The Last Month

The last month of the year reminds me of musical chairs. The music starts on Thanksgiving and everyone starts moving around. Who’s hosting sundowners tonight! Who’s sailing up to Barbuda when the window opens! We’ll circle back and meet for dinner aboard! Get those Christmas Lights up! The Christmas Winds are creeping in! Where will you be when the music stops? Watch for those Northern Swells! Christmas dinner for 18, make reservations now! Got a good view for the New Year’s Fireworks?

We took a week break and ducked out to Deep Bay. It’s not as secluded as it once was. The big resort takes a chunk out of the southern shore-line but that is not too bad. Their loud poolside DJ doesn’t perform every day and when he does, sport-casting the pool activities at the resort, doesn’t last too long. Deep Bay unfortunately has attracted swarms of biting jet skiers. These decibel breaking speedsters can be as annoying as those tiny noisy mosquitos that fly into your ear at night. They popup around noon and blast through the bay to experience the noisy, jolting, twisting, turning ride with as much straight line breakneck speed that these one and two man floating engines of annoyance can muster. Safety is the last thing they seem to regard, not to mention the drone of their high-powered water pump missiles.

Despite this, most of the time, we did enjoy the quiet (other than the whistling winds in the rigging). A couple of Salty Dawg boats did stop by and so we did have some sundowners with Peter and Beth of WAYWARD WIND.

We anchored right next to Dozy Girl. This local sloop was firmly secured and we had no worries that she would drag in the moderate winds of the bay. That is always a concern as one never knows how well the captain of that upwind boat set his anchor. The last thing you want to awaken to at two in the morning is the sound of boats bumping in the night. And you know they don’t want Grey Poupon. You’re lucky if they greet you with cloths on. I should mention that this never happened to us. I usually keep a pair of shorts handy.

We did go bump in the night recently in Freemans Bay, English Harbor. Oddly enough it was not due to strong winds or rain squalls. Actually, there was no wind at all. And that was the problem. The current there swirls and if there is no wind each anchored boat does it’s own thing. We anchored near (a respectable distance given the circumstances) our friends boat (ROXY). Well, at four in the morning Maureen hears a “bump in the night” and sure enough we were stern to stern with ROXY. Davits just touched. No damage. Mark and Lynn never even woke up. We fended off, pulled some chain up so we wouldn’t collide again and went back to bed. Yes, the shorts came in handy.

But I digress. Dozy Girl would definitely not drag. She couldn’t. She lay 15’ underwater with her mast sticking up like a flagpole in the middle of the bay. It is an interesting snorkel attraction in addition to the wreck of the Andes close by. Some even thought it fun to try a mast walk. From what I heard when one of the tour boats (booze cruise catamarans) that passed by was that the boat broke loose in a squall, lost its rudder and sank. Other details I couldn’t hear. The Andes, by the way, caught fire and the captain tried to bring it to the beach before it sank. He didn’t make it, but it makes a good snorkel dive, a lot of fish now call it home. Luckily there have been no swells recently so the water clarity is good. Considering that this area of Antigua usually has very murky (sandy) water close into shore, both Dozy Girl and Andes provided good snorkeling.

So our week break in Deep Bay will end tomorrow as we will head back to Jolly Harbor. We’ll actually go into the marina on Sunday and prepare for our flight back to Brooklyn on Tuesday. The latest CDC procedures require us to have a covid test on Monday. Our up-state daughter will be down before Christmas for a few days after we arrive and we will celebrate her birthday. We will then spend the Christmas Holiday in New York with family and friends. New Year’s eve will be with my 100 year old dad, then celebrate our other daughter’s birthday on the 3^{rd of January} and fly back to Antigua on the 4^th.  By then the music will stop and we will run to the open chairs and have a seat. But we will be back on board and a New Year beckons. Hopefully, island hopping will be easier although that could be the start of another round of musical chairs.