More than 5000 nautical miles, 5,753 miles, 9,260 kilometers,  6 months, 11 days and roughly 5 hours after our departure from La Rochelle, Taka Trois is in her new home in Anse Marcel, St. Martin.  We left Antigua as planned last Friday and had a brisk sail to Barbuda where we anchored for two nights off the most beautiful beach we have ever seen.  I do not have the time to write about this idyllic little island properly right now, but I promise that I will try to do it justice in my next post.

From Barbuda, we made a quick overnight stop in St. Barts and then arrived here late Monday and are now happily settled in the marina in Anse Marcel which we plan to use as our base for the next year or so.  Anse Marcel is an small cove on the northeast part of the island.  It's a bit isolated, but it's a good hurricane hole, which makes our insurance company happy and we have a lovely spot on the outskirts of the marina facing mangroves and the green hills which surround the cove.  After being at sea for so  long, we cannot get  enough of the color green.

St. Martin is an island we know fairly well as tourists, but we’re looking forward to exploring her as quasi-residents.  Before we can do that properly, we have our daughters coming for a visit tomorrow and my brother and sister-in-law coming in shortly after they leave -hence the brevity of this post and the reason why I won’t be writing much during the next 10 days.  But in the words of the immortal Bob Marley,  “Don’t worry, be happy” and I’ll be back soon.

Before we arrived in Antigua, the plan was to spend about a week there, go up to her sister island Barbuda for a week and then head for what will be our home base in St. Martin with brief stops in St. Kitts and/or St. Barts on the way.  It was a good plan, but silly me, I forgot that all-important sailing rule in that the weather is king and always has the last word.  Bottom line, we’ve been here for two weeks now because with the wind and swells that Barbuda has been getting, there is no way we could have a safe and comfortable anchorage there, nor are the conditions favorable for going to St. Kitts and Nevis  That’s OK.  Antigua is actually a lovely place to be stuck, so let me share a little of what we’ve seen and discovered about this island.

Antigua’s first inhabitants, the Amerindians date back to 2900 BC.  As of 1200 AD, the agricultural Arawaks lived on the island and were displaced around 1500 by the Caribs--an aggressive people who ranged all over the Caribbean.  Their ‘claim to fame’ in modern day history is a local beer which is named after them. Christopher Columbus named the island in 1493 after Santa Maria la Antigua, the miracle-working saint of Seville, but Europeans didn’t settle there for another century due to resistance from the Caribs and a lack of fresh water.  

The English arrived in 1684 and established sugar plantations.  To run their plantations, they brought in African slaves who eventually gained emancipation in 1834 and their descendants make up the bulk of the current population.  The island became independent from the UK in 1981, but remains part of the Commonwealth.  Due to its natural protected harbors, the British Navy developed it as its base under Horatio Nelson in 1784.  His job was to construct what is now known as Nelson’s dockyard.   Apparently he spent most of his time in the cramped quarters of his ship, declaring the island to be a “vile place and a “dreadful hole.”  

We disagree.  We found the island to be a lovely place with many beautiful natural beaches and coves, charming local houses gaily painted with gingerbread trim and a fine selection of cafes and eating establishments many of which are right on the beach.  The island is expensive and there are a few too many all-inclusive resorts for our taste, but I guess both are necessary for the island’s economy which relies mainly on tourism.

St. John’s is the largest city on the island and hosts the cruise ship industry.  The waterfront has been specifically developed for the cruise ship trade, but the city has retained a local flair and is a pleasant place to walk around and the people are friendly. The Lonely Planet describes it as follows:  “Intriguingly shabby, St John's is worth a day's exploration. Good cafés, idiosyncratic shops, a grand cathedral, a cute little museum, a thriving market and more line the chaotic streets of the fairly compact center. There's a melange of buildings ranging form the 19th-century survivors to modern-day horrors."  We concur.

We began our stay in Falmouth Harbour and spent an enjoyable week moored up at the Catamaran Marina.  Shelagh commented to Alan in an e-mail before our arrival that there were a lot of ‘big boats’ at this marina.  “Surely she’s forgotten how big Taka Trois is,” we thought.  HA!  The woman knows her boats.  Upon arrival we were relegated to the pontoon equivalent of the ‘kids’ table at a wedding as we were one of the smallest boats there.  Very humbling, but wonderful for boat lovers as there were some beautiful specimens to behold.  The nearby Falmouth Marina had even larger specimens including the Maltese Falcon one of the largest privately owned sailing yachts in the world at 88 m (289 ft). Not a hint boat envy for us though, Taka Trois and her 45 feet are just about all we can handle.

We visited Nelson’s famous dockyard at English Harbour where many of the original buildings and structures are well-preserved/re-built and the site is charming.  There are no naval ships here, just super-yachts competing for the distinction of biggest and shiniest.   Over-looking English harbor is Shirley Heights, the site of the a military look-out where we joined locals and tourists for an evening of steel pan, reggae, barbecue and rum and were treated to a dazzling view of Falmouth and English harbors as well as a spectacular sunset over the island.

After a week’s stay in Falmouth Harbour and Alan and Shelagh’s last day, we decided to sail with them up the coast to Jolly Harbour where, we planned to stay for just a day or two to take advantage of its excellent ship chandlery and facilities before moving on to Barbuda.  Falmouth Harbour didn’t let go of us easily however, and talk about getting stuck, we ran aground just a few feet away from our berth!  We had been concerned that depth might be a problem for us when leaving from our assigned berth before leaving, but when we raised the question to the the harbor master (mistress, actually) she assured us that there would be no problem as the bottom was soft mud.  She was wrong.  

Although the harbor floor was indeed soft mud with some gravel, as Patrice saw when he dove down to check, the keel got somehow completely wedged into that mud and would not budge!  The harbor officials offered little assistance, but thankfully our pontoon neighbors all came out to us on their dinghies to lend a hand and their advice.  This ready willingness to help it is one of the things I love about this lifestyle.  After two hours (!) of trying various ideas and combinations of pushing and pulling, while trying not to panic a local fishing boat came to the rescue and pulled us out.  Whew!  

Taka Trois suffered a few scratches and our sailor’s pride got a bit bruised, but otherwise we came out of it unscathed.  We got to Jolly Harbour in good time, dropped anchor before the marina to have a swim off the boat and then got ourselves a berth in the marina before having a last meal with Shelagh and Alan and saying farewell to them.  We have been here for almost a week enjoying a lively marina complete with a swimming pool, several bars and restaurants and a beautiful mile-long beach to walk along while waiting for the weather to change so that we can continue northward.  God and weather willing, maybe tomorrow...?

Our arrival here in Antigua last week was one of the best moments of my life and one that I dreamt of incessantly since leaving the Canaries in early January and especially during this last passage.  During the past week, we have been resting, spending time and exploring the island with my parents and Shelagh and Alan, cleaning and restoring the boat to ‘cruising mode’ and basking in the afterglow of having successfully completed what was for us, an incredible, epic journey which began in La Rochelle last August and ended this January with a 14 day passage across the Atlantic Ocean from Cap Verde to the Caribbean. 14 days at sea!  A relatively short time in a lifespan, but trust me, a very very long time to be a boat without seeing land.

There is much I want to share of our experience, but where to start?  Given that a complete accounting would entail too much information for some, I’ve decided to be as brief as possible (ha-ha) in this blog post, but for those brave souls who would like to hear even more, you can read a fairly detailed account with photos of what it was like to be onboard Taka Trois during the crossing on a new page here on this website entitled “The Crossing.” (http://www.takadventures.com/the-crossing.html) .

I guess a good way to begin is by saying that the journey was both much easier and much MUCH harder than I expected.  From a purely sailing, technical and a ‘what-if’ standpoint, it was a breeze.  We had no major technical problems, no accidents, no medical emergencies and managed to sail at a decent speed for most of the journey without too much effort or mishap and arrived at our destination within at our original estimated timeframe. 

What was also easy, was how life became very simple revolving around a routine of sleeping, eating, keeping the boat and ourselves relatively clean and amusing ourselves all while keeping the boat moving in the right direction as safely and quickly as possible.   That, however, was probably the main cause of stress on board and as crew, I didn’t have as much of that burden as our skipper did, but we all shared in it nevertheless.

Patrice, our faithful skipper would say that the sailing was not without its challenges.  With the wind coming from behind us for most of the trip, our main point of sail was downwind, a difficult point of sail especially with swells of over 2 meters rocking us back and forth over that course and putting us in danger of gybing for a good part of the trip.  Although we had installed ‘a brake’ to stop the main sail from gybing, with winds of force 5 on average and squalls which brought us sudden gusts of up to force 7, we couldn’t trust it 100%.  We therefore chose to do a fair amount of our sailing with just the headsail.   Unfortunately we were unable to use our new Code 5 sail or the Spinnaker which would’ve been perfect sails to use to sail downwind, but were too fragile and unwieldy to use in winds above 15 knots.  In the end we did an average speed of well over 6 knots on our route which was not bad, all things considered.

As a team, the three of us were very complementary and rarely had a disagreement or a cross word.  We handled most maneuvers and the problems we encountered fairly smoothly and although we all had our ‘moments’, on the whole we managed to remain calm and we did a good job of encouraging each other, boosting each other up and keeping our sense of humor.  Having the Iridium satellite phone and therefore being able to stay in touch with our loved ones helped enormously.   Patrice stayed in touch with two of the boats that were crossing with us via satellite e-mail and it was good to know that we were not alone out there.    

Two of my personal concerns before leaving were seasickness and having enough fresh food.  In the end, I only had a bit of queasiness at the beginning, but no real seasickness, thank God, so I felt pretty good for most of the trip and I was able to function normally and perform my duties easily.  My concern about food was also unnecessary.  We had enough fresh food and rarely had to open a tin can (I have an intense loathing of Spam and other such canned delicacies traditionally used by sailors on long hauls).  As those of you who followed us on the blog saw, we managed to prepare some wonderful meals which greatly helped our morale. 

What was so very hard for me was in fact a combination of several factors:  The seemingly endless number of days ahead of us, the sheer monotony (there were days and days and days when we saw NOTHING except that seething ocean), the constant vigilance and therefore a constant, under-lying stress that something could go wrong and the never-ending fight to stay balanced on the heaving ‘bronco’ that Taka Trois had become and even the smallest tasks were exasperating and exhausting (to get an idea of the movement and the swells have a look at the slideshow below). This was all highly amplified by serious sleep deprivation which has always been a bête noire for me personally.  We never got more than 6 hours of sleep at a stretch (if that) and although we took every opportunity to nap during the day, the lack of continuous sleep eventually took a toll on our mental outlook.  Every three days or so for me, I could feel my spirits plummeting and it was only the kindness of my shipmates and my faith that kept me going. 

Little things kept us going.  Seeing flying fish, the occasional bird, a rainbow, shooting stars, VHF contact with one or two other boats and our little daily rituals.  The highlights of the trip for me were leaving Cap Verde, crossing paths mid-Atlantic with Bizim, another sailboat on its way the the Caribbean  who we will hopefully meet up with in St. Martin in a few weeks to share photographs, seeing the Killer Whale (twice), incredible sunrises and sunsets and of course arriving here in Antigua.  

Would I do it again?  Nope.  Once was enough.  Crossing the Atlantic for me was not really about the challenge of crossing, but more of a means of getting our boat to the Caribbean.  Nevertheless, I am in awe of that fact that we did it and call it pride, but I am so enjoying seeing people’s reactions when we tell them that we crossed the Atlantic Ocean on our sailboat.  It’s HUGE and it will take a long time and perhaps a few rum punches to digest the enormity of it all.

Thanks goes first to God for His protection and guidance throughout, but also to you dear friends and family, for your continuous support through prayers and encouraging messages.  Knowing that you were following us on that precious ‘yellow brick’ felt like an extra boost of wind in our sails and we were very grateful for it.  Thank you.

The following is a slideshow of Shelagh and my mother's photos from our arrival at the Catamaran Marina, Falmouth Harbour, Antigua.  What a joyous occasion!