{"id":3537,"date":"2026-04-21T15:25:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T15:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=3537"},"modified":"2026-04-21T15:25:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T15:25:30","slug":"grenada-to-antigua-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/grenada-to-antigua-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Grenada to Antigua (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/6766f4022dc5d9b993aeca62\/69e755591e5fb1ae4646942e\" width=\"100%\" height=\"80px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Sunday 19<sup>th<\/sup> April 2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">20 miles west of Dominica<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Wind: E2. Barometer 1016<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Distance to Antigua; 98M<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hardly going to be more than three days, but it seems like a voyage already. The last time I looked, we were doing seven knots bang on course for English Harbour.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, if I did sail the direct course for English Harbour, it would mean crossing a good bit of solid ground on Guadeloupe, but with a small detour, we should be there by Monday afternoon &#8211; plenty of time. Ben doesn&#8217;t land until after lunch on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Just at the moment, I&#8217;ve been sitting in the cockpit, reading Peter Townsend&#8217;s second book. Peter Townsend was the Spitfire ace who became equerry to King George VI and, more importantly, fell in love with Princess Margaret &#8211; well, if <em>The Crown<\/em> is to be believed, Margaret threw herself at him, and he didn&#8217;t have much chance.<\/p>\n<p>Since we can assume that everyone has seen <em>The Crown, <\/em>I won&#8217;t repeat the story of how this ruined both their lives (alternatively, just ask and I&#8217;ll pontificate). What I didn&#8217;t know was that he married again, went to live in France and wrote the definitive book about the Battle of Britain <em>Duel of Eagles &#8211; <\/em>that&#8217;s the one I&#8217;ve just finished. He followed it up with <em>Duel in the Dark<\/em>, the story of the Blitz and his part in it, leading a night fighter squadron when the only hope of finding the enemy was a large helping of luck.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the sensation of a proper voyage is helped by taking the direct route. The Windward Islands are arranged like a bow, bending to the left as they go north. The direct route is therefore the bowstring, and pretty soon, you&#8217;re well offshore. Yesterday, I was 30 miles off St Vincent. Now the distance to Martinique is 50 miles. By Sunday evening, I&#8217;ll be closing Guadeloupe.<\/p>\n<p>But it does mean there&#8217;s hardly anybody else here \u2013 just the occasional tanker on its way up from Venezuela, and they keep well out of my way. I had to reef a couple of times for rain squalls, and at one point, the vane for the Hydrovane slipped from the vertical to the horizontal. I remembered just in time to put a line on it before I started fiddling. Imagine if I lost it. Should I carry a spare?<\/p>\n<p>While thinking of Hawkins and his vane (I call the Hydrovane \u201cHawkins\u201d), some while ago, the fabric started to split. They warn you this is going to happen \u2013 it\u2019s the ultraviolet light \u2013 and I have a spare. But it\u2019s my only spare, and I have a long trip coming up, so Hugo and I started sticking it together every time we took it down. It is now covered in bits of black duct tape attached with a variety of different glues \u2013 I thought it would be useful to find out which was best. It turns out they all work, and the vane is still going, although I\u2019m not sure I ought to turn up to Antigua Race Week with it in its present state.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I woke up when everything landed on top of me. That\u2019s what happened in the Great Knockdown a couple of years ago, although this morning, it didn\u2019t include the fridge \u2013 just the new extra-strong glue for the dinghy, a bag of chain markers and the spare cabin lamp left over from when I bought one too many.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it was a rude awakening. Outside, there was a lot of flapping and crashing going on. When I went to bed, I wondered whether I should reef the main \u2013 it didn\u2019t really need it, but I like the idea of a quiet night. In the end, of course, I didn\u2019t \u2013 and now this.<\/p>\n<p>I poked my head out \u2013 and found we didn\u2019t have a reefed headsail (I thought I\u2019d at least done that). Instead, it turned out I had full sail up in 21kts. The Rival can cope with this \u2013 just not comfortably. I reefed both sails and went back for breakfast. I\u2019m so out of practice after having Hugo for three weeks that yesterday, I hadn\u2019t made the overnight porridge. Today was an improvement \u2013 although I\u2019d forgotten how much water to add and overdid it.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I did get to try the new nutmeg syrup. I bought this to go with the <em>Bob\u2019s Red Mill Pancake Mix<\/em> left me by the Canadians on the catamaran. Nutmeg is a speciality of Grenada, and I got to like it over breakfast in the One Love Bar (two pancakes, syrup and eggs sunnyside up). All I need now is a second frying pan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday 19th April 2026 20 miles west of Dominica Wind: E2. Barometer 1016 Distance to Antigua; 98M &nbsp; It&#8217;s hardly going to be more than three days, but it seems like a voyage already. The last time I looked, we were doing seven knots bang on course for English Harbour. Of course, if I did &#8230; <a title=\"Grenada to Antigua (2)\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/grenada-to-antigua-2\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Grenada to Antigua (2)\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3538,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537\/revisions\/3538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}