Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Category: Eastern Caribbean

  • Climbing back to civilization

    We’re about 3 hours out of Barbuda with 2 hours left to sail. Our destination is Dickinson Bay which is a bit of a touristy spot. We’re supposed to be able to get fresh veg here which will be nice. After Barbuda this will all be culture shock.

  • Last day in Barbuda

    This morning we moved Dignity up to Low Bay on the western side of the island. In our guidebook it suggested we could haul our dinghy over the sand into the lagoon behind and get to Codrington, the sleepy capital, that way. It seems the islanders don’t like that advice as they’ve fenced the crossing off. We reckon this is to stimulate the water taxi service. In our case it has stimulated us to stay put.

    The area is desolate. We have anchored near the only hotel along the 11 mile beach with about 3 other boats. While we were ashore we met Ian and Jen from McCurdo who knew John and Ziggy from Windancer IV having crossed the Atlantic with the ARC east to west. They also have two children aboard. They are Australian and making their way home from Turkey. Fair winds to them.

    Tonight is curry night which we’re all looking forward to. The weather has been a bit overcast today so things have been very slow. I’m ruing the loss of solar amps as it means we’ll have to run the genset again tonight.

    We have to head back to Antigua tomorrow as the wind speeds are expected to rise into the 20s come Sunday. With gusts into the 30s it’s best to be tucked behind the hills and reefs of Antigua. Dignity should cope well enough (as I’ve heard from other owners) but we all want to keep it from being bumpy.

    Can’t believe the kids have been with us for over two weeks now. In some ways it has flashed by but thinking back to St Martin seems an eternity ago.

    Jess says “Hi” to her Mum.

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  • Bread

    This morning the kids went ashore to take a look at the east coast around Spanish Point. The landscape is very rugged there with pounding seas crashing against ancient volcanic rock. As soon as they had dinghied back we motored around to the west side of Cocoa Point. It was only two miles but the challenge was avoid the coral. We had both John and Helen as lookout on each bow.

    One thing I don’t mention enough is how well Helen is looking after all of us. Recently she has been trying out different ways to make bread. All very delicious. Today she made pizza base upon which she put pizza topping. Simply heaven. After lunch Helen and I tried out the Hookah but it was a bit disappointing as visibility was terrible.

    All of us bar Helen have played on the beach. I don’t recall sand as perfect as this. It is utterly clean, no trash, and has the most amazing building qualities I have seen – almost like instant cement but at the same time powdery sand. It makes building beach constructions very easy and fun. I certainly enjoyed being a kid for a while. Tomorrow we may head further west to the 11 mile beach that runs north from Palmetto point. It’s utterly deserted. Met a Norwegian yesterday who said his family had had it to themselves for three days.

  • Turqouise

    Helen says the sea around us is turquoise. It’s important to get this right.

  • Barbuda

    We were all up at 6am this morning for final boat prep for a 7am departure to Barbuda. Given the forecasts we decided to prepare the Code Zero for a nice beam reach. Well – we ended up with a lot of lessons learned going all the way back to how we stowed the sail last use. In the end we had to abandon the attempt and pack it away so we can unfurl it and sort it out when we have calm conditions. So we ended up sailing merrily using the regular headsail. Our needlework held up. We used the radar to navigate around a squall saving us from reefing the sails and getting wet. We anchored off Barbuda shortly after midday in an idyllic setting – a bay with blue water and corals around. Now it’s time to settle down and do very little very hard.

    … later …

    We’ve all been snorkeling on the best reefs so far this trip. By a long shot. Helen and I have been for a walk along the beach. More doing very little to do next.

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