Day 9 – Thursday November 13th
We sailed from early AM until about 11AM today, and started motor-sailing again. By early evening the wind picked up and the motor went off so we could sail all night.
With the ability to sail, or motor-sail at over 6 knots we now know we have plenty of fuel to get to Antigua so we changed course for there this AM. As of early afternoon we have about 215 miles to go, 1450 down. Since we left Mattapoisett we have done 2,200 miles.
Today we all wrote down our anticipated arrival times. No prize just bragging rights except Jenna who gets a daiquiri if she wins. The times range from Reinhart’s guess of Friday 11:30PM to Roseann’s guess of Saturday 11:30PM. Mindy guessed Saturday at 8:30AM (hoping for a daylight arrival). Jenna overheard me say something about us arriving on Saturday, and in a seperate conversation talking about arriving at 2AM (which was me relaying that on our delivery from Charleston to Mattapoisett in the spring we arrived at 2AM) so she guessed Saturday at 2AM. I guessed the same, but only because I thought we would arrive anywhere between Friday 10PM and Saturday 6AM so 2AM was my middle ground.
Day 10 – Friday November 14th
Today much like the last two days we motorsailed during the day, by late afternoon we sailed a bit but by dinnertime we could see Barbuda just to the north of Antigua. Normally we would pass Barbuda and Antigua to the east of the island becuase the harbor we were aiming for is along the bottom of Antigua and if you go to the west the last 25 miles of your trip is beating into what is usually a stiff easterly wind and not a fun way to end a 1600 mile trip.
Because of the wind angle we decided to pass Barbuda to the west, and then motorsail between Barbuda and Antigua to pass Antigua to the east. We rounded Antigua and got to the outer Falmouth harbor (our agreed upon arrival point) nearly exactly at 2AM! Normally its advised to never enter a port for the first time at night, but Falmouth is a wide open entry with a reef to one side and a very open anchorage just inside. All of us were up from about 1:00AM to help keep a lookout for bouys and navigate into the harbor. On arrival one other rally boat was anchored there but we were able to get the anchor down and set, have a quick congrats and then off to bed for a couple of hours of sleep without the boat moving!
Day 11 – Saturday November 15th
After a good couple of hours of sleep Roseann made a breakfast for all of us, I took a quick shower and went into town to clear customs. My first steps on land were pretty funny – the sidewalk definitely had a “swell” running or that’s at least how it felt. The walk from Falmouth to English Harbor where customs is located is about 10 minutes. I cleared us all in, which is super easy now that all the forms can be submitted ahead of time on a website. I met another rally boat in customs who had just docked at Nelsons Dockyard in English harbor and he was swaying back and forth at the desk! By the time I walked back the “swell” had died down – all back to normal.
Our passage was 10 3/4 days, 1674 miles at an average speed of 6.6knots with a max speed of 19kts. Many have said that this was the trickiest passage weather in at least the last 5-6 years, and for many the storm on Wednesday the 5th was as bad or worse than many had ever been in. We were fortunate that we had a faster boat and were able to get southeast enough that we were in much milder conditions than most. The end of the trip, most people motored all or considerably more than half of the last 6 to 8 days. Partly because we have a boat that can sail in light air and partly because we were conservative on fuel, we only motored a total of about 95 hours, including the time out of Hampton, and into Falmouth Harbor. Much of that 95 hours was a very low RPM (1400-1500) where we burn under one half gallon per hour, where many were constantly motoring at 1800+ RPM and going the same speed as us.
