Pre-Dawn
I got up before the sun and started working in the virtual office. I’m preparing to depart Antigua & Barbuda and want to make sure that I get my remote work done.
Morning
It is only 7AM now and I’m taking a short break from work to check how LiteSpeed is doing on this site. The free plan gives me daily quotas for initial conversion/caching and it hasn’t caught up yet.
9AM and I’m on the 3rd cup of coffee. I am using pre-ground at the moment, but after completing work I’ll head up the hill and get some good Carib Bean Coffee Roasters beans for the rest of my stay here in the Caribbean.
Noon
Work was more involved than I’d planned and it wasn’t until after 14:00 that I was ready to finish. After a shower and change of clothes I had to wait a bit longer for the passing rainstorms to depart. They looked more serious than they were, leaving only a couple of drops on the ground. Those soon disappeared in the tropical sunshine.
I decided to take care of clearance first. The people at the C&I office were friendly and I was soon finished. I was lucky that I got there before 16:00, as they shut and locked the door behind me – their off-season hours are shorter. Next time I will use Jolly Harbour, though. That is much cheaper and is more convenient for heading north.
Preparing to depart Antigua had 2 parts to it – formal clearance to depart and buying my coffee. The roasters closed at 16:00, so I will have to take care of that on the morrow.
Afternoon
The docks in both English and Falmouth harbours are empty, the season is definitely ended and all the big boats have departed for either Europe, the Med, or the USA. I like this time of year, the weather is always amenable and anchorage less crowded. One downside is that many establishments close for the summer; but that hasn’t happened here quite yet.
I spoke at length with the lady working at the Carl Henry store, which sells handmade mahogany carvings. I found out a lot about local politics; which are not much better or worse than on the other islands.
By the time I’d returned to my dinghy in Falmouth it was late, so I just went around the bend to the dock at the AYC and went upstairs for a draft beer and dinner at Club Sushi.
The seats at the bar were all taken and the ranks of tables further back were empty. This in true British pub style. I squeezed in at the bar and chatted about various topics for a while until I was ready for a burger. This came promptly and it was large. I wasn’t able to finish it, although it was tasty and quite spicy.
Back aboard Zanshin I cleaned up the galley a bit and then read my book in the cockpit for a little while before heading off to sleep.