rushing to finish our yacht in Carriacou

This has probably been the longest period that I have been off the net in years. The last time my laptop felt the power of the internet was last Tuesday morning. The reason for me not being able to get online and not being able to blog was that I have been off Antigua on a mission that had the one and only goal of launching our first yacht.
I left Antigua on British Airways bound for Grenada with the heaviest two bags that I have ever traveled with outside of going to a windsurfing competition. They were mostly filled with stainless steel plates and fittings for the yacht we have been trying to finish in Carriacou. David Mendes picked me up and looked after me for the night including buying me a good sushi dinner. The next morning was going to be an early one with a two hour ferry ride to start with. I finally got to the little boat building town of windward just before lunch and found master boat builder, Alwyn Enoe and his three sons busy working on the boat. If you remember I made a deal to take this boat over from the person who originally commissioned this boat only 5 weeks before. It looked like this then: I had paid Alwyn to rush the finishing of this boat in order for us to be ready for Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta which starts April 17th. As I sat there looking at the guys working on the boat I had doubts about the possibility of meeting the deadline. A huge fire was heating bits and pieces of lead inside a mold on the beach. We still had no shoe under the greenheart keel and there was plenty of work still to be done. Despite the 7 guys working on the boat I worried we needed more time. After lunch we went over things that needed to be done still, and Alwyn assured me that the boat would be launched on Sunday.
That night I stayed by “Juice”, one of the guys working on the boat and Alwyn’s nephew. His nice little house sat only 5 minutes walk from the boat and right across a little shop. It was a handy place to be staying and I slept well. Early the next morning I inspected the lead. It was going to be another long day of work as we had to remove the lead from the mold and set up another batch inside the mold. After quite a bit of heavy work we removed over a thousand pounds of lead from the mold and started loading it up again. The finished piece was marked and cut in two so that it could be fit under the keel. The mold had been borrowed from another boat builder in Petit Martinique which was only a few miles away and we still had to cut it a bit to make it fit our boat. For hours and hours I collected bits of lead and dropped them carefully into the mold. We made a huge fire under it and as the lead slowly melted and the level dropped I had to add more lead. Meanwhile the other guys painted and hurriedly worked on various jobs under the waterline. A template had to be made of the keel bolts so that holes could be made in the lead. The guys took some time making these holes and I think it could have been way quicker with proper tools. I had to off in search of a socket big enough for the nuts that would hold up the lead too. By the end of the day we were totally exhausted, but the boat was looking much more likely to be ready. One piece of lead was shaped, holed and positioned under the hull. The other set of lead was cleaned already and was cooling in the mold waiting to be pushed out the next day. www.sailing-antigua.com

North Swells

I know many people who visit my photo site and read my blog are not going to be happy about the lack of big wave photos, but the truth is that i was surfing them and didn't have time to shoot that many pics. Most of the surfers in Antigua were not that happy as there was quite a bit of North in the wind direction which made the waves choppy and bumpy. It also prevented them from forming properly. The guys drove around most of the day on wednesday looking for new perfect waves, but mostly were unable to find them. Roddy and Nik found some good ones late wednesday afternoon near Eric Clapton's drug and alcohol rehab center, Crossroads. The waves on the far North side of Willouhby Bay were protected that day from the winds and were nice walls of double overhead green according to the boys. After wiping out on a good one, Roddy told me he was held down in full washing machine mode for what felt like minutes. A good thing he can hold his breath long!

One of the nice things about using the SUP long boards is that you dont need to have super fast moving waves to keep you up as the guys with the little boards do. I knew of a nice wind protected wave near to home and surfed with Nik in the morning until we were beat. As you can see i took a few snaps of Nik on this nice litte wave just before i jumped in myself.

Later that day i returned with "Rabi", Ross and JD for a wicked afternoon session and by the end of the day i was "spent" and smiling. That was wednesday. Thursday was bigger and i had a bunch of work to get done in the morning. We are trying to launch our new yacht on the 30th of March, so i was busy getting last minute metal fabrication done in the morning. After lunch it was time for some surfing action and i met us with Roddy to go back the same spot as the day before. When we got there Nik was already enjoying the surf. We were just about to go out when Roddy got a call from a friend who said that the regular spots were much better. In a decision that i now regret, we called Nik in and went over to one of the regular spot on the other side of the island. The waves looked huge when we got there, but once we were out we didn't get the waves we had hoped for. I spend more time waiting than anything else and only managed to get a few good ones. On one wave i took off a little late just before the wave broke and got thrown off the top as the lip came crashing down. Somehow i managed to fall right on top of the boar which had flipped over exposing its fin. Guess where i landed? The fin caught me just above the left hip. Its a good thing i am sporting a good set of love muscles at the moment otherwise i may have been impaled! After making sure i wasnt cut i took some time to rest and caught another wave or two. On my last wave i fell pretty hard and managed to break one of my fingers. That was the last straw... I was over this place. Why did i leave a good thing? To cheer me up and kill some of the pain, we decided to meet some of the eco tour crew Trevor, Tony as well as Greg (helicopter pilot) for some rum over at the Foredeck Bar. We heard stories of beaches getting bad erosion and of hotels losing beach chairs. One or two boats had gotten in trouble and several coastal roads had been flooded. The surf is still larger than normal today but is getting smaller by the hour. I think things will be back to normal by tomorrow and it will be back to cruising on the boards instead of surfing.

big waves here in the Caribbean tomorrow.

Each winter several big cold fronts push off the East coast of the USA and Canada and give the Caribbean a slight change in weather for a few days. If the cold front makes it all the way down here then we will get some cloudy weather and usually a big surge in winds. Our normal trade winds and waves come out of the East coming over from the African West coast, but during big cold fronts we get winds and swell (waves) coming out of the North. If cold fronts have all the right (or wrong depending on how you feel about weather) conditions, then a gale or nor-easter will form off the North-East coast of the USA. These storms can be as strong as hurricanes and although they can be over fifteen hundred miles away as in the case of the storm today, we can have huge effects from them. This storm as seen in the satellite photo taken a short while ago has winds of over 60 mph in the middle making it almost hurricane strength. AS you can see from the swell maps, the usual east to west flowing Atlantic waves are being replaced by massive North to South long period swells which will stick around for a few days up until Easter Sunday. This photo below shows waves right now in the North Atlantic around the storm up to 30 feet!!!!!All the surfers here have been going bananas since windguru.com first indicated that we were gonna get some. For whatever reason everything is lining up for the swell to be big. 4.9 meters means waves will be over 15 feet in open waters later this week. This photo shows what it will be like on thursday in the Atlantic.North and West facing coastline that is not protected by barrier reef will get huge waves and there will probably be some beach erosion over the next few days too. I for one will be surfing most of the time and i think we will have to cancel trips. I just got a call from Wadadli Cats too who is thinking about cancelling tours tomorrow and on thursday. We will have to see. Tomorrow we will both be up checking conditions before the sun risies. Friday's forecast shows the waves getting smaller.The strange thing about these "ground swells" as they are called is that they are mosly only dangerous when they get near shallow spots not protected by reef and dont have anything to do with winds here on the island. Out in the open they are like long swells and don't cap. I remember fishing one time when the waves were about 15 feet, but there was no wind. It was like being in a rolling and moving hillside. The fish didn't seem to mind which was cool and the surfers love it. Anyway, SUP or "stand up paddle" is the sport of choice for me and a few of my friends when its like this these days, and i will try to get some more pics of our sessions over the next few days. The last time we had good waves was back in Jan and there was no wind on them making them perfect for surfing. Nik seen in the opening shot was loving life back then. Tomorrow there should be winds of about 16 knots, so it will be a little more bumpy on the board. Last week we had a nice little SUP sunset session and i took along my camera. The MPEG movies are cute and show a nice sunset on the SUP. The area we paddled is Jolly Harbour to Jolly Beach. AS you can see, SUP isn't just about waves.

Adventure Antigua - Sailing Part 4

From the Adventure Antigua Sailing Part 3:

“Ocean Nomad” would be brought back to life in the morning when work resumed after far too long. Sure enough at 9am once they had collected some lumber from town, work started up on Ocean Nomad and after sitting there for over a year she was back in business on her way to being the latest boat launched from Windward, Carriacou.”

Work started with a determination that was fueled by both excitement and relief. This boat had been a chain around the families neck for some time. A yacht which usually took 8 months to finish was sitting there as a tourist attraction well over two years after they had started. In fact, while I sat there and watched them work several taxi buses filled with tourists stopped to take photos and inspect the boat. The taxi drivers were most interested and jokingly asked Alwyn if he was finally going to get this thing finished. Alwyn replied positively introducing me as the new owner. The owner of the little house next door came home for lunch and said that she was just about to turn it into a sandwich shop and was upset to see that it might finally be moving. She was joking of course, but I think there were very few people who had ever past this section of Windward’s main road who didn’t know a version of this boat’s story. Poor Alwyn and his family had shamefully sat back waiting for something to happen and were delighted to be showing themselves working on the boat. And worked they did! As I sat there snapping photos I could see change happening port and starboard. The cap rail was being finished and the cabin roof was being prepared. I wanted this boat finished within five weeks in time for the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta held in the middle of April, and although Alwyn said it would be no problem when I told him the day before, I wasn’t so sure.
This feeling of doubt gradually was replaced with optimism as I watched the team of three family members work carefully and methodically around the hull. They probably had imagined the steps they would need to take in order to finish her several times and she sat there in her undignified and unfinished state. By early afternoon it was time to head back to town in order to catch the ferry. I told Alwyn, that he would need to hire extra hands in order to get it done in time and he said it would be no problem. I think he wanted it out of there sooner than anyone, so that he could focus on my other boat which I think will be one of the most beautiful yachts he has built yet. Sitting on the ferry going downwind back to Grenada I felt happy to have seen some of the process as well as to have helped Alwyn get Ocean Nomad back on track. That was February 20th and they have been working almost every day since then trying to get the boat done. The cabin is finished, the corking is done on one side of the hull, the cap rails are done. We are still shooting to have the boat here in time for classics. Sails have been ordered from North Sails and we are looking good to be ready for charter by the end of April.

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!

Justin Wassouf Hadeed turns nine

This past weekend it was another Adventure Antigua party and this time Justin was the main man who was boss. Justin told me he was 7, his cake said 9 but i think he was acutally 29. He is a very mature charismatic 9 year old and told his parents that he wanted to go out on our boat again, but this time he wanted it to be different to his sister's party. The lovely Rax seen with her Dad above had a real adventure several weeks before and this birthday party was equally enjoyable for all guests and crew alike. Big Justin invited a bunch of his friends from school as well as some "older" family and friends for a long cruise up the coast from Jolly Harbour all the way up to Green Island. First we had to stop at Stingray City park to visit the rays as well as Greedy Bob the hawksbill turtle who hangs out nearby. Some of us were lucky enough to see him on this day too. The rays were swimming by and Justin seen in the pic above and below was the first to say hi. After everyone had drinks and had seen the rays we were off to Green Island. Tony, JD, Ross and Olly took the Arawak Odyssey up past Devils Bridge and into Green Island's Non Such Sound while i followed in the boston whaler. We had JD's whaler so that we could pull the Jumbo Dog once again which was a favorite in the last party. The kids then felt that they didn't get enough and if you remember i took some heat from one of the young ladies who thought i was a bit "evil". hehehe

We set up two lunches. One for the kids and one for the grown ups. My crew decided that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hot dogs, tuna, patties and cheese sandwiches were better than the adult food. I guess this happens when you eat the same thing every day. That being said the adults loved our regular buffet.

After playing on the beach for a while picking on the biggest kid there (Elias) and making enough noise to wake the dead it was time for the Jumbo Dog. Who comes up with these names?

Anyway, Justin, being the main man, invited 4 of his best pals to come on with him on the first ride, and once they had belts on, Captain JD took off. We could hear the screams for the whole ride even though JD kept the speed limit to a very low pace the thrill was still big enough. Each child had several turns and then all of a sudden i heard screams from all directions. It was Justin's last ride with his friends and they managed to flip the dog over. I counted 5 little heads swimming quickly towards JD and Tony who were already back alongside them. When they got back to the boat they were talking all at once recounting the adventure from all different angles of bravery.

IT was now time for a bonfire! Ross and Olly had been in the forrest looking for dead wood and within minutes of the last Jumbo Dog rider coming back to shore the first marshmellows were getting roasted. In fact we had to let the little fire cool down a bit before the kids were allowed to get close enough, but they were amazingly patient. One and a half bags of sticky gooey marshmallows later and we had some hyper kids on our hands. They also had marshmallows on their hands and on their faces. Cameron Hadeed was covered in the stuff, but i think that's because this tiny skinny little kid had managed to consume about 10 marshmallows. He's too cute! I think he would have kept on going too but we told him we had to out the fire. Olly took careful care of that before coming back to the boat just in time for the cake. ....and what a cake it was! With all the sugar in the systems of those kids it was time for me and JD to abandon ship with the Boston Whaler. Tony, Olly and Ross managed to take Justin, his family and friends all the way back to Jolly Harbour. The day had been a 50 mile round trip of fun in the sun, and i hope enjoys many more such birthdays to come. The crew and i enjoyed the day out too. I went to elementary and high school with some of the adults on the trip and it was good to hang with them again. Thanks to Laila for asking Adventure Antigua to be involved once again and thanks to her also for all of these great photos. Well done! OK now since i know there are some smart kids reading this. Please make notes and comment on all my spelling mistakes so that i can correct them. My spell checker doesn't work after 11pm. hehehehe