Itano, Jason and I managed to get to the Antigua Yacht Club on Wednesday. On thursday a few of us got together and went out to test the rig and see how Zemi felt. It was the first time we had sailed properly since last year. We had won our class in the regatta then, but the winds had been exceptionally light. Our sail on Thursday was fine and the boat felt good with the extra lead ballast that i had just purchased from a local scrap metal business. I took a photo of my truck deep inside the scrap metal place when I was about to collect the lead the Tuesday before. My sister Fran was going to be joining us for the regatta so she came out on the practice sail with us: All of the wooden Caribbean vessels sailing in the Traditional class of the regatta bunched up together between the Turtle Surf Shop and the Skullduggery Bar on the Antigua Yacht Club Marina. Half of them seen here: The first race was on Friday and our start was actually just after 10 am. We had two crew coming in from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands at the very last minute and they were bringing uniforms. Andy Morrell and his son Josh run HIHO which is a high end clothing company (check it out) and our team was going to look sharp if they arrived with the loot. In fact, HIHO is one of the sponsors of Antigua Sailing Week which starts here at the end of this week. Anyway, they arrived, jumped on board Zemi and we cast off our lines. The race was starting shortly, and we needed to get everyone set up (and suited up).

The Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda provided air rifles for the race committee, so i can't say the races started with a bang. Needless to say, it was quite funny hearing about that mess up on the radio. Anyway, the race started and Zemi was off. Our boat has more sail area than the others and the light winds of the first race were in our favor. We slowly pulled ahead. On the broad reach we had our spinnaker up which gave us a slightly bigger lead. When it was time to drop this sail in preparation for our sail back upwind, something went wrong. The line holding the sail to the top of the mast was jammed. There was nothing we could do but sail upwind with about four of the crew trying to bunch the sail up around the mast. Spinnakers are sails that don't go upwind and that's where we were headed. Thankfully the winds were light and the sail didn't get ripped out of the hands of our crew and torn to shreds. We were going directly for the rocks at Winter Hill and had to tack with this sail which was another challenge. Then there were other yachts which had right or way coming toward us. We had to "duck" them, still with this sail dangling from the top of the mast. Finally a decision was made to send one of the crew up to the top of the mast. Out came the bosun's chair and up the mast Jason went with a knife! The sail was finally cut down, but we had to get it fixed, and in no time we were sending Nikolai back up to get it prepped for the next time we had to use it. Here is a pic of Nik way up at the top while we were racing: Here he is on his way back down:

With this kind of team work we were able to finish enough ahead to beat the second place boat by under a minute on corrected time after the handicap had been worked out. Here is some of the team celebrating our win back at the dock:

More on the rest of the Classic Yacht Regatta tomorrow.

Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta 2012

As you know we offer a classic yacht tour, and each year we try and compete in the Traditional Class of the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. The first year we entered on the brand new Ocean Nomad with paint still drying on the deck we finished second. The next year we finished first. I didn't race again until last year and this time it was on our new Carriacou Sloop, Zemi with paint still drying once again. We finished first and were delighted. Since then Zemi has not been sailing once and has sat in Jolly Harbour slowly getting an engine installed. It's finally in there and operational. She is now able to get in and out of harbours without sailing. Ocean Nomad is the older of our two sailing vessels and has been out of commission for the past month while her mast was repaired. She may be ready to sail in the regatta which starts on Friday which means that Adventure Antigua will have two boats in the Classic Yacht Regatta.

I will be skippering Zemi again this year, and over the next few days I will be strengthening the rig and finding some more ballast. In last years race we knew she was under ballasted which means she didn't have enough lead below deck to keep her steady in the water during heavier winds. Luckily the winds were light last year and it worked to our advantage.

This year will be different if the forecast continues as it is right now with winds getting up to 22 mph. We have to have more ballast otherwise we will not be able to sail fast and will spent plenty of time over on our sides! Lead is what we need, but if we can't find it we will be looking for anything else. We have three days to get it below deck and register the boat. Among the team sailing with us this year we have Andy Morrell of HIHO with his son Josh. This means that Adventure Antigua's team Zemi will have some nice clothing to race with for a few days. We also have an old team mate from Scotland sailing with us. Harry Ingram didn't sail across the Atlantic this time but took the quick flight here for the regatta. He will be leaving his chair below deck and will be on the rail like the time when we won on Ocean Nomad. I understand he's bringing some good Scotch to "bless the deck". You know, it was the Scottish who first built these boats down in Carriacou for the Plantation owners of Grenada. Plenty of history which you can learn about if you end up watching Vanishing Sail which is a film about these amazing vessels. Click here to learn a bit about the project and see a preview. Of course we will have plenty of local knowledge, skill and rum drinking/sailing experience on board too with several of our long time team members playing key rolls. Guilli, Nikolai, and Big John will be there too. Once again this year Mount Gay Rum is providing us with shirts and hats or one of the day's racing. I am sure there will not be a shortage of rum either. I will blog more about the progress of Zemi before Wednesday and then after the first race on Friday. Stay Tuned.

A wonderful slideshow of over 600 Adventure Antigua images.

We are working on building a new website and will be including many of these photos fom out tours and private charters. As you can see, there are many images of sailing, snorkeling, power boating, beaching and relaxing in this beautiful place in the caribbean, we call home. There are over 600 images here which will take some time to view, so make some tea, sit back and relax. Tell me if you think that some of these need to be cut from our soon to arrive Adventure Antigua website.

Why are the skies so clear sometimes and so dusty at other times?

The photo above is of my wife on the helm of our boat during a July holiday trip 200 miles over to the British Virgin Islands. As you can see even far off shore the skies were full of dust.

This article below was printed in the Enjoy Magazine, published here locally by the Observer Group and Antiguanice.com. I write a piece every two weeks for them. This one was edited down from a blog i did some time ago. I hope you enjoy, but if you want the longer one check this link from my blog written over four years ago:

Over the past week we have been blessed with some of the clearest skies that anyone remembers. Last week I spoke with Shelly Hulford who has been living out on Curtain Bluff's point for nearly fifty years, and she says that in all the years that Montserrat has been "sitting in her living room" she's never seen it as clear as this. Yesterday on our Classic Yacht sailing tour we could see Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Redonda, Nevis and St. Kitts all at the same time. The reason it's been so clear is that we've had light north east winds which have kept the haze to the south of our islands. "Sarah Dust" also known as African Dust comes across the Atlantic every year blanketing the region in haze. Many people think incorrectly that the haze has something to do with Montserrat, but the world's most studied volcano, Soufriere, has nothing to do with it. What happens is that high winds blow massive quantities of dust from western and northern Africa up into the sky. Millions of tons a year of it comes across the Atlantic passing through the Caribbean traveling on the same trade winds that brought the original European settlers here. Since the early 1970s the mass and content of the dust has changed dramatically. Extreme droughts possibly to do with the "green house effect" as well as changing land and water use have resulted in more land losing its vegetation. Of course this results in more dust getting into the air, but that isn't the worst of it. Since the 1970's there has also been a change in the composition of the dust. There is now a variety of pollutants contained inside the dust and many scientists are now attributing much of the decline in our coral reefs to this increase in african dust. It’s quite logical actually because we all know that when coral is covered with silt of any kind in can die, so with african dust filled with pesticides and all the other nasties covering the coral each year, it’s not hard to make the connection. There are so many things killing it off that i think much of it is gone forever. Sadly, i remember when i was a teenager 19 years ago snorkeling on huge coral forests teaming with life. All of a sudden we had a few mega-hurricanes and most of the reef was gone. Many people blame the hurricanes, but the reef's decline wasn't just because of the storms.
It will take more time and study to find out all the negative effects of this increase in african dust, but there is at least one "positive" result. Using satellite imagery, NAOAA predicts when we in the Caribbean will get "african dust surges", and we know days in advance when it will be hazy.
They have done many studies on the effects of the dust on our weather and have concluded without a doubt that increased levels of the dust can hinder hurricane formation. Considering that due to "global warming" we are forecast to have more conducive conditions for extreme hurricane formation, it is also interesting that also due to global warming, the increase in dust helps to deter these storms from forming. The way it works is that the dust doesn’t come across the Atlantic in a constant stream and instead comes in big waves almost like weather fronts. If good hurricane forming conditions and the dust appear in the same area, then water droplets inside the clouds become too heavy when mixed with the dust and fall out of the sky before they get a chance to become huge thunderstorms. The dust kills the storms before they get a chance to turn into hurricanes.
Apart from all of this, the dust also makes a huge mess on clean surfaces including our boats! There is some great reading to be done on African dust, and of course there are many articles on the net about the health effects of the stuff too. For now we can be extra thankful that it's nice and clear out there. Enjoy it while it lasts.

www.adventureantigua.com