The 2008 Stanford 20 20

Stanford 20 20 cricket matches start today and i have my tickets ready. "Who will rise" is the slogan and i am sure that there are many teams from all over the Caribbean basin ready to win the tournament and some big $$. I am gonna try to take some high res photos of the cricket down here and will show some here and on my flickr page. Today is one of four Stanford Pro teams, St. Lucia, up against the Cayman Islands.

Click here for a slide show of some photos from the 2006 Stanford 20 20.

For more info on the worlds most exciting cricket tournament being held here in Antigua over the next month or so you can goto http://www.stanford2020.com/.

I think cricket is generally very boring, but i think that stanford 20 20 is the most exciting thing to see off the water while you are in the caribbean.

This photo shows Tony, the eco tour skipper, as excited as you will ever see him just after Guyana won the final match. Guyana is where Tony originally came from years and years ago. They are the current champs.

"Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone."

A song that i like to listen to every now and then is Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)". So many things he says in the song like the title of this blog are true and things we should all think about. One of the things i didn't think about as a kid was the silly sunscreen. As you know from reading my blog on sunscreen, i think covering up as much is possible is better than putting it all over you. Anyway, one of the other things i didn't do was be good to my knees. In fact i wrecked one totally in kitesurfing fall. I used to love the extreme air we would get out there and after windsurfing all over the world, kitesurfing was such a cool new angle to the water sport addiction i had. I knew it was dangerous and i had actually met two people who later were killed in kitesurfing accidents, but i thought i would be fine. I was wrong and as i landed badly from a big jump down at jabbawock, i immediately knew i had done something bad to my knee. I had fractured my tibia in the middle of the knee joint and crushed a section of tibia plateau. My life changed that day back in 2002 and has never been the same since then. I have had three major operations on my left knee and my doc has tried to help me get back on the water. The last time he opened me up the bones were all fine but the cartilage was in terrible shape. This shows the knees back in 2006.

There was quite a bit of bone on bone rubbing and he urged me to not drive the boat as much as i had been doing. He told me that i would damage the cartilage in my knee even if i rode a bike. I already knew that driving the boat and just being on the boat was one of the most painful things that i did regularly, so it wasn't a big shock to me. It sucked though all the same, but i started taking some time off the regular driving. Since my accident in 2002 i have slowly stopped doing sporting activity more and more until this time last year i was doing no exercise at all. It was killing me. My mind was suffering more than anything else and i knew i had to get into some fun physical activity again. Several doctors in the USA and in the UK had looked at my scans and told me that if i was 50 then they would to a total knee replacement, but since i was so young i better just wait a while. This bugged me so much because it meant i had to be inactive until i was old enough to get my knee fixed (to be active again at 50)! Last may, after experiencing plenty of pain for a week or so during the fishing tournament, i decided to saw "what the heck", and go to a windsurfing event. HIHO held in the BVI had always been one of my favorite events and i had stayed away from competing in it because of my knee. WHY? Its just a little pain right? My knee wasn't going to get better anyway and the worst thing that could happen was that it would have to be fixed earlier than planned. I went and had a ball. I finished 1st overall and did have plenty of knee pain, but it wasn't so bad that i couldn't walk. It also didn't last more than a week or so which was cool. That all being said, i think over the next few months i noticed that knee pain was more quick to come and little things would sometimes give me plenty of trouble. Hurricane Dean came along and i couldn't resist the temptation to windsurf a little. It was extreme and extremely enjoyable, but as you can imagine the pain lasted another week. 3 hours of windsurfing and one week of bad pain. I had to find some other sport to keep my mind and body in shape. I am the kind of person that needs physical activity for my mind as much as for my body. I think that's the case with many people. What was going to be kind to my knees? My buddy Nik kept telling me about stand up paddle surfing or SUP. Essentially its a mix between canoeing and surfing using a big purpose built surfboard and a long paddle. You can cruise along exploring the coastline or you can go out to surf that is difficult to get to while normal surfing. I tried Nik's board a few times and enjoyed it so much that i was very excited about getting my own. This had to be better on my knees, so i ordered some gear from my friend Sean in Maui. After our two boards came in, my girlfriend and I went for a nice long cruise from Curtain Bluff Hotel to OJs. It was 4 miles downwind close to the reefs, flats and mangrove habitats of Cades Bay. We saw turtles, rays, permit and loads of other sea life and birds. I was loving it, but i did notice some pain in my knee. The next day my knee killed. If i couldn't do this then what could i do?
The next day i went to get some scans of my knee and sent them up to Mr. Justin Cobb in London. He's the one who has been working on my knee since 2002. As one of the world's leading Orthopaedic surgeons and a close family friend, i trust him with my life. Justin has just chaired a conference where 300 orthopaedic surgeons from around the world discussed knees and hips. He says that every year there are huge advances in technology and that there is a very good option for me. It looks like i may be in England within a few months to do some "relining" of my old knee. He says it wont be a total knee replacement, but more of a resurfacing or "relining" the ends of bones when cartilage has worn away and bone has been destroyed. Anyway, i am not sure when this will be and in the meantime i will be using my SUP in the afternoons. They say there will be waves this weekend!!!! eli

lost shipwreck

People often ask me about shipwrecks in Antigua and there seems to be so much intrigue surrounding them. Today and maybe on the next blog I will chat a bit about wrecks and what type of ships and boats end up in trouble here only to end up on the bottom and in some cases on top.
Anyway, the reason we were looking for this wreck in the first place is that our new boat being built down in Carriacou needs a lead show attached to its keel. This bit of ballast isn't readily available, and I am trying to recycle some lead from a wreck's keel to use in our new one.
I have spoken many times about my uncle Nick Fuller and good he is at salvaging boats that get into trouble. His company North Coast Salvage has pulled probably over 100 boats off reefs helping to prevent damage to corals as well as prevent these boats from becoming part of the reef. It is dangerous work and it way more technical than the average person and many times the average skipper knows. I have been out on salvages with him at night and the excitement level is almost as high as the danger. It’s scary yet enjoyable if you are able to save the boat you are out there for.
There are many reefs around Antigua and Barbuda that have made it a dangerous place to navigate around since the first European wrecks here back in the early 1500s. Almost as soon as boats started coming across the Atlantic they were wrecked here in Antigua or in Barbuda. Why? Well the entire island of Barbuda is made up of limestone and coral (almost the same thing I guess) and it is very flat indeed. Waters coming in from the Atlantic are extremely deep right up to the massive barrier reef system just off the beaches on the windward side. To this day there are no lights on that side and boats just don’t know its there until it’s too late. Even with today's modern GPS navigation boats are making mistakes. Just last week when I went fishing with my dad, we heard Uncle Nick speaking to a boat that had run aground in Barbuda. Lucky for the crew the winds and waters were as still as it gets and it was pretty easy for them to get off safely. Antigua's North coast is very similar to Barbuda with a low limestone coastline and barrier reefs just off shore. From our house on the North Shore I watched many boats run into trouble as a kid. So many skippers get it wrong. It’s not just the inexperienced ones either and several excursion boats that I know of have ended up in trouble over the years. The south side of Antigua is made up of ancient volcanic rocks and although there is a huge barrier reef called Cades, the waters are generally safer for navigation. Cades is where Ross and I went looking for this wreck using Xtreme yesterday. It's a long reef stretching from just outside Curtain Bluff in an east west direction towards Johnson's Point. For thousands of years the beautiful Cades Reef stretched submerged just inside the 100 fathom curve and outside the shallows along the coast providing food and protection for humans and a huge variety of wild life. In fact some of the best and most sophisticated of all Arawak Indian settlements were close to Cades reef. Much has changed since Arawak Indians fished on Cades reef some 2000 years ago including their ultimate genocide. The Siboney hunted there 2000 years before them too only using shell and stone tools. Nobody knew what happened to them but 4000 years later I doubt anyone would be able to catch enough to survive there with stone and shell tools. I know I am getting off topic, so let me get back to the wrecks. Many say that the hurricanes we get these days are stronger and more frequent than ever before. We don’t get many hurricanes here in general with no direct hits between the early 1950s and 1989 when we were hit by Hurricane Hugo. It was the first storm in my lifetime to hit Antigua and was a strange one for the south coast. Cades reef which lay submerged since the first coral polyps colonized the area hundreds of thousands of years ago became an island in one night back in 1995. For some reason I always thought it was the stronger hurricane Louis that raised the broken reef out of the water and had arguments with Trevor about this. Anyway, I just spoke with Captain Franco of Franco's Glass Bottom Cruises and Rob Sherman, GM of Curtain Bluff Hotel, who both agreed with Trevor. Hurricane Hugo back in 1989 developed massive waves coming in from the South which trashed the entire coast and Cades Reef. Many beaches still are missing sand to this day from that storm and so much coral was broken during that storm that by morning an island had been made along the entire span of the reef. As seen in this pic taken from an interesting page on The National Center for Coral Reef Research the huge corals were just ripped apart and thrown where the waves wanted to have them. This reef had been fooling captains and crew for hundreds of years and now all of a sudden even in bad visibility you could see it poking as much as 8 feet out of the water. I took this photo back in Sailing Week 2006 and it shows what i am speaking about.

My uncle Nick wasn't happy and his business suffered as a result. he he he The poor reef has never been the same and to make matters worse we were hit by another even stronger hurricane in 1995 and again in 1998. Far fewer boats ran aground with the reef out of the water but at night some mariners still managed to make the mistake. Several yachts last year ended up in trouble on Cades including the one Ross and I was looking for. The yacht was about 35-40 feet long and like many wrecks, was rumored to be on a smuggling mission. This time the cargo was alleged to be illegal immigrants. Somehow, the yacht sailed right up onto the dry coral in the middle of the reef and was left there where it sat for months and months being slowly picked apart by the sea and those who looked for tiny treasures. A friend got a nice compass from it. We on the other hand were looking for its keel, but knew it would be very hard to find because of what happened this hurricane season. Although we have not had any hurricanes hitting our shores directly since 1999 we did have massive waves pounding the south shore in summer 07 when Hurricane Dean passed 170 miles to the South. The waves were so big in fact, that the strip of land (broken coral) almost all got washed back into the sea and the yacht in question vanished. This photo taken by "bugdriver" shows the reef after the storm and as you can see its gone back to being submerged. Uncle Nick is happy again I imagine. ha
Ross and I arrived at the place where I imagined the wreck rested before the storm. I made a call to Andre, skipper of Wadadli cats who snorkeled close to it many times, and he said we were exactly in the right place. He was passing a mile to our port side and could see us. We entered the water as a short rain squall with rainbow passed above us and were not surprised by how much warmer the water was. Around us colourful fish scattered as if disturbed by our big splash. The waters were clear as is usual on the south side at this time of year with visibility over the coral blow us spanning about 70 feet. We swam over the reef passing 3 barracuda, many other fish and countless black spiny sea urchins which seem to be making a big comeback at the moment. There was a section of the dry coral still above water and it was there that the wreck was sitting before Dean passed this summer. As soon as we got to the spot we started finding small bits and pieces of the boat. A section of aluminum mast, the bimini top's frame, a coral encrusted mask, a small hatch, bits of the sail, some stainless steel bits and pieces, but nothing significant. We looked and looked seeing nothing bigger. We even got out of the water onto the little "island" for a better look and tried to imagine how the wreck would have been pushed by the massive waves. As you can see from this pic showing almost exactly where we were in the distance yesterday, the waves During Dean's passing were of titanic proportions. Just when we were about to give up and go back in, I saw a tiny piece of sail sticking out of the broken coral. Imagine thousands of rocks which were live coral at one time, tightly piled upon each other only inches below the surface. In all of that, the piece of sail poked out. I turned over a few of the broken pieces of coral as tiny, thin, black starfish scurried out of the way, and it became evident that we had found the yacht. The sail was attached at the boom/mast joint and the rest of it was burried right there i guessed. We had found it! That was the good news I suppose, but the bad news was that it lay almost entirely covered in broken coral. There was no way that we were going to get that keel. For now until the next massive storm the wreck and its keel will stay inside Cades reef.
Wow, look how long this blog ended up being. My next few blogs will add more info on Antigua and Barbuda’s ship wrecks and why we don't have more of them to snorkel and dive on. I will also explain why we don't have much chance of finding treasure in any of the hundreds of wrecks that we have scattered around the place. Hope you enjoyed the long read. eli

What to do in Antigua?

I see the above question on various forums and message boards every day and often laugh at the replies. There are so many things to do here on Antigua while on holiday that it's impossible to give a proper answer to the general question. Usually taxi tours are pushed and or boat tours like mine are pushed, but many times people reply with more unusual suggestions. If the question about "things to do in Antigua" is asked on a message board it can usually be answered honestly by people giving various options. I say usually because there are some business owners on these message boards posing as happy customers praising their own tours. There are one or two taxi tours at the moment doing that fairly aggressively, but this isn't anything new at all. In general if you do the research on the net you are more likely to get a good perspective of the different things on offer. This changes dramatically when you get to Antigua though for several reasons.
I guess the first thing to consider is who you come to Antigua with and as important is where you stay. Many people coming from the UK and Europe to Antigua come with pre booked tour operators like Virgin Holidays, Thomas Cook, BA Holidays, Kuoni or some other. If this is the case then when you get to Antigua you will be met by your company's Hotel Rep. Now things get interesting. I don't think it’s wise for me to name companies specifically but I will point out that almost all tour handling and rep companies have strategic alliances and often ownership in the excursion companies. Can you imagine how difficult this makes it for an excursion to be offered to you if your rep is working for a company that co owns another excursion? Many times it is simply impossible and a great number of excursions are not offered at all to guests arriving in Antigua. This is another reason to book before you come. All of the small excursion companies know this all too well. We constantly take guests who were told by their reps that "they are fully booked", "they are no longer in operation", "their boat isn't working", "they don’t have insurance", "you are not covered by our company if you go with them"... the list goes on. This isn't a made up story at all and has been going on since I began working in this industry. I hear it from my friends who have run similar small operations too.

Then there are other situations where a visiting guest may not get the best reply about what to do on their holiday. There are many hotels that do not carry certain tours. Some hotels demand so much commission that it is impossible for some of the excursion companies to afford to be in there. 20% is the most common commission for being the middle man, but some hotels require 30%. I guess this is just business and like Donald Trump keeps on saying "its nothing personal..... Its just business", but the little guys and the visitors are the ones who suffer with this sort of practice.
Another situation that can sometimes prevent a visitor from coming into contact with an excursion is when a hotel tour desk is actually rented out to another excursion company. This is very common and as you can imagine can be hard on some excursions that just don’t fit in with a particular tour desk. There are several other situations too other than the main ones above, but I guess I am just trying to give readers a little more info on the big picture. If you see an excursion that you like while you are surfing the net email them and book it. This way you usually get a discount, you get what you want, and you get the day you want. We often turn people away when they wait until the last day to book a tour. At the very least keep the number so that you can call direct to make your booking when you are in Antigua.
My company Adventure Antigua would not exist today if we had not spent so much energy in web development during the early days. If you read the history of our company you will hear how hard it was to be sold by reps and hotels. It is now way easier but there are still many areas where we are not sold.
Actually when Sandals took over Pineapple Beach Hotel a.k.a. Grand Pineapple we tried to work with them but eventually had to pull out. It just didn't make business sense at that time, so now we are not sold there at all. When the hotel closes down to become Beaches or whatever Sandals decides to do with it I will try again to see if we can work something out. For now if you are going to stay at Sandal's Pineapple in Antigua and want to come out with us, you better pre book or keep our number. Remember there is a new tour that picks up just around the corner from the Pineapple Grand at Veranda Hotel.

Anyway, whatever happens I hope you get what you want out of your holiday in Antigua and that the typical sunshine and warmth make you smile for a long time after you leave Antigua. The above info should help you to book or at least bookmark the excursions you want before you get down here. Email us info @ adventureantigua.com or comment here if you have any questions or comments.

North Beach Hotel in Barbuda

If you read the blog regularly then you will know that i am now helping the owner of North Beach Hotel Barbuda (a.k.a North Beach Cottages). Ruben is a Barbudan engineer and politician who decided to build a few cottages on a camping site that we used to use as kids.

He owned the property and got permission to put up the little hotel. Shortly afterwards Coco Point Hotel took over the running of the tiny property and used it as an alternative and more secluded destination for their guests. Anyway you can read more about the property on the other blog entry about it as well as a few trip advisor reviews on the property. I like the "Mind Numbingly Beautiful" quote there.As you can see, North Beach Barbuda is $500 a night but booking directly with me and or Ruben gets you a US $100 discount.

Ruben wants to get as many people to stay there this year as possible in order to get the word out. Each cottage is set up for all inclusive accommodation for two people.

Anyway, since I started helping Ruben we have had a steady stream of emails and bookings. The place has come alive again and Ruben is excited. A few days ago I was asked to show an agent the property and we flew over for the day. I love it over there and it’s always a pleasure to make the trip.

As soon as you approach Barbuda flying over its famous "14 mile beach" and fantastic lagoon your excitement level goes up a few notches. The ride down the lagoon into the narrows is such a beautiful trip that just getting there is like doing one of my eco tours. Of course you can not drive a car to North Beach as it sits on Rabbit Island which almost closes off the lagoon leaving just a narrow opening called "Creek Mouth".

The natural setting is always breath taking. This time my cousin Jack (brother of Ross who works for me on the boats) is visiting from England where he hopefully is about to be crowned Pub Chef of the year, and i took him along with me. All of us including the agents were in silent awe as we passed magnificent frigate birds, pelicans and terns in the mangrove habitat. As we passed through the Creek Mouth the amazing colours of the waters inside the barrier reef made me smile. It’s that beautiful. Anyway, we took some photos chatted with Ruben, had a drink in the pavillion (seen above), walked on the beach and before I could get enough, we were back on the boat towards Codrington where a venison lunch was awaiting.

If you want any more info about Barbuda or North Beach please email us on info @ adventureantigua.com. or call me 0n 268 725 7263. Hope you enjoy the pics too. eli

http://www.adventureantigua.com/

say hi to Chris!

Chris Weeks, seen with the shades on in the above photo, has been working with us since the summer and has fit in very well considering he was working for an airline before jumping aboard our boats. It's not surprising though as he grew up in Antigua enjoying the sun sea and sand just myself. I had seen chris many time out on Dive boats when he had days off and he had come with my family camping in Barbuda earlier this year too. When i heard that Caribbean Star Airlines was going to merge with LIAT i knew that there was a possibility he would be looking for new work. He was one of many who lost jobs when Allen Stanford closed down his caribbean airline and I was there offering him a job with us at Adventure Antigua months before his last day with the airline. Thank God he accepted my offer because he has proven to be extremely helpful, fitting into whatever role and situation that comes up. The rest of the crew enjoy working with him too. What anyone will notice about Chris is that he is always willing to go the extra mile with whatever he is undertaking. No job is too hard or too difficult..... he will give it his best shot every time going above and beyond what is expected. The photo above and below show him helping out on clean up campaigns we went on back in September. He had to work on the Eco Tour on all week long and then came to Bird Island to clean up on the Saturday, came out to Green Island and Rendezvous Bay on Sunday and was ready to do an early leaving Xtreme Tour on Monday. He has soooo much energy and enthusiasm and is the kind of person who isn't happy unless he is doing something productive. This last part about him made his trip to the Nevis fishing tournament with us even more terrible because he was too sick to really help out (or so he thought). IT was very rough out 30+ miles from shore and going only at 9 mph the boat was rocking and rolling way too much for him. He was very ill and managed only to help when we had fish on the lines. The poor guy was more upset about being of little help than he was of being very ill. Anyway, some of you may have met him on the tours and some may have spoken to him via email this past week when he was filling in for Nell answering messages until 10 pm some nights! IF not make sure you say hi when you see him on the boat. He's the one in the back row on the right hand side without a shirt on seen here after a massive clean up of some of the off shore beaches (click on the image):

By the way, we are planning another cleanup day by boat soon. I am not sure which day, but we have started a discussion on the http://www.facebook.com/ Adventure Antigua group. Hopefully it will be towards the end of this month.

Antigua Facebook group

When facebook first started i thought it was another of these silly networking websites for kids just like hi5 and others i had gotten a million emails from. It didn't take long for me to figure out that there were many adults including most of my friends on facebook, and like millions of others i joined up. What was interesting was how many old friends i met up with, and how quickly i could search for old friends too.

It was interesting how many people would use it for email purposes too as if not using any other type of online email program at all anymore. I guess some people figure, that if you are not connected with them then they shouldn't be getting mail from you.

When Google purchased part of facebook i began to become more interested in how powerful a tool facebook could become. Recently i noticed several huge companies using facebook to their advantage in the travel industry and decided today that i would start a Adventure Antigua group on facebook.

For those of you who are members of facebook or become members on facebook please join the Adventure Antigua group. You can add video, photos, comments, suggestions..... tag your friends in photos which are so easy to upload and share on facebook. Its an interesting tool and i hope that it provides some fun to our Adventure Antigua friends all over the world. Click on the image to see what the group page looks like and goto www.facebook.com to join up if you want to be part of the group.

Cousin Ross!

I just realized that I have been speaking about Ross in my blog for months with only a tiny explanation of who he is. I need to update the crew list too. Chris will be next, but this one is about Ross.
Ross Alan Bloomfield is one of my cousins who is now working with us at Adventure Antigua as crew on the tours. He is my dad's sister's son and was born here in Antigua as was his older brother Jack. Mary was their mom and was the last of my grandparent's seven children. She ran the Lord Nelson Beach Hotel with her husband Graham and it was where Ross and Jack grew up.
Like the rest of the Fuller kids before them, they spent all their free time snorkeling, fishing, boating and generally messing about on the waters edge or in the sea. Life changed dramatically when Mary discovered she had cancer. Poor Mary fought hard always being positive and upbeat bringing joy into many people's lives. She was a great person enjoying life to the fullest, but like many people she just couldn't beat the disease. So many of us miss her and think about her and her positive attitude all the time. After she passed on, Graham who was originally from England decided to move back to be close to his family there. The boys went to school in England and came to Antigua on holidays. Ross graduated from school and decided that he had to come back "home".

We are delighted to have him back here doing what he grew up doing now as a "job" and spreading some of that upbeat positivity that Mary had passed onto him. Ross loves fishing and has fit into the Adventure Antigua team like it was all part of him from the start..... which it was.

Say hi when you see him on the boat.

happy holidays to you

.... from all the Adventure Antigua crew: Jill, Nell, Tony, JD, Shamel, Chris, Wan Lovv, Trev, Ross, Kaitlyn and eli.

While sending you warm winds from the Caribbean, we hope to see you all again in the new year and wish you all the best.

changes and additions

As i mentioned on an earlier blog entry, we have had plans to take school children on our eco tours to show them areas they would not normally see in an effort to help promote eco tourism's importance as a tool of saving the environment. My family have been fighting environmental battles for over 40 years and it seems that although many have been won, many have been lost because the people making the final decisions just didn't understand the big picture. By giving children an opportunity to see for themselves, i am sure that only positive outcomes can come about.

While in the planning stages i was contacted directly by Racquel D'ornellas who said that her teacher had told the class to find an interesting field trip to do. Anyway, it was a little earlier than i had planned to start taking kids but we ended up taking 18 kids form her class out with some of their teachers on a full day in the north sound. The Eco Tour was "a blast" according to some of the kids i spoke with and we are excited about the future trips.

Taking groups of people from the west coast on the 40 mile round trip into the ecological playground that is the North Sound involves conisderable costs both financial and some we can not measure exactly. The whole footprint thing as i spoke at great length about on this earlier blog is something we have to consider too. Buying offsets for our busines from companies in another country is not somthing i have been convinced is a great option. Doing these tours for kids under cost is a better option i think. Our usual cost for the Eco Tour is US $100 and we have decided to offer the trip at a tiny percentage of that for school kids not to cover cost but to cover a % of them and also to give some more value to what they kids are getting. We are in the early stages of speaking with an environmental group about partial funding for these trips as their is international grants for these types of school outings. Our hope is to start full time in the new year with several school outings a month and in order to take all of antigua's kids we will need some of that grant help hopefully.

On another note we have decided to start another new adventure tour offering people a day of exploring and snorkeling in and around Nonsuch Bay. Green Island, Crump Island, the amazing mangrove habitats of Ayres Creek probably containing the largest of these trees on Antigua.

Anyway, to read more about it click on the image and zoom in.

Hotels like Veranda, Pineapple, and Long Bay may be interested in this tour as it highlights the virgin areas nearby that are not accessable by car. We pick up In Jolly Harbour, St. Johns, Dickenson Bay and Dian Bay, but only offer this tour on Fridays and Saturdays currently unless we are doing it as a private charter. If you want more infor about any of this you can call me directly on +1 268 725 7263. Have a good day, eli.

want some wallpaper for your computer?

The problem with putting large photo files on the net these days is that people end up using them commercially all over the world without permission. I had quite a few imgaes from my private photo collection used that way. Anyway, since it sounds as though its pretty cold and nasty up in North America, England and Europe.... maybe you would like a new computer desk top background. If you click on the images you should be able to get the bigger files. It may take a while so pick the one you want. Then all you have to do is right click and save to your computer. Once saved you can "set as desktop background". Just a thought, and if you like i may do more.Hope you enjoy. Have a good warm sunday! We are off to Harmony Hall to see the new Dragon Fleet of boats there at the opening of the new yacht club there. Should be fun.

Christmas winds are here

Windguru and magic seaweed had the christmas winds arriving earlier in the week and just as predicted, they came with a vengence. There is nothing new with this as each year during the winter and especially around christmas we get strong 20-25 mph winds during many days. Yesterday and today its been blowing hard. Windguru usually lets us know about a week in advance that wind surges are coming and this gives us plenty warning to adjust tours and or snorkeling sites if we have to. Most of the time the winds are out of the east which is perfect for our eco tour. The Xtreme tour has to be modified if winds are up to or above 25 knots. This doesn't usually happen more than one or two times a month during the winter. On those days we stay in the protection of the North Sound after visiting stingray city. Whatever happens we try to make the tours fun and safe. We do cancell tours and did this way too many times the winter before last when the winds and rain squalls were terrible. Windguru also does a very good job of predicting cloud cover and rain. Rain is something that makes it more difficult on tours. We cancel more tours because of rain than for any other reason, and if the forecast turns out to be correct and we wake up before dawn with rain bucketing down, we first check the guadeloupe radar which shows actual rain fall, then we correlate that with various satellite cloude cover maps like this one and then we make a decision. Here the radar image below was taken this summer and shows circular rainfall over the southern caribbean when Hurricane Dean was passing. They had torrential rains in the islands to our south that day.

Of course we put both radar and cloud maps in animation (a collection of images taken over hours) to see if the mass of squalls is going to move on before the tour gets started. Another bit of info that we use is swell maps which are very good when planning pick ups at the hotels. This one shows how big the waves are in the atlantic as well as the direction the waves are coming from.

Some days when we have ground swell the weather can be lovely and without checking the swell maps we would never know that there were 5 foot waves pounding hawksbill beach. If all the bits and pieces of info are within reason then the tours go on as normal, but each week we use this info behind the sceens to make sure you are all well taken care of.
If you know me, then you will know its not all just about the job either. Coming from a windsurfing background, the weather sites also help me plan sessions on the water too. Yesterday i was out windsurfing with some of the Sunsail employees, wadadli cats owner Xabier, and Roddy from Aquafilms. As predicted, Half Moon Bay had massive waves and strong winds. IT was perrrrrfect! JD and Tony said that the eco tour was fun inside the protection of the North Sound, but that it was hard to hold down the salad during lunch. Harriet's lovely salad will be blowing all over the boat this week for sure. I would have put more interesting links and pics but my APUA internet is being a real pain in the tail fin today!

Antigua "super yacht" show.

Antigua is one of the most important places on the planet during the winter months for super yachts also known as "mega yachts". Generally the Caribbean is where many of the world's largest private yachts come to cruise around during the winter months when its just too cold for boating in the Mediterranean.

Antigua, St. Martin and St. Barts are the three most important islands in the Caribbean at the moment for the huge "yachting industry" and when i say yachting i am speaking about the big ones, and not the little ones like they have in the BVI and other islands.

What exactly is a mega yacht or a super yacht? Wiki says that they are very expensive private yachts that are professionally crewed. I think that's too broad of a definition. I think there should be a price or a length in there to narrow it down a bit. For example a private yacht like my friend's that is professionally crewed couldn't be called a mega yacht or super yacht but could i guess be called a "luxury yacht". Its funny because i looked on google for a definition and saw this lame try at it. That made me chuckle. Anyway, according to Jim Gilbert, editor-in-chief of Fort Lauder dale -based ShowBoats International, "Typically, true luxury yachts start at 60 feet, with mega-yachts starting in the 80-foot to 100-foot range and the super mega-yachts at 200 feet and up," Gilbert said. "The 80-foot to 100-foot sizes were overlooked for some time, but are now the fastest-growing segment." The above was taken from South Florida Business Journal from back in 2002 and can only be described as old news. Since 2002 i would think that the 200 foot and up boats have seen the largest growth in the industry. I mean, if your boat isn't 200 feet these days why are you docking in Gustavia or Antigua Yacht Club? Funny...... kinda. Each year some boat comes into port with loads of people straining to get a look at "the biggest privately owned sailing yacht" or the "biggest powerboat" or "biggest single masted yacht of all time". BUT this keeps happening each year like there are people out there trying to compete for the biggest boat title. Anyway, this years Boat Show here was a little less dramatic than it has been over the past few years with some lovely yachts on show, but nothing as crazy as i have seen before. St. Martin's boat show is now going on during the same week in an effort to disrupt ours. Not exactly sure of the reasons but you hear grumbles from some of the yachties down south. I know that over the past few years St. Martin and other islands have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into their Mega Yacht industry and now are on par or even bigger than Antigua for yachts. Grenada is trying very hard with their Port Louis mega marina this year. They are in every yachting magazine you open. Its big business in the Caribbean. My friends Roddy and Ian over at aqua films have been very busy this past week and have a new promo film out which they have been showing off at the show. It's not on their site yet, but should be soon. You can also see some of their other stuff now if you go there. Cool vids of massive yachts.

I took a walk last night along the Antigua Yacht Club and Marina docks and saw some lovely yachts. The photos at the top of today's blog were taken by me last night and the others last season. While in Antigua over the winter months you should definitely take a drive down and have a look. Lots of eye food.