Overnight to Antigua

It’s 00:55 and I start hearing some rather interesting sea shanties through the speaker—it’s time to get up and leave Marie-Galant! Andy is in the galley prepping coffee while everyone is slowly rising from their bunks. Our night mission to Antigua has started. We leave the anchorage and hoist our mainsail and staysail in a quiet fashion. The first bit of the trip is going to be tacking upwind towards the eastern side of Guadeloupe, so I go back to bed (or try to) as they start tacking. You can hear laughter and feel the tacks getting better and better. I think to myself how cool it is that we are sailing a 65ft ex-racing boat with a bunch of like-minded people who a week ago didn’t know each other, making almost perfect tacks through squalls in the middle of the night.

After reaching the east side of Guadeloupe, we are able to bear away and it’s a sprint from there. FALKEN flew at 10-11 knots, first with the staysail and then with the Yankee and staysail on a close reach all the way to Antigua. She was loving it and so were the crew, feeling her speed on the helm. We directed FALKEN’s bow towards English Harbour, where Nelson hid his fleet of boats back in the day, as Andy explains to us. It was a fabulous entrance to the bay under sail, dropping sails as we turned the corner. After a little tour of the bay, we decided to head to Falmouth Harbour and ended the night enjoying some Caribbean Piri-Piri Chicken ashore at Flatties.

It is now, when I look back, that I realize how proud I am of what we do, what we bring to people who join us, and all they bring to us. It has been a blast! // Alex