Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Yesterday we moved Dignity a short distance so we could spend Thursday and Friday nights on a mooring ball a little closer to the marina and shops in Jolly Harbour.  The main benefit is that we don’t have to dinghy half a mile into wind into the channel from the anchorage.

These last two days are going to be a little slow.  Yesterday the highlight was (depending on who you talk to) going out to eat.  We ended up going to a local pizza parlour outside of the marina and immediate tourist area.  This meant we could eat/drink more and pay less.  If I read the mood right, the boys were in favour and the girls not.  We had a good time and it was nice to chat with the family all together.  This was mainly due to the amount of time we had to wait for the food.  It was good all the same.

Last night and this morning it has been raining quite hard.  A lot that was left outside got wet.  Worse still, the forecasts for the next three days shows a lot of rain.  GO AWAY.  The upside is that Dignity is getting a nice wash.

Tomorrow – everyone flies home.  As I’ve said, we’re not looking forward to this.  I think the kids are in different ways itching to get back to their lives.  On the flip side this lets Helen and I free to head onwards.  We’ve been reading up on Guadeloupe and are very much looking forward to visiting this next set of islands.  We’re likely to be there all the way to Feb 25 as this is when Carnival culminates.  We must make sure we’re in Point a Pitre or Basse Terre for that.

One of these days I’ll be reporting that everything went to plan. Not today. We went for our walk to St Johns via Greencastle Hill. To get to the hill we had to walk about 3-4 miles along the road, turn right and walk another mile, look for dirt track next to a brick factory and then walk up that. Well, the best we could figure out that since my guidebook was written (10 years ago) the brick factory had become a quarry and mined out the side of Greencastle Hill and it was no longer accessible.  Alternatively we simply messed up. Not that Antigua has any signs for these things. It didn’t for Devil’s Bridge which was there so no surprises here.

So we walked the final 3 miles to St Johns, had lunch in a local cafe where we had chicken and lamb curries for 15 EC$ which is about 6 US$ each. Then we split up so the kids (mainly Jess) could look at the shops while John, Helen and I went to the museum.

We took the bus back to Jolly Harbour. Back on the boat we first went back to the marina to use their showers as we were dusty from the quarry and needed to clean up. We left Ben and Jess ashore and headed again back to Dignity. I had a minor crisis with the watermaker. When going under the floor to remove the filters for cleaning I accidentally flipped a switch without realizing it. This put the watermaker into a tizz which I could only resolve by calling Spectra support. They knew the answer immediately. Another lesson learned.

We’re now anchored just outside of Jolly Harbour and may well remain in the vicinity for the next few days – until the family leave. This allows us to sort out some things together which would otherwise be difficult being so far apart.

Not that we won’t continue to be in vacation mode. Tomorrow we expect to go for a hike. Approx 3-4 miles away from here are the Megaliths of Greencastle Hill. These are rocks which are debatably either interestingly natural or some archaeological artifact. From there we may walk all the way to St Johns so we can see it during a weekday and maybe visit the Museum. If we do walk all the way there, we’ll certainly return by local bus.

I’ve also learned to use geo locations in blogs, including those sent via SSB. This means many of my posts will now be embelished with a little google map showing where we are exactly. The thing I now need to do is to make grabbing the GPS coords simpler than it is right now. Another task for another day.

Tonight we’re back in Five Islands Bay in fact off a little internal bay called Hermitage Bay. It’s got a pretty secluded resort ashore and that’s about it. We’ve been ashore and walked the beach. Ben and Jess stayed a little longer. Here are some recent pics of Dickenson Bay, Deep Bay & St Johns.

Saturday night we spent a nice quiet evening in Deep Bay. In the morning we shifted Dignity close to the wreck of the Andes to see if it was feasible to Hookah dive. We did not even drop the anchor as
the winds were whipping through that part of the bay and it did not look feasible to dive there. We therefore went around the corner and anchored right in St Johns. On a Sunday, St Johns was pretty dead. We walked around town anyway. There was an interesting cathedral, stone on the outside with pitch pine and mahogany on the inside. It had two towers like Exeter Cathedral albeit a bit smaller. We found an open supermarket where we mainly stocked up on bread, fruit and chocolate treats (mine was a Crunchie).

We then had another planning session. A key need was to get on the internet Monday to deal with some banking issues.  So we ended up back off Dickenson Bay for Sunday evening as we knew we could get connections there. The kids went ashore for a couple of hours leaving Helen and I alone on the boat. We watched a movie.

Our plan, as of yesterday, was to head to the reefs NE of Antigua. Now it looks as though the winds are picking up so we may change our minds (again) and head west. We may end up hanging around Five Islands Harbour and Jolly Harbour and look to take bus trips inland. If we have time today we
might go back to St Johns but that is not high on our wishlist.

Right now we’re having a familiar fight with the internet. Performance is really slow again. Haven’t yet found a way to really tell where the problem is. In the same location it was not too bad last night.