Enjoying the luxury of bars, restaurants and a stationary bed to sleep on, with no night watches. It’s great to be back here and finding so much unchanged – Mad Mongoose, Abracadabra, Grace Before Meals, espresso martinis in the Skulduggery Bar…  We drove in to St Johns to see our old friends the Francis family who cooked us a wonderful dinner while we tried to catch up on the last ten years.

Now fully recovered from the Atlantic crossing we could hear the call of the next island. Time to re-provision and sail 30 miles or so to Barbuda.

On the way we stopped at Green Island to windsurf. We discovered a perfect breezy anchorage tucked in flat water behind a reef where a big groundswell was breaking. For two days JP windsurfed waves peeling down the reef with no other sails in sight.

On the morning of January 15th the swell had dropped a little, we were up early, hauled anchor and set sail for Barbuda, pausing to land a nice Spanish mackerel on the way. Our destination was Spanish Point, a beautiful turquoise swimming pool of an anchorage, with a tricky approach through the reef which protects it from the Atlantic swell. Escapade surfed in through the narrow reef pass at 16kts with breaking waves on either side, speeding out of the channel in to the vast turquoise pool. We anchored in 1.5m of transparent water, the boat hovering above her shadow with stingrays gliding underneath. Not another boat in sight! The fish was filleted and although it was still rather early, an exception was made and the 50th birthday celebrations began.

One week later, supplies were running low. We had explored most of the navigable West coast of Barbuda and anchored off a series of beautiful, deserted, pink sandy beaches. We had explored ashore, visited the astonishing frigate bird colony with our guide, Goldilocks (who used to have long blond dreadlocks – we had wondered here the name came from when we met him!) and the only settlement of Codrington, home to the 2000 Barbudians. Outside of the village you are more likely to meet the horses, donkeys, deer and pigs who roam wild.

On the morning of the 23rd we sailed back to Antigua to re-provision. A glorious sail in to Deep Bay for the night, then on down the West coast and short-tacking up the South Coast between the reefs, back to Falmouth.

Forecast looks good for a crossing to Nevis tomorrow..