Today was the quiet before the storm day. I only went ashore briefly in the daylight hours to use the internet, as the service I’d purchased from a local WiFi provider wasn’t working from the boat – the speed at which I connected to their website to create an account and do my payment was quite impressive, but once I’d parted with my cash the speeds went progressively down until in the end it was taking 5-10 minutes to build the Google home page! Thus I resorted to using the free WiFi at the Loose Mongoose to do my e-mails.
In the afternoon I did some more stainless work on the rest of the stanchions and lifelines, all that is left to do is the cockpit area and pushpit stainless. Then I’ll be finished, just in time to start all over at the bow of the boat. The big initial party for the Antigua Sailing Week is the Mount Gay Rum “Red Hat Party” ashore. Since another rum company is one of the big sponsors of the Antigua Sailing Week this party is not really advertised by the organizers, but it is a well-known and big event both for the visitors and the locals. There are red baseball caps that are distributed at the beginning of the evening and they are collector’s items and go out quickly, so I decided to head out early at 18:00, just before sunset, to get in line and get my hat. This is my 4th time at the races and I have yet to garner a red baseball cap.
I made it to the dinghy dock, which was already pretty crowded and 2 dinghies deep, and proceeded to walk towards the site of the big party. I pulled out the camera to take a picture and realized that I had left the batteries in the charger on the boat. After a moment of indecision on whether I should continue towards my free hat or return to the boat to get the errant battery I opted for the camera battery. Once back on Zanshin I put the battery in the camera and decided to reward myself with a cold happy-hour beverage prior to heading into the fray at the party. While the sunset isn’t visible from within Falmouth Harbour it was still nice to relax in the cockpit and see the day slowly wind down. The first Corsaire beer was followed by a second and I realized that it was now probably too late to get a Mount Gay hat and I had a third drink as a consolation prize. I then made dinner aboard and intended on heading out to the celebrations (which I could clearly hear from my spot in the anchorage) but the pasta turned out to be a large and heavy meal and my energy was waning and my motivation to go ashore kept on going down until I decided to stay aboard after all.
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