Work on our second yacht starts again.

Many of you know if you have been following this blog for a year or longer that back in November 07 we decided to commission the construction of a Carriacou Sloop. We at Adventure Antigua made this decision for a number of reasons which included the following.
1- to diversify away from higher "footprint" type tours.
2- to maintain return clients' interest in our company.
3- to keep ourselves interested and motivated.
4- to offer guests something new and not done in Antigua.
5- to have another area of recreation when there are no tours.
6- to get back into sailing and racing on days off.

The list of reasons we decided to get a Caribbean wooden sailing vessel goes on and on. It had to be different though and getting a sailing vessel which was not just the typical fiberglass (plastic) boat that you see commonly these days was critical. They are fun too, but a traditionally built wooden boat had, history, life and character even before you put crew on board.
I have written so much about Carriacou Sloops on this blog and you can use the little box above to find out more.
I paid our first deposit to Alwyn Enoe back in November last year and shortly afterwards he made a model according to what we had agreed would be the perfect boat for my needs. After this was done he and his sons went into the "bush" as they call the Grenada jungle to select several white cedar trees which they would use to make the skeleton of the new sloop. By mid February they were cutting and shaping the timbers on their home island of Carriacou. Very shortly after that i was contacted by the owner of a boat who had started and stopped building another boat down the beach. He made a deal with me to take over the building of his boat and work immediately stopped on my boat so that we could have Ocean Nomad ready to sail in time for the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta in mid April. It was a mad rush and the slide show here shows some of that work. Since that regatta in April we have been doing work on Ocean Nomad to get her ready enough to do charters and tours here in Antigua. We are pretty much finished finally. This summer work started back up on my original boat and once the bronze fastenings (nails, nuts, washers and bolts) had arrived the frames were attached to the greenheart keel. My good friend Alexis Andrews who did the fantastic two volume book Carriacou Sloops took some video last week of the boat as you can now call her on the beach in Carriacou. You can see his video at the end of this presentation:

A CNN interview about our type of yacht

Happy Sunday people, our plans changed a little bit and we now are departing tomorrow morning for Grenada where we get last minute rigging gear before going over to Carriacou to rig and then sail our yacht back to Antigua. Alexis Andrews who has been a fantastic help with our sailing projects and who owns the sistership to our newly launched Carriacou sloop "Ocean Nomad" is seen here in the vid below giving an interview from "Genesis". His book launching is April 16th at the start of the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. Check his blog for more info. Enjoy the vid:



OH ya! Goto www.sailing-antigua.com !!!! We will be doing our unique brand of traditional sailing tours very soon.

Sailing in Antigua on a traditional Caribbean sloop

As you know if you have been reading the past few blogs starting with the Sailing Part 1, we are getting a yacht built and will be operating a sailing side of Adventure Antigua's tours, charters and excursions under Sailing Antigua. The site is http://www.sailing-antigua.com/. Please read the sailing blogs if you haven’t as they have great pics and loads of interesting info about how the wonderful sailing yachts are built here traditionally in the Caribbean. More photos and info about our new yacht to come next week. For now though I will show a little vid taken on our cheap little sony camera yesterday. Mykl and I were invited out sailing by Alexis Andrews on his Carriacou sloop “Genisis”. Our boat coming this April will be almost exactly the same so it was good to finally get our on Genesis. The winds were fairly strong in the morning as we sailed out of Nelson’s Dockyard into the Atlantic, and even though there were some good sized swells, Genesis sailed very comfortably over them with grace and pride.
No prouder than Alexis who had this yacht built traditionally in Carriacou by the same guys building our yacht. It was Alexis who introduced me to the yacht builders during the Antigua Classic Yacht regatta a few years ago when Genesis took top honors overall. He has two books coming out at the start of this year’s regatta. The first, Vanishing Ways, is about how the ancient tradition of wooden boat building in the Caribbean is slowly fading away with the exception of a few small builders trying to keep it alive. The second volume contained within the coffee table book is simply called Genesis and is a photographic journey though the amazing cultural process undertaken to build the very boat we were sailing on yesterday. I can’t wait to get my copy! I hope to interview Alexis soon about the book and about the boats that we are getting soon. For now enjoy this little video I put together of our sailing session yesterday. Thanks Alexis!