Location: Cocoa Bay, Barbuda
Hold onto your hats, blog readers, because, let me tell you, today was an adventure. It started off at 6:57 this morning when I went to plug in my phone to wake our wonderful crew up to the sounds of my summertime playlist only to discover that my phone didn’t want to work this morning(Don’t worry, mom and dad, some fluff crawled into my charging port overnight, we all good). Thanks to some quick thinking and a new phone, we were able to get the crew up (with them possibly getting a few extra minutes of sleep 🙂 ). Breakfast was an incredible meal of bagels, leftover yogurt, and green grapes (yum!) prepared by Meg, Hannah, and Ethan and was quickly eaten in order to make sure we got off the dock with enough time to make it to Barbuda by nightfall!
Now here’s where it gets interesting because guys, it took us over an hour and a half this morning to get our anchor up out of the slipway harbor, and boy was it an adventure. Shoutout to Ash, who spent a good majority of his morning diving down to free our twisted and coiled anchor chain in the harbor (it had wrapped itself around multiple different objects throughout the course of the storm) and to Caleb, who spent the entire time in the anchor locker re-flaking(for all you non-sailors, flaking the anchor basically means playing Jenga with the anchor chain so that we when drop it at our destination it comes out nice and doesn’t get caught) the same 10 meters of chain over and over and over again (trust me when I say that this anchor locker is not a fun place to spend more than 10 minutes in, I’ve done it and have no clue how he made it out alive). FINALLY, when hope was starting to dwindle, the anchor was brought up onto Ocean Star, and away we went!
When we hit the ocean after a short motor out of English Harbour, we were an hour and a half behind schedule. Our wonderful captain Steve decided to scratch our plan of making our way around the windward side of the island. Instead, he took us back up the leeward side, passing familiar anchorages like Falmouth and Jolly Harbour on our Journey to Barbuda. Lunch was mouthwatering cornbread and vegetarian chili. Then we got the chance for the first time on this trip to split into our watch teams in order to get some practice having less of our crew available if we needed to trim the sails. Watch Team 1 began our trip and, in my opinion, had a MUCH nicer 2-hour watch than Watch Team 2, which included: clear skies, small swells, and two DOLPHINS swimming around and under Ocean Star (this was all relayed to me after, sadly I was taking a nap 🙁 ) Watch Team 2’s time on deck was a bit hairier in the form of increasing swell size, a quick squall and quite a few lunches lost over the leeward side of the boat (RIP our amazing galley crew).
Finally, we saw Barbuda on the horizon, and guys, if you’ve ever been to Anegada, it basically just looks like that. The tallest point on these islands might be the palm trees on the beach we are anchored near. It’s that flat. But, we are all super appreciative that we get to visit another island in these crazy times and can’t wait for the diving that we get to do among the incredible reefs near Barbuda! Dinner was spaghetti and Meatballs with Garlic Bread and Green Beans (much bartering happened with the garlic bread and the meatballs), leaving everyone feeling stuffed and satisfied. Tonight is pretty open to enjoying our new anchorage, possibly watching a movie or getting in some study time, and finally getting to bring the hammocks back on deck (the boys are especially excited about this one). Hope everyone is doing well and see y’all later!
Picture 1: Selfie of the anchor lift crew while we watched Ash’s bubbles as we wrestled with the anchor chain
Picture 2: Your lovely skipper putting the jib sail cover back on, showing off my incredible PFD burn
Picture 3: Ethan smiling over his incredible meatball creating and Ian staying Covid healthy in the back
Picture 4: Ash and Sydnei enjoying our new anchorage with some cute smiles
Picture 5: Sunset view from Barbuda featuring the prettiest catamaran I have ever seen
Picture 6: Caleb being sprayed down with the hose in between his flaking job
Picture 7: Selfie with the lovely Ash and our lift bag that was holding the anchor off the bottom
Picture 8: Selfie with the anchor drop crew post securing our new anchorage of the night