Although there was a race meeting in Deshaies slated for tonight, I’d received notice that they were all set for the organization of the start for the Deshaies to Antigua race and I decided to head ashore at 9am to clear out and then proceed to use the nice weather to sail to Falmouth Harbour ahead of the race crowd and in time to join the initial meeting that night at 18:00 at the Antigua Yacht Club. I got underway at 10:30 and had a comfortable sail in good conditions, making Falmouth on a single tack between close hauled and beam reach depending upon the wind direction; averaging around 7 knots for the trip.
A helicopter trailing a big hexagonal array flew by low and did a circle over the mountains above Deshaies before returning to the coastline and I couldn’t understand what the rig could be. I’d seen it two weeks earlier flying over the Îles des Saintes and at that time thought it might be some sort of fishing apparatus to encircle and capture fish; but now I could see that it couldn’t float and it seemed to have a lot of wiring in addition to the supporting cables. I looked across the internet and used all of the search terms that I could think of, to no avail. I zoomed into one of the pictures which showed some fuzzy letters and a part of a logo, but unlike the TV shows which take a cheap low-resolution security camera still of a car license plate at 200 paces and, through the magic of some mysterious computer program, manage to to not only get the plate number but also the registration expiry date from the electronic image, I couldn’t make missing pixels magically appear. Later on in the day, with the help of a sailing forum, I finally found out that the rig is used for electromagnetic subterranean detection and is made by a company called SkyTEM.
I made it into Falmouth and anchored just after the immigration offices closed, put up my yellow Quarantine flag and the showered and changed in order to be somewhat presentable at the reception. There were quite a few more people present than I had anticipated; it is a much bigger event with more infrastructure and people when seen from the organizational side that I had expected. I am assigned to assist on Committee Boat “A” and would meet the responsible officer on the next day, but did meet some of my fellow shipmates. After the event I ate at the restaurant downstairs (which I’d never visited before) and had a very tasty meal indeed prior to making it back to my boat for the night.
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |