Row, row, row your boat.

First, I'd like to thank those of you who leave comments on the blog. We love the feedback and also love hearing how everyone is doing back home - so keep the emails coming!

Here we are at the beginning of September, just over two months into our travels. We're currently sitting in Jolly Harbour Marina on Antigua's west coast and have been enjoying this island for a little over a week. The last you heard from us, we were in St. Martin, about to start heading south. Well, we've made it about 120 miles so far.

To give you a timeline, we left St. Martin on August 18 and headed south to St. Barts. It was a great day for sailing with clear blue skies, a nice breeze and just enough big puffy clouds to give us something to look at. The trip was only about 18 miles from where we were in Anse du Marcel. Our destination was Gustavia which is the main port in St. Barts. For those of you who haven't visited St. Barts - its atmosphere is quite a bit different from where we've been so far.

Not only is Gustavia's main harbor right out of a picture book, but all the store fronts in the town look like they'd been plucked right from Madison Avenue in New York City!

While in Gustavia, we had to get fuel for the dinghy. We were nearly out and when I say nearly, I'm kind of stretching the truth. The only place to get fuel for a boat was the commercial dock, which was about 1/2 mile from our boat. When I got up in the morning, I decided to zip over to the fuel dock and get that chore out of the way. I jumped in the dinghy and headed to the commercial dock. I ran out of gas 10 feet from the dock. Luckily, I had oars so I could row myself the remaining 10 feet.

I found myself on a commercial dock with lots of containers and machinery. I was in a little 9 foot inflatable boat wanting about 6 gallons of the island's best unleaded. Oh, and I've not mentioned that "Mon Français est très mauvais" or for those that don't "parlez", my French is very bad. I manage to find the main office and between my trying to pronounce "gasoline" with a French accent and wildly gesticulating my arms, the very nice and patient French guy understood my goal. He said in broken English, "you want gas." "Yes! Yes!", I respond. Then I saw it coming, I knew what he was going to say next. "No gas." I looked from him to the pumps and then back to him, pretending not to understand such a simple phase in my native tongue, raise an eyebrow and waited. I don't know what I expected him to say, whether it was, "Just joking...unleaded OK?", or..."I have a little stash of gas here behind the counter, for you, I can spare a few liters." What he did say was, "Pumps no work."

Yes, it's true. I'd used all the remaining gas we had in the tank to get the dinghy to a dock that had pumps and had fuel, but couldn't get the fuel where I wanted it. I managed to ask in very poor French where the nearest gas station was. "Airport!" was the kind Frenchman's response.

I'm sure you all know what happened next because of the title of this blog. I had to "Row, row, row my boat" back the 1/2 mile to our big boat. For those of you who didn't crew in college, or don't enjoy a skiff out on the river - rowing is a LOT of work. Plus, you can't see where you're going. Frequently I would find myself rowing to a destination that I had no intention of visiting

Now this is Rick adding a side note: I've seen Jim at the gym, sitting on a rowing machine, happy as a clam in sand. He gets no sympathy from me.

Well, after about an hour I made it back. The rest of that day...and I'm not kidding, was us on a quest for gas. St. Barts only has two gas stations. One is near the airport and I have no idea where the other one is. Our first order of business was to either take a cab or rent a car and drive to the airport. I have to confess, that part of me was excited about visiting another airport. I have an obsession with airplanes, so any excuse will do - and after all, this wasn't an excuse.

We boarded the dinghy and "row, row, rowed" ourselves to the dock. Fortunately, it's not far... only about a 5 minute row max. We then inquired about the cost of a cab. As it turned out, we could rent a car for less money - only about $40/day. So we chose that option. By this time, it was about lunch time. We quickly learned a very important fact about French island culture. Nearly all non-restaurant businesses close at noon and some reopen later in the afternoon (remember, it's off-season). Since we had to wait until 2pm for the car rental place to open, we decided to grab a bit at a restaurant that had a great view of the harbour. I love the way the French can teach us how to enjoy one another more by taking time to have lunch.

Anyway, I digress (the American returns). After lunch we rented a car. As a side note, cars in St. Barths for $40/day aren't nearly as nice as cars in St. Martin for $25/day. But that's another story. We were happy to be in a car and drove the 10 minutes to the airport. We got to the gas station and as it turns out, closed between 12:00 and 2:30pm. What time was it? Only 2:15! Good lord man - what are we to do for the next 15 minutes! (again, the American - or maybe it's just my OCD).

Long story short (I know, it's already long). We got the gas and were "liquid" again with dinghy fuel. We drove back to the boat and hooked up the tank and happily polluted the air while motoring 2 minutes back to the boat :)

Are you wondering how long this is going to continue? I started by saying that I would tell you about how we got to Antigua and I've just most of this blog telling you about getting gas.

We left Gustavia a few days later and headed north to Anse du Colombier, a beautiful little cove with a long white-sand beach that isn't accessible by any road. We were there with 2-3 other boats and had a great time.

We snorkeled! We've not had much of a chance to be in the water since we left Tortola, and we were in heaven. The sunset set in the west (as always) and we had a clear view.

On our last day before leaving for Antigua, we took a hike from Anse du Colombier to Anse des Flamandes. Our goal was to find a nice place for breakfast and/or coffee. For those that don't speak French, an "Anse" literally translates as "hanger." I take that to mean cove.

This hike wasn't for the feeble hearted. Cooper and Coco went with us - and at times even they seemed a bit taken aback by the sheer drop. Our effort was totally rewarded when we stumbled across a small hotel with a restaurant that served a very good French-style continental breakfast. They even had a bowl of water for the dogs. I love the French.

Once we'd hiked back, we packed everything up and headed back to Gustavia. We needed to make sure we were full on water - and after the incident with the fuel, we thought it a good idea to get an early start. There were no troubles getting the water and around 3:30 in the afternoon, we departed the lovely island of St. Barthelamy for Antigua. During the journey, we'd pass Saba, St. Eustatis, St. Kitts, Nevis and then arrive on Antigua.

For those that are wondering why we're passing all these islands, I have two words for you: "Hurricane season." We are only taking extended stays at islands that have good hurricane holes - and those that we were passing, while beautiful, aren't known for helping sailboats weather a storm.

We leave St. Barths around 4pm in the afternoon bound for Antigua. I'd been up since about 6am, so we decided that Rick would take the first watch and I would do the graveyard shift. If you're not familiar with how to sail at night, someone always needs to be awake to keep watch. Basically, the guy on duty ensures that we don't run into any passing cruise ships or freighters. After all, we're only a 41 foot catamaran and don't always register with those on the "watch" of these other ships.

I headed down to the stateroom with the nubbins around 8pm. We keep the dogs locked in the stateroom when we're at sea at night. If they were to go overboard in the dark there would be no hope finding them. I had been in bed about 5 minutes when Rick called me to come back to the cockpit...we'd hit a squall. Now, we are both very diligent about checking the weather several times before leaving on a passage. This time was no different. While in Gustavia earlier that day we both had checked the 4-5 different sources of weather that we have. We knew the squalls might happen, but this was a first for us.



I'm back on deck in my shorts wondering what on earth was going on. Rick told me the winds had risen to around 25 knots sustained with gusts up to 35. When I'd gone to bed, 10 minutes before, we were seeing winds between 10-12 knots. We immediately took action to decide how to best weather this storm. However, the dogs weren't locked in the stateroom anymore...I had neglected to close the door when I sprinted back to deck.

The moment seemed to last forever. Rick asked about the dogs and I told him they were inside. He went below to find them and told me that he couldn't find Cooper, but had located Coco. Of the two, Coco would be the one to worry more about because if it were possible, she would attach herself to Rick. Rick continued to look while I became more and more frantic at the helm. I had just about accepted the fact that the little black cocker spaniel was not going to be found on board when Rick said he had her. She had wedged herself under the desk in the office. The fact that it was night time and Cooper is black....enough said.


We managed to get through the squall and decided that it would be better to have less main sail out in case it happened again. With only one of us on watch, it would be easier to tolerate any upcoming squalls if we didn't have as much exposed sail area. Just like when you take an umbrella with you, by putting two reefs we managed to weather any other passing squalls.

We arrived in Jolly Harbor, Antigua the next morning around 8am - and jolly it was!! We'd made it to the end of this leg of our journey. We've had a great time while on Antigua - and also had quite a few more experiences worthy of blogs. We'll try to get some of them down in the next week.

We plan to leave on Sunday, Sep 9th for either Martinique or Guadeloupe. We're on the fence. Martinique gets us south faster, yet the hurricanes have been in the south. Additionally, Guadeloupe is only about 10-11 hours away which we can do by the light of day. Martinique is over 24 hours away which would mean over night sailing. We'll let you know what we decide.

In the meantime, we hope all is well with all of you. Be well and stay safe.