Sailing week finishes and I am lucky to sail the last two days on an amazing yacht.

There is so much to say about this years sailing week. I think I will leave that for another blog post. There will be dramatic changes I hope to the way it planned and organized. There were many brilliant ideas and for the most part it was well run, but wow!.... some of the ideas were so dramatically wrong that there is no wonder the event gets less and less interest each year. Look out for my blog about all of that soon.

Anyway, as the title of this blog post suggests, I managed to sail a few days with an amazing yacht. It was a custom made 60 foot beast of pre-preg carbon fiber made in France for an Italian owner. He and his wife wanted to have one of the fastest luxury cruising yachts in the world and they indeed got what they paid for. Wow that thing was fast!
On day one of race week I managed to snap a few images of the regular cruising yachts racing outside of Curtain Bluff resort. My wife and I then drove up to Shirley Heights and The Lookout to take a few photos of the racing yachts outside of Indian Creek and the St. James Resort. Here are a selection of those images.

On Monday I took out my Eco Tour boat with my wife, my sister Fran and a few friends and we followed the racing class as they zoomed down past Rendezvous Bay passing Carlisle Bay and Curtain Bluff.

Seeing the two fastest yachts in the regatta, Titan and Genuine Risk battling down wind was quite amazing. We couldn't even keep up with them. Driving the boat and trying to shoot a few photos was not too easy. Here are a few I managed:

We then chilled out for a swim in Carlisle Bay which was lovely. You can't swim and watch the yachts racing past during the internationally famous Cows Week in the UK. Antigua's sailing is hard to beat.

Later that day one of the fastest boats in the regatta that was being sailed by a team of paid professionals was so badly damaged by a fire that she had to retire from the regatta. Titan Powerplay possibly will never race again, so these images are some of the last of her racing. She's the large sloop with the red bow and dark stern.

One of my Zemi crew from our Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta was racing on the black 60 footer I mentioned at the start of this post (shown above with white spinnaker and crew wearing green shirts) and when I heard they lost one of their crew in a accident on board, I asked if I could join them for one of the races. As it happened it was blowing 25 to 30 knots on the day that i joined them and it was a very exciting day of racing indeed. This video done by close friend Roddy Grimes-Graeme of http://www.acquafilms.com/ shows some of the action and if you look carefully from 2:27 into the youtube video you will see yours truly trimming the spinnaker at 22 knots. I have spent most of my life windsurfing at speeds well above 20 knots but doing it on a 60 foot yacht was quite amazing.



See all the sailing week videos that were quickly edited after each race and uploaded for everyone to see on this link

Anyway, the boat I was on is called Ourson Rapide and the owner and his wife just wanted to have a good time racing their amazing machine in Antigua Sailing Week. There was an equipment malfunction the day before I joined them and one of their crew was badly hurt taking him out of the competition. They probably could have done with about four more experienced crew. The first mate on board was a extremely experienced French racer and probably would do very well on one of those single handed races. He wasn't the best at communication and I think the main reason he was on board was to help the owner and his wife learn how to race the vessel. The hot shot racer was down below doing who knows what when we were sailing back upwind towards some rocks when the owner decided we should tack. Naturally this was the only decision that could have been made. Anyway, the hot shot came back up after the tack arguing about why we tacked. Needless to say and argument ensued that resulted in him leaving the boat after the race. The boat was now short of two experienced crew. The hot shot was the man who usually did the starts and sailed upwind leaving the downwind sailing to the owner. Anyway, you know where this is going..... I was asked to come the next day and when I arrived I was asked to do the start and the upwind legs. I was then asked to do the down wind legs too. I had come on board to be used as what I like to call on my boat "intelligent ballast" and next thing you know I am on the helm of a multi million dollar racing machine in Antigua Sailing Week. Sometimes you just have to laugh at how things pan out. Anyway, we were doing very well until we had another equipment malfunction which prevented us from using our spinnaker on our second and third down wind legs. It was ultra enjoyable for me anyway and an honor to be given the helm on this beautiful boat. Here are a few images I took from their site:

And these shots were taken by Jame Miller using the wide angle gopro camera. He's friend of mine back home in Antigua between terms from Med school: As you can tell, I was ultra happy to be on the wheel for this race. In fact, I would be ultra happy sailing that boat anytime!!!

This year I ended up staying for Antigua Sailing Week instead of going to the West Indies Regatta because for many reasons I just couldn't go. I was very upset about not being able to race in St. Barth on my boat Zemi especially after we just won the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. Anyway, after sailing with Ourson Rapide for those last two days of Sailing Week I didn't feel so bad.

www.adventureantigua.com

MD Overseas: Day 114: Adventure Antigua Eco Tour

MD Overseas: Day 114: Adventure Antigua Eco Tour: "Sunday started out a little overcast, and had us a bit worried. However, by the time the day started, it was blue skies with a few clouds. ..."

Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta summary 2011

Well after getting our boat Zemi ready to race the day before the regatta started, we didn't have much time to do much training. We had spent a month on the dock sanding and painting, making a new rudder, making new spreaders and modifying the mast. We also had to melt up lead and add internal ballast.

We put new winches on the boat as well as a bunch of lines and blocks. Our crew was one of the best i have sailed with though and we got out on the course every day before any of the other yachts had left the dock.

Here you see us wearing some t-shirts which were a gift from a lovely clothing shop in St. Johns called  Rasta Pasta. The hats and later the red shirts were a gift from Mount Gay rum. Thanks guys!

Leaving the dock early each day helped us fine tune the equipment and get a feel for the boat in the light air. The winds were unusually light and shifty which helped us as we were don't have enough internal lead ballast and the wooden boat is still fairly "dry". It will take a while before the wood has soaked up all the water it can. Anyway, before the first race we made a big mistake before the start by getting ourselves nearly into a penalty position between the start boat and the shore just before the start.

To avoid this we had to sail to the opposite end of the start line which caused us to start slightly later than the rest of the class.

There were seven Carriacou Sloops in our class with New Moon being the newest one straight up from Carriacou. Our boat was the largest but with a solid wooden mast and boom, we didn't have the worst penalty "rating". The worst rating went to Summer Cloud who with aluminum mast and boom and a bunch of other race modifications which made her quite unique in the class. Anyway, as expected, Summer Cloud raced ahead with Genesis behind. It took us a while to slowly pass other boats and move into second. In the end we finished over the line in second and after the penalty had been calculated (also known as corrected time) we ended up in second by just ten seconds. This race had taken over three hours and to be beaten by just ten seconds was a wake up call to all of Zemi's crew that the regatta could easily be ours. We enjoyed a swim before getting to the dock. That's the beauty about sailing in the Caribbean. Imagine trying to do that at the famous Cows Regatta!

There were three more races scheduled and we finished first on corrected time in the next two putting us in the lead.

We needed to make sure we won the last one and from the start we lead the race and the fleet until we got to the down wind mark where a massive "hole" enveloped us all. There was no wind at all and we drifted around until a gust of about one mile per hour appeared. Summer Cloud got it first and managed to slowly move around the mark while we watched our lead vanish. If she won this race the overall result would be a draw. It was a long race and they would need to beat us by about 8 minutes. When we got to the windward make we were three minutes behind them and possibly gaining in the fresh breeze. Way down behind us the majority of the fleet now sat motionless in the big hole we had sailed through. On the way to the last mark we heard the race committee over the radio say that sadly they were abandoning the race due to the lack of wind on the course. Our crew cheered knowing that there wouldn't need to have a result of the last race to make us winners.

Summer Cloud who said they heard our cheer wasn't happy at all. Of course, we will never know how far they would have finished ahead of us, but everyone on our boat knew that we would have beat them on corrected time. I know our competition all thought the opposite, but that's racing and it wasn't the first time i have seen a deciding race abandoned. So as you can imagine we were all very proud of our boat and crew. Zemi is a fast boat and may get faster when we have more ballast on board. We are looking for lead and have so far collected four hundred pounds of used wheel alignment lead.

Before the regatta we melted up the same. There is a big regatta this weekend in St. Barth (St. Barts), but sadly we won't be able to make it. Our other boat will be racing in the regatta without us and hopefully will do well in this one.  

Photos were taken by many of our crew as well as by some of the Adventure Antigua crew who came out to watch us one day. A special thanks to our crew seen here collecting our prizes.

Zemi was helped to her win by: Eli, Serge, Guilli, Nikolai, Kat, Hugo, Olly, Justin, Josh, Tom, Alan, Peter, Big John. As you can see we had plenty and they were all needed and appreciated! We also had some help getting in and out of the port from some firendly cruising yacht crew as our engine isn't here yet.

www.adventureantigua.com

good friday barbuda trip

This trip to Barbuda was a private family charter with friends. The whales were an almost sure thing at this time of year and with these conditions. Snorkeling with them was amazing!

Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta is starting today

The racing starts on Friday but today and tomorrow are registration days. In fact, tonight is the official crew party at the Antigua Yacht Club.
A few of the Adventure Antigua crew and I have been putting in 12 hour days for weeks trying to get Zemi ready for this regatta. In what seems like dejavu from 2008 when we were slapping paint on the sides of Ocean Nomad hours before the first race, it's been a mad rush to get Zemi finished. This photo was taken yesterday when we rigged her with all the modifications and the new paint job.

The cabin roof will eventually be the same colour and the deck. There is still plenty of painting to be done but she's ready to sail, race and hopefully do well in the regatta. There's a crew party put on by Mount Gay later today at the Antigua Yacht Club so if we make it there, we will have a few very deserved drinks! This has been over two months of solid work. I wish we would have had another two weeks to sail her and figure her out, but at the end of the day we will be very happy to have made it to the regatta. This little video was taken back in 2009 when we actually won our class while racing on Zemi's sister, Ocean Nomad. She is taking time off from our day tours and charters and will also be racing in this years regatta.   

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a little kitesurfing action from Jabbawock Beach in Antigua

A cool video shot at a place I used to kitesurf almost every day. Those days are done for me but Jake and others are still ripping. Enjoy the little video, but put it on mute if you have kids around. The music is "PG 13".



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more progress and a re-launch of Zemi just in time for Antigua Classics

We have just relaunched a very very dry Zemi yesterday afternoon. Her planks had contracted so much that she was taking on plenty of water after the launch. Anyway, the wood is slowly swelling and within a few days she should be well on her way. Today we plan to do some painting of the deck and by monday we will be sailing. Racing starts on Friday in the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta


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A lovely new review of the Eco Tour on Tripadvisor

This review is another great review of a five star trip thay you can take while you are in Antigua. Tripadvisor users have given our company 5 stars for a reason. There was a short time when our ratings went down, but over the past year we have tried exceptionally hard to improve all aspects of our trips. We are very happy to repost this trip report. Enjoy!

I am a regular visitor to Antigua as I work for a major airline that flies there. I thought as I had a long layover that I would do something different and this was something different. The boat is very spacious and gives you the chance to sunbathe but also stay in the shade if you prefer. There is a toilet, which has a 'boat' style flush system but is completely adequate. There is plenty of space to store your bags etc too, I would recommend this as when the boat gets up some speed it really does go fast, a lady lost her hat to the wind, so be careful.
We had very informative guides giving fantastic facts on the local animals and flora, conservation efforts and the general history of Antigua. The food served was great, typical Caribbean food and plenty of it, drinks were available throughout the day.
The best part was what we saw, swimming to the Devils Bridge (hell's gate) and climbing through a small cave system in the island was fantastic! Then we saw Bird Island and the different birds and snakes found there, they are harmless don't worry, but very interesting to see them all!
The snorkeling was a highlight, I couldn't get the hang of the mouthpiece and struggled with it, even though the guides were very helpful I just couldn't do it, but I was able to use the mask and just hold my breath and I saw a lot of fish and amazing things all over the reef!
Overall it's a fabulous day, I would highly recommend it, please take plenty of sunscreen or keep your shirt on most of the day as it's very hot out on the water, staff are very friendly and attentive and the value for money is there...you will have a fantastic day and see a lot...enjoy!

www.adventureantigua.com

Blog news and boat news... getting ready for Antigua Classics

First, some blog news:
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In other news today we are painting exterior of Zemi to get her ready for the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. IT will be the first time she is racing in the regatta. I will post some photos tomorrow.

A slide show of our newest boat's slow evolution. More to come.

I have written about Zemi a few times before. Here is a slide show of the evolution up to now. We are racing her in the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta in 2 weeks. This will be the second time she has raced and the first time here in Antigua. It should be very interesting. We are having to make many adjustments to her rig's design. Most importantly we have been finishing painting her above and below the waterline both inside and outside the boat. Look for her in Antigua Classics.

www.adventureantigua.com

A slide show showing the history of how our "Classic Yach Tour" evolved.

After running powerboat tours, charters and excursions for nearly 10 years we decided to go back to the sailing which had always been part of our family's lives. We also knew that the price and ecological impact of oil and it's industry would some day limit the number of powerboat excursions that we would be doing. A move to sailing and not just any sailing was something we were very interested in. To be even more "green" we decided to build locally here in the Caribbean and not our of the usual fiberglass which our other boats are constructed with but from renewable wood. These boats have been traditionally built with very little change in the design or the construction process for nearly 300 years. It was a dream that has come true and this little slide show will give you a glimpse of how the adventure started and eventually finished with us doing regular day sailing tours and charters for holiday makers and residents here in Antigua. We have been on several big trips up and down the Caribbean, and i can tell you that there is nothing quite like sailing on a authentic West Indian work boat. These things have soul! Why wouldn't they after all that went into them.

www.adventureantigua.com

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

The most important and threatened fish in our waters

 

Photo from www.365antigua.com

 Since my last blog about Cabinet's crazy decision to demand that fisheries officers, the coast guard and the police ignore the laws on spear fishing has gotten plenty of play i figured it would be a good time to blog something that Enjoy put out recently. This was the story i did for them about one of the most threatened and important fishes we have in Antigua which also happens to be the most common fish speared in Antigua.  

People often ask me how Antigua and Barbuda came to have so many beaches. Why is it that we have so many? Are we that unique? For several reasons, we are actually quite unique. We have a more rugged coastline than most of the nearby islands, but that alone didn’t give us more beaches than everyone else. In addition to some unique geography, we also have quite a bit of biology to thank too. I’ll explain: Our nation has one of the largest continental shelves in the Caribbean, and herbivore fish like parrot fish (locally known as chub fish) graze all over the shallow shelves chewing bits of coral to remove algae. Algae, a type of aquatic moss, are parrot fishes main diet, and it is this same algae which if allowed to grow freely, kills coral by taking it over. For a number of reasons, Antigua and Barbuda and the rest of the Caribbean are seeing much of its coral reefs disappear. On a healthy reef there are a great many fish all living in a symbiotic relationship with the coral and each other. They feed on the algae cleaning the reef, and as a result keep it healthy and alive. A healthy reef keeps growing expanding it’s mass and area along the sea bed. There are other relationships in the reef which mankind has disturbed, but one of the most important relationships is the one between the parrot fishes and the reef. A healthy large adult parrot fish living on a healthy reef, can make about 900 kilos (nearly 2000 lbs) of sand a year. This sand is excreted after the chewed up coral and algae mix has been consumed by the fish. This doesn’t harm the reef, but actually makes it healthier.

Parrot fish are one of the most popular fish eaten in Antigua and Barbuda, they can be found in many supermarkets as well as a few restaurants. Surgeon fish and Blue tang, known locally as Doctor Fish, are also popular food fish doing the same job as parrot fish. Populations of parrot fish have declined so much in my lifetime that i think some species have actually become extinct here. The huge Rainbow Parrot Fish known locally as the Macaw Chub may possibly still exist in Antigua, but I have been looking in shallow waters for them for years without a single sighting since the late 90s.They used to be very easily seen feeding on top of the reefs along the shores but have slowly disappeared. One of the main reasons for the decline in herbivore fish is simply over fishing and inadequate management of the reefs around the islands. Reef conservation and management isn’t as easy as one would think, but changing our eating habits can help in dealing with the problem. If you would like to help out the beaches and reefs, you should consider all of this when you see parrot fish on the menu or in the supermarkets. Select a more sustainably caught fish like Mahi Mahi or Wahoo for your dinner and know that the reef and beaches will be better off as a result.

please sign a petition to the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda which calls for the 2004 Fisheries Act to be signed so that we can get more environmental protection for our marine resoirces:

Change.org|Free Online Petitions

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